Kaede Hondo

Nagoya-born, signed to I'm Enterprise, and busy on a scale that is difficult to convey: close to a hundred credits sit in this catalogue alone, with leading roles scattered through most of them. Hondo belongs to the generation of Japanese voice actresses who came up alongside streaming, when the number of series produced each season went from many to absurd, and she has worked accordingly.

What makes her useful to a casting director is a bright, forward voice that can be aimed in two very different directions. Sakura Minamoto in Zombie Land SAGA is the loud end, a performance that mostly lives at the top of her range and holds together a premise that would collapse if anyone played it calmly. Elaina in Wandering Witch is the other end: cool, unhurried, a narrator's voice more than a heroine's. Maple in BOFURI sits between them, sunny and entirely unbothered while the show does increasingly ridiculous things around her.

The rest is volume, and volume is the job. Hikari Takanashi in Interviews with Monster Girls, Hitomi Mishima in Hinamatsuri, Akira Komi in Komi Can't Communicate, Hakari Hanazono in The 100 Girlfriends, Rin Fujishiro in A Sign of Affection, Eiko Tsukimi in Ya Boy Kongming!, plus small parts inside enormous shows: a Kamado in Demon Slayer, a black cat in BEASTARS. That mix is the whole industry in miniature. On a Tuesday she is carrying a series; on a Wednesday she is a background credit in the biggest anime in the world.