Kaori Nazuka

Kaori Nazuka is an actor, born 1985.

Anime voice work is measured in volume, and Kaori Nazuka's output is enormous: this catalog alone lists over 150 credits for her. The two roles that made her name arrived early and close together, Eureka in Eureka Seven in 2005 and Nunnally in Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion the following year.

Both are built the same way, which is the clue to what she does. Each is written to seem fragile and each has to sound unbreakable at the decisive moments, and Nazuka plays the softness without ever letting it read as weakness. That is a harder register than the high-energy comic voice the industry tends to reward, and it is why she keeps getting cast as the still center of very loud shows.

The supporting work shows the range. Kiyoko Shimizu across Haikyu!! is a study in minimal speech. Maria Ross in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is military and plain. Chelsea in Akame ga Kill! is playful and cold at once, and Tsubaki in Soul Eater is patience given a voice. Toru Hagakure in My Hero Academia is the comic assignment and an unusual one, since the character is invisible and the performance has to carry the whole thing alone.

She is still busy two decades on: Suirei in The Apothecary Diaries, Ukyo Kuonji in the 2024 Ranma1/2, Uta in One Piece Film Red, Frederica in Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-. Her Wikipedia entry gives as much space to her three daughters as to any of that, which says more about how voice careers get documented than about the work.

Movies (47)

Where to start with Kaori Nazuka

Everything points back to Eureka Seven. It is long, it has a genuinely odd emotional center, and the title role is the performance the rest of the career refers to.

Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion is the more famous show and Nunnally is a smaller share of it, but the two sit together as a pair worth comparing directly.

If a full-length series is too much of a commitment, One Piece Film Red is a single film with a substantial role in it, and My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising is the shortest route to her comic work.

For the quieter register, Haikyu!! and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood both use her sparingly and well. The Apothecary Diaries is the best-looking recent series she appears in, and Akame ga Kill! the one that lets her play something with an edge.

The defining roles

The mid-2000s parts that made her name, all of them characters whose softness sits over something considerably harder. Eureka is the title role and the most demanding of them, and Nunnally is the one most people name first.

The big supporting parts

The long-running shonen series where she sits somewhere in the ensemble, usually as the composed one. Kiyoko in Haikyu and Maria Ross in Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood get the most out of that register.

The recent work

She has moved into older characters, mothers and teachers and the woman who knows something, and the workload has not slowed at all. The Apothecary Diaries and the Ranma remake are the highest-profile of the current run.

Genres Kaori Nazuka works in

More about Kaori Nazuka

Wikipedia