Shoya Ishige

Shoya Ishige was born in Hidaka, Saitama in 1990 and came to voice acting sideways, working first as a stage performer before deciding that anime was what he actually wanted. The route in was the usual one: additional voices, in his case a male student in Orange, followed by years of small parts, a passerby here, a schoolboy there, a member of the handicraft club in Diary of Our Days at the Breakwater.

His first lead, Yusaku Fujiki in Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS, gave him a taciturn hacker to play and set the type he has been cast in since: quiet young men who go very still when they are concentrating. The best example is Wakana Gojo in My Dress-Up Darling, a boy who makes traditional hina dolls and is mortified by almost everything else. The comedy of that performance is in the noises rather than the lines, a catalogue of embarrassed half-syllables, and then the voice drops and steadies the moment he starts working with his hands. Yun Arikawa in Godzilla Singular Point is the same instinct applied to an engineer who thinks out loud at speed.

The recent run is heavier. Renji Kaga in WIND BREAKER, Gaku Taira in TRILLION GAME, Koushi in The Fire Hunter, Souga in Ayakashi Triangle, Albert in Orb: On the Movements of the Earth, plus a voice credit in the Demon Slayer film Infinity Castle. He has become one of those reliable working actors whose name is in a third of the season charts.