Takahiro Sakurai

Takahiro Sakurai comes from Aichi Prefecture, was born in 1974, and works as a voice actor, narrator and radio personality. His voice sits in the tenor range, clean and unhurried, the kind of instrument that gets a young performer cast as heroes: Cloud Strife across the Final Fantasy VII material, Suzaku Kururugi in Code Geass, X in Mega Man X, Miyuki Kazuya in Ace of Diamond. He is also the official Japanese dub voice of Robert Pattinson, a job he has held since Twilight.

The interesting part is what happened when directors noticed that the same calm, courteous delivery works even better on people who are lying. Sakurai villains are not shouters. Griffith in the Berserk films is polite ambition with no floor under it. Shogo Makishima in Psycho-Pass reads philosophy at you in the voice of a man recommending a wine. Suguru Geto in Jujutsu Kaisen keeps his warmth exactly where it is while his position moves underneath it. Rohan Kishibe is arrogance delivered as reasonableness.

The best single performance is neither hero nor villain. Arataka Reigen in Mob Psycho 100 is a fraudulent exorcist with no powers at all, and Sakurai plays him as a salesman who genuinely believes his own patter about ninety percent of the time. It is a comic performance that keeps turning sincere without warning, which is a very hard thing to do with only a voice.

He has several hundred credits and shows no sign of slowing: Giyu Tomioka has carried him through the entire Demon Slayer run, television and features alike.