Reina Ueda

She began voice work in 2012 and got her first lead two years later, as Naru Sekiya in Hanayamata. In 2015 that run brought her one of the Best New Actress prizes at the 9th Seiyu Awards. She is from Toyama Prefecture and works out of the agency 81 Produce, and the catalogue here already lists roughly 150 credits, which tells you how the Japanese voice industry works: constant, overlapping, one show ending as three more begin.

Her specialty is the quiet one. Ueda's default instrument is a soft, slightly breathy voice that other performers would use for shyness and she uses for pressure, so her characters tend to sound like people holding something in. Miyo Saimori in My Happy Marriage is the purest example, an abused young woman whose politeness is a survival tactic. Kanao Tsuyuri in Demon Slayer works on the same principle, a swordfighter who barely speaks and has to convey everything in the gaps. Kisa Soma in Fruits Basket, a girl who stops speaking altogether for a stretch, sits in the same family.

The range shows up when she is cast against that. Gigi Andalucia in Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway is coy and manipulative, Reze in the Chainsaw Man film pulls her well away from the type, and Ayumu carries the disaster series Japan Sinks: 2020 with none of the softness available to her. She also voices Mallow in the Sun and Moon run of Pokemon, credited under the character's Japanese name Mao, plus Methode in Frieren and Hemimorphite in Land of the Lustrous. She sings too, and released a mini-album in 2016.