Unsho Ishizuka

Ishizuka had one of the most heard voices in Japanese animation and very little of the fame that usually comes with it. He was a stage actor, narrator and theatre director from Katsuyama in Fukui, affiliated with Aoni Production until his death in 2018, and for two decades he was the sound of Pokémon: the narrator who opens the episodes, Professor Okido, and a long list of the creatures themselves, including Onix and Steelix. He worked in both the Japanese and English-language versions of that show, which is unusual.

Outside it he specialised in weight. Jet Black in Cowboy Bebop is the model: an older, heavier man who does the cooking, the worrying and the actual detective work while the leads pose. Zabuza in Naruto is the swordsman who gives that series its first genuinely frightening fight. Van Hohenheim in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is a father carrying centuries of guilt in a very calm voice. Joseph Joestar, Mr. Satan in the Dragon Ball films, Dino Golzine in Banana Fish, Heihachi Mishima in Tekken: Blood Vengeance, Blanka in the Street Fighter II film: the parts are older, larger and slower than the heroes, and he never plays them as slow.

He was also a career narrator, which produces one of the better facts in anime. The same man opens Pokémon and Berserk.