Kenichi Ogata

Count the Detective Conan entries here and you get more than twenty feature films, all of them with Ogata as Professor Agasa. That is one franchise, one character, across nearly three decades, and it is only a slice of a career that runs past two hundred credits.

Ogata is a specialist in old men, and specifically in old men who are funnier than they are wise. Genma Saotome in Ranma 1/2 is the loudest example, a father written as an obstacle and played as a force of nature. Myoga in InuYasha, later carried into Yashahime, is the opposite register: a fussy retainer whose main function is to explain things and then vanish. Agasa is the third mode, the neighbour with a workshop, warm and slightly ridiculous, which is why he has survived so many films.

The range shows up in the odd jobs rather than the famous ones. He is a cat in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, an animator in Golden Boy, a riot police inspector in Roujin Z, Nebraska in Trigun, an old man in Star Wars: Visions, and Ankoku Daishogun in Great Mazinger back in 1974, which is the earliest credit listed here. His King Dedede in Kirby: Right Back at Ya! and his Ebisumaru in the Ganbare Goemon games are not among the credits here, though the extract names both. In 2024 the new Ranma adaptation brought him back as its narrator, which is a nice piece of casting: the man who played the father now introduces the show.