Ryotaro Okiayu

Ryotaro Okiayu is an actor, born 1969.

Listen for the register. Okiayu works in a low, level, faintly aristocratic voice, and his signature roles all share one quality: men who treat raising their voice as a defeat. Byakuya Kuchiki in Bleach, Treize Khushrenada in Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, Kunimitsu Tezuka in The Prince of Tennis and Kokushibo in Demon Slayer are the same instrument tuned to different kinds of certainty, and the discipline it takes to hold a scene at that volume is easy to underestimate.

The range shows up when he abandons it. Akio Furukawa in Clannad is loud, teasing and deliberately unserious, and it is genuinely hard to hear the same actor. Scar in the 2003 Fullmetal Alchemist is grief with the temperature turned down. He plays both Kaku and Borsalino across the One Piece franchise, Enrico in Hellsing, Helbram in The Seven Deadly Sins, Ebisu in Noragami, and the catalog lists more than two hundred credits for him, which is a career built on being requested by name.

He is affiliated with Aoni Production, sang in a group called Entertainment Music Unit between 1995 and 2000, and is married to the voice actress Ai Maeda. Outside anime, he is Zero in Mega Man X and Alucard in Castlevania, and he is the standing Japanese dub voice for Scott Foley, Taylor Kitsch, Lin Gengxin and Stephen Fung, which is its own kind of steady employment.

Movies (72)

Where to start with Ryotaro Okiayu

Byakuya Kuchiki in Bleach is the calling card, and the fastest way to hear what makes him castable: a character whose entire personality is refusal to be hurried, played by someone who never hurries.

Then break the pattern deliberately. Clannad is the one to watch second, because Akio Furukawa is loud, warm and ridiculous and sounds like a different performer. Mobile Suit Gundam Wing has the most florid version of the aristocrat, Fullmetal Alchemist the most wounded, and Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle the most recent, where the same measured delivery is used to make a demon feel geological. For the long-haul stuff, One Piece gives him two distinct roles across decades, and The Prince of Tennis is the long-running one, the same instrument in a school uniform.

The composed antagonists

The register he is hired for above all others: low, controlled and entirely certain of itself. Byakuya in Bleach is the definitive version and Treize in Gundam Wing is the earlier prototype.

The long-running series

Decades of work in the biggest ongoing productions in the medium, usually turning up as a figure of authority the young cast has to get past before the plot can continue.

The Detective Conan films

A remarkable run in the annual Conan features, mostly as Subaru Okiya and Fumimaro Ayanokoji. This is the volume end of a Japanese voice career and it is where the steady work actually is.

The recent work

Kokushibo in Demon Slayer is the widest-reaching recent role, and the rest is a steady run of supporting parts in the larger productions of the last few years.

Genres Ryotaro Okiayu works in

More about Ryotaro Okiayu

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