Houko Kuwashima

Kuwashima, born in Iwate in 1975 and affiliated with Aoni Production, has a range her own industry states flatly: young boys through to adult women, in the same voice. Kenny in Beyblade and Minoru Kokubunji in Chobits are boys. Sango in InuYasha and Clare in Claymore are emphatically not. This catalogue holds 182 of her credits.

The through-line is control rather than sweetness, which is unusual for a voice actress cast this often as women and children. Clare in Claymore is nearly affectless, a half-monster warrior narrating her own damage in a flat, careful register, and Kuwashima makes the flatness itself expressive: everything the character will not say is audible in what she withholds. Soifon in Bleach is clipped and permanently furious. Medusa in Soul Eater is silk laid over a blade. Then she can turn round and play Kie Kamado in Demon Slayer, the mother, in a handful of gentle lines the series returns to whenever it wants to hurt you.

Her first major role was Yurika Misumaru in Martian Successor Nadesico, which this catalogue does not carry. Everything since has been steady and enormous: Sango across the InuYasha films and Yashahime, Tomoyo in Clannad, Kagura in Azumanga Daioh, Delta in Boruto, Peridot in Land of the Lustrous, Satomi Niiyama in Sound! Euphonium and Liz and the Blue Bird, Scarlet in Space Dandy, Rose Thomas in Fullmetal Alchemist.