Yui Ishikawa

Ishikawa trained as a stage actress and a dancer, in classical ballet, jazz and tap, and arrived at voice work sideways through radio drama from 2007. The background shows in an unexpected way: she is one of the few leading voice actresses in anime whose signature is restraint.

Her defining roles are all variations on a character who will not raise her voice. Mikasa Ackerman in Attack on Titan, across the television series and its film compilations, is written as close to affectless, and the part would be unplayable without an actor who can carry meaning in the gaps between short sentences. Violet Evergarden is the same problem in a gentler key, a young woman learning what emotions are while sounding, at first, like someone reciting from a manual. Her 2B in NieR:Automata Ver1.1a completes the set. Three enormous roles, all built on withholding, which is not a trick most performers can sustain for a whole series without going inert.

The rest is broader than that reputation implies. She is in the comic ensembles, Cells at Work! and The Masterful Cat Is Depressed Again Today. She is in the sports series, Iwa Kakeru and HANEBADO!, and the fantasy leads, The Saint's Magic Power Is Omnipotent, Doctor Elise and The Demon Sword Master of Excalibur Academy. She is Nyaan in Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX, a supporting classmate in A Silent Voice, and she still takes small parts in the biggest current shows, Solo Leveling and The Apothecary Diaries among them.