Kazuhiko Inoue

Kazuhiko Inoue has been one of the defining voices in Japanese animation since the 1970s, when he played Anthony Brown in Candy Candy and Joe Shimamura in the 1979 version of Cyborg 009. Two generations later he is still working constantly, and to most of the current audience he is one thing above all: Kakashi Hatake, across Naruto, Naruto Shippuden, the films, and now Boruto, which adds up to roughly a quarter century in the same mask.

Kakashi explains the appeal. Inoue's default is a light, unhurried, faintly bored delivery that suggests a man who has already worked out how the fight ends and would rather be reading. He can drop that register into something much colder without changing volume, which is what makes the character's serious moments land. It is a rare trick. Most voice actors signal the gear change; he simply arrives in the new gear.

The range underneath is wider than the signature role suggests. Jerid Messa in Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam is a genuinely unpleasant young officer. Kars in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is grand and theatrical. Toichiro Suzuki in Mob Psycho 100 is quiet menace, Gotou in Parasyte is inhuman calm, and Faraday in Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is a fixer whose politeness is the threat. He works steadily as a narrator and a singer as well, and he turns up in Makoto Shinkai films in small adult parts, including Taki's father in Your Name. Few performers with a run this long still sound this current.