Kikuko Inoue

The specialty is calm. Inoue has spent nearly four decades playing the serene one, the patient one, the mother, and her real skill is that she plays serenity as a decision somebody is making rather than a personality they were issued. Kasumi Tendo in Ranma is the archetype, and she was still playing Kasumi in the 2024 remake, thirty-five years after the first series, which is a fairly remarkable sentence to be able to write about any performer.

The list of gentle women is long: Sanae Furukawa in Clannad, Shuko Komi in Komi Can't Communicate, Elvira in Ascendance of a Bookworm, Mirellia in The Rising of the Shield Hero, mothers in Orange and My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU. What makes her more than a type is that she never sweetens the delivery, so the warmth reads as intelligence rather than softness.

Then there is the other half, which the fan base tends to enjoy more. Lust in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is the same unhurried voice used to make cruelty sound bored, and it works precisely because the instrument is identical. Minerva Orland in Fairy Tail, Miria in Claymore and Acrobatic Silky in Dan Da Dan run the same trick at different temperatures. Away from the booth she sang with DoCo and the Goddess Family Club, works as a narrator, and founded and runs her own agency, Office Anemone, which is a rarer career move in that industry than the credit list suggests.