Kappei Yamaguchi

Born in Fukuoka in 1965 and credited professionally as Kappei Yamaguchi rather than by his given name, Mitsuo, he works as an actor and a rakugoka as well as a voice actor. His voice debut in 1989 set the pattern for everything after: the male half of Ranma Saotome in Ranma 1/2, a character split between two performers, so his job was to be one recognisable person while somebody else played the other half of the same body. That same year he was Tombo in Kiki's Delivery Service, the boy with the bicycle and no sense of when to stop talking.

What he has is a bright, slightly cracked adolescent tenor and an unusual willingness to drain it. Usopp in One Piece is the loud version, boastful and cowardly and pitched permanently at the edge of a squeak, a role he has now carried since 1999 across the series and more than a dozen films. L in Death Note is the same instrument with the air let out: flat, unhurried, faintly bored, a voice that makes a deduction sound like a complaint about the weather. Inuyasha gave him a snarl, and in Case Closed he plays both the detective Shinichi Kudo and the thief Kaito Kid, which is a private joke he has been telling for years.

He is married with two children, Ryunosuke and Akane, who both became voice actors themselves, and Akane is a rakugoka as well. He also voices Teddie in the Persona games, which are not catalogued here.