Sanae Kobayashi

Casting directors in Japanese animation call Kobayashi when a character's voice has to be ambiguous, and a quarter century of credits bears that out. Born in Hamamatsu in 1980, she was formerly with Production Baobab and works now with Sigma Seven.

That shows up two ways. She plays boys and young men without the strain that usually gives the trick away, including Allen Walker in D.Gray-man, Akira Toya in Hikaru no Go, Chris Thorndyke in Sonic X, Daedalus Yumeno in Ergo Proxy, the child version of Shin-Ah in Yona of the Dawn, the young Yakumo in Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju and Tokugawa Yoshimune in Ooku: The Inner Chambers. And she plays women whose surface and interior do not match, which is the reason Elfen Lied functions at all: Lucy and Nyuu are one body with two voices, one adult and emptied of feeling, the other a child, and the show would collapse if the seam ever showed.

The rest is the ordinary, enormous workload of a career anime actress since the turn of the 2000s. Ennis in Baccano!, Namie Yagiri in Durarara!!, Reiko Natsume in Natsume's Book of Friends, Asuka Tenjouin in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, Kumi Mashiba across the Fighting Spirit films, Catherine Glass in Macross Frontier, Emma in Steamboy, plus a long game resume: Gemini Sunrise in Sakura Wars, Pai in .hack, Popo and Nana in Super Smash Bros., Kat in Gravity Rush and Raven in Honkai Impact 3rd.

She has never been a star-name performer in the modern idol-adjacent sense, and that is roughly the point. The range is the career.