Sayaka Ohara

Ohara has one of the most useful voices in Japanese animation: a full adult register in an industry that mostly wants teenagers, which is why she has spent twenty-five years being cast as the mother, the captain, the elder or the threat, and often several of those in the same season.

The signature role is Erza Scarlet in Fairy Tail, carried through the television series and out into the films Phoenix Priestess and Dragon Cry. It is the loudest thing she does. The more interesting work is quieter and stranger: Yuko Ichihara in xxxHOLiC, all smoke and amusement; Milly Ashford in Code Geass; Irisviel in Fate/Zero; Ozen across the Made in Abyss series and its films, a performance built almost entirely on unsettling calm.

The mother roles are a category of their own and she is the best in the business at them, from Yasuko in Toradora! to Masaki Kurosaki in a Bleach film to a role in Your Name. She played Michiru Kaiou in the Sailor Moon Eternal films, Mari Kurihara in Prison School, Captain Kobayashi in Knights of Sidonia, and Elsie Crimson in Edens Zero.

Affiliated with the Haikyo agency, she also works in video games, dubs foreign live-action into Japanese, and hosts radio. That breadth is the norm for a working seiyuu, and the volume here is unusual even by that standard.