Wataru Hatano

Wataru Hatano is an actor, born 1982.

The 2nd Seiyu Awards in 2008 gave Wataru Hatano its Best Male Rookie prize, citing Sam Houston in Toward the Terra and Tenshi Yuri in Saint Beast. He was already several years into a career at 81 Produce that has never been only voice acting: he is also credited as a singer, narrator, radio MC and comedian, which is the standard portfolio for a working seiyu in Japan and part of why the credit list runs to well over a hundred titles here.

The useful thing to notice is where he sits in a cast. Hatano is rarely the lead and almost always the character you remember from the second tier: Metal Bat in One-Punch Man, Hitoshi Shinso in My Hero Academia, Haruta Shigemo in Jujutsu Kaisen. Three of the biggest shonen franchises of the last decade, three supporting parts, all recognisable. The exception that proves the pattern is Gajeel Redfox, whom he carried across the Fairy Tail series and both of its features in this catalogue, a role held long enough to become an association rather than a credit.

He works in games too, voicing Josuke Higashikata in CyberConnect2's JoJo's Bizarre Adventure titles and Rufus in the Street Fighter franchise, neither of which is in this catalogue. The breadth is the point: he moves between shonen action, romance, sports comedy and horror without the register giving him away. Recent credits keep the same shape, from Anji in the 2023 Rurouni Kenshin to Okada in Uzumaki, and he announced his marriage to fellow voice actress Mai Hashimoto in April 2018.

Movies (16)

TV (104)

Where to start with Wataru Hatano

Begin with Fairy Tail if you want the association rather than the sampler, because Gajeel is the role he held longest and the one where you can hear him build a character over a long run rather than land a cameo. The film Fairy Tail: Dragon Cry is the same performance at feature scale.

For the shonen supporting run, One-Punch Man and My Hero Academia are the two clearest samples, and JUJUTSU KAISEN is the biggest recent one. Then go sideways: Ouran High School Host Club is the earliest role here worth hearing, ReLIFE puts him in a quiet slice-of-life register almost nobody associates him with, and Uzumaki is the strangest thing on the list by a distance.

The big men

The type he gets cast as: physically enormous, verbally economical, and considerably more sentimental than they look. Gajeel in Fairy Tail is the long one and Metal Bat in One Punch Man is the most fun.

The current shonen work

The steady supporting work in whatever is currently running, which is how a voice career actually stays alive. None of these are leads and he is reliably the most distinctive thing in a crowded cast.

The gentler roles

The other register, and the more interesting half. Kimi ni Todoke and Ouran are the early school-drama work, and ACCA gives him something quiet and adult that almost nothing else on this list does.

Genres Wataru Hatano works in

More about Wataru Hatano

Wikipedia