Mayumi Izuka

Two Studio Ghibli credits open the page: Tsuneko Tani in Only Yesterday (1991) and Kinuyo in Whisper of the Heart (1995), small parts in two of that studio's most grown-up films. Izuka has been a working voice actress in Tokyo since the early 1990s and records as a singer under the alias Hoshi Mai.

Then came Pokemon, and it took over the page. She voices Kasumi, known in English as Misty, and the credits collected here follow the character from the first feature in 1998 through the run of films that followed, out to the 2019 remake Mewtwo Strikes Back Evolution. Playing one role across more than twenty years of releases is the kind of job that pays for a career and defines it at the same time, and the performance holds up: impatience and loyalty arriving in the same line, which is harder to keep fresh than it sounds.

Around that sits a steady rather than starry anime career. Millerna Aston in The Vision of Escaflowne (1996) and the film version, Makoto Sawatari in both the 2002 and 2006 adaptations of Kanon and again in Kaginado, Cleao in Orphen, Reika Hayami in the Kindaichi Case Files, Kazuko in Junkers Come Here (1994), and a long tail of supporting roles through the 1990s and 2000s. She is affiliated with Across Entertainment and teaches at a voice-acting training school.