Yoshitsugu Matsuoka
Yoshitsugu Matsuoka is an actor, born 1986.
Yoshitsugu Matsuoka was born in Obihiro, Hokkaido in 1986 and is affiliated with the agency I'm Enterprise. He won Best New Actor at the 6th Seiyu Awards in 2012, the year Sword Art Online turned Kirito into his signature role, and Best Lead Actor at the 10th in 2016. If you have watched much anime from the last fifteen years, you have heard him lead at least one series without necessarily noticing it was the same voice.
That is the point of him. Kirito is played level and unshowy, a deliberately low-affect protagonist who works as an audience surrogate precisely because the performance refuses to grandstand, and it is the reason so many people underrate the actor. Then he does Inosuke Hashibira in Demon Slayer, who is nothing but shriek, appetite and misplaced confidence, or Petelgeuse in Re:Zero, who is pitched several registers past unhinged, and the range becomes obvious.
The rest of the list is the shape of a lead seiyuu's career: Sora in No Game No Life, Soma Yukihira in Food Wars, Bell Cranel in Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, Fuutarou Uesugi in The Quintessential Quintuplets, Mechamaru in Jujutsu Kaisen, Teruki Hanazawa in Mob Psycho 100, Zanka in Gachiakuta, plus Xiao in Genshin Impact and Vash in Trigun Stampede. As of 2019 he also held a Guinness World Record for the most unique sound bites recorded by a voice actor for a mobile game, on the Danmachi spin-off Memoria Freese.
Movies (58)
- Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle (2025)
- Jujutsu Kaisen 0 (2021)
- Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Movie: Mugen Train (2020)
- Cosmic Princess Kaguya! (2026)
- Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba -To the Hashira Training- (2024)
- The Quintessential Quintuplets Movie (2022)
- Baki Hanma VS Kengan Ashura (2024)
- Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Mt. Natagumo Arc (2021)
- Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba - The Hashira Meeting Arc (2021)
- Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba -To the Swordsmith Village- (2023)
- Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba - Infinity Castle 2
- Detective Conan: The Million-Dollar Pentagram (2024)
- Sword Art Online the Movie: Ordinal Scale (2017)
- The Stranger by the Shore (2020)
- Sasaki and Miyano: Graduation (2023)
- Sword Art Online the Movie - Progressive - Aria of a Starless Night (2021)
- Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie Part I: Beginnings (2012)
- No Game No Life: Zero (2017)
- Hirano and Kagiura (2023)
- Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?: Arrow of the Orion (2019)
- Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie Part III: Rebellion (2013)
- Code Geass: Akito the Exiled 3: The Brightness Falls (2015)
- Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal the Movie Part 1 (2021)
- The Quintessential Quintuplets∽ (2023)
- Mobile Suit Gundam SEED FREEDOM (2024)
- Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie Part II: Eternal (2012)
- Fate/strange Fake -Whispers of Dawn- (2023)
- Goblin Slayer: Goblin's Crown (2020)
- Sword Art Online the Movie – Progressive – Scherzo of Deep Night (2022)
- Code Geass: Akito the Exiled 1: The Wyvern Arrives (2012)
TV (141)
- JUJUTSU KAISEN (2020)
- Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- (2016)
- Solo Leveling (2024)
- High School DxD (2012)
- Sword Art Online (2012)
- Mob Psycho 100 (2016)
- Ace of the Diamond (2013)
- The Eminence in Shadow (2022)
- Ahiru no Sora (2019)
- BLUE LOCK (2022)
- The Irregular at Magic High School (2014)
- Mission: Yozakura Family (2024)
- Chiikawa (2022)
- Gachiakuta (2025)
- Seirei Gensouki: Spirit Chronicles (2021)
- SHIROBAKO (2014)
- Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (2019)
- Goblin Slayer (2018)
- Akame ga Kill! (2014)
- Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer (2022)
- My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! (2020)
- The Quintessential Quintuplets (2019)
- Oreshura (2013)
- Nagi-Asu: A Lull in the Sea (2013)
- Sasaki and Miyano (2022)
- Witch Watch (2025)
- ALL OUT!! (2016)
- Record of Ragnarok (2021)
- Deaimon: Recipe for Happiness (2022)
- A Couple of Cuckoos (2022)
Where to start with Yoshitsugu Matsuoka
Hear the baseline first. Sword Art Online is the signature role, and Kirito is played flat and competent on purpose, which makes everything after it land harder.
Go immediately to Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba for the opposite: Inosuke is pure noise, appetite and bravado, and it is genuinely hard to believe it is the same throat. Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- pushes further still, since Petelgeuse is pitched several registers past anything else in his catalogue.
For the comic-lead register try No Game No Life and Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma, both of which run on rapid, confident delivery. Mob Psycho 100 is his best supporting turn, a rival written with more nuance than the genre usually bothers with, and The Quintessential Quintuplets is the softest and easiest watch here.
The isekai and light-novel leads
He is the default voice for the young man transported into a game world, which is by now an entire genre on its own. Sword Art Online set the template, and Re:Zero is much the best written of them.
Demon Slayer and the shonen work
Inosuke in Demon Slayer is the role that proves the range: a shrieking, feral character with none of the composure his usual leads have. Mugen Train is the highest-grossing Japanese film ever made.
The quieter shows
The work away from the shouting, and it is the more interesting half of the list. Anohana and A Place Further Than the Universe are two of the best-written series of the last fifteen years, and neither of them has a sword in it.