---
name: "Megumi Hayashibara"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/megumi-hayashibara"
roles: ["Actor"]
born: "30 March 1967"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 1
updated: "2026-09-16T23:36:43.096850+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Megumi Hayashibara

Actor. Born 30 March 1967 in Tokyo, Japan.

## Details

- **Work:** Actor
- **Born:** 30 March 1967, Tokyo, Japan
- **Active:** 1995–1998
- **Also known as:** Хаясибара Мэгуми, 林原 めぐみ, مگومی هایاشیبارا, 林原惠美
- **Works often with:** Tetsuya Watanabe

## Fi1m on Megumi Hayashibara

> A voice actor who made her name by giving less than the medium asks for. Her Rei Ayanami in *Neon Genesis Evangelion* is nearly flat on purpose, and that flatness is why the programme's rare human sentences land as hard as they do. She can do loud as well.

Rei Ayanami hardly speaks, and when she does the voice does not rise or fall. Megumi Hayashibara plays her in *Neon Genesis Evangelion* (1995) with almost no colour: short answers, no hesitation, nothing audible behind the words. The direction she was given, by her own account, was "It's not that she doesn't have emotion, but that she doesn't know what it is," and that is exactly what comes out of the speaker. It is an odd thing to sit through for several episodes. Then Rei says something ordinary with a shade of warmth in it, and because nothing before it had any, we heard it as a shout. We had not expected a cartoon girl in a giant robot to get at us, and she did.

She came to it sideways. Her first parts were small ones in *Maison Ikkoku* in 1986, taken while she was training as a nurse and studying at the Arts Vision school, and the first lead was the female Ranma Saotome in *Ranma ½* (1989), which some fans did not want her to have. The 1990s then belonged to her. Rei; Lina Inverse in *Slayers* (1995), loud and comic; Musashi, or Jessie to English-speaking children, in *Pokémon* (1997); Faye Valentine in *Cowboy Bebop* (1998), where the instruction was again to leave out the exaggeration the medium usually asks for. From 1991 she was also singing, often the opening and closing songs of the programmes she was in.

The thing that runs through the best of it is subtraction. She has said that recording for anime normally calls for surprise and sadness at about one and a half times life size, and that *Cowboy Bebop* asked for none of it; Rei is the same discipline taken further. That is why the Evangelion performance is the one we stand behind: the flatness is a choice, held for weeks, and it is what makes the exceptions count. The louder work we have not reviewed and will not judge at length. The nearest thing to a complaint anywhere is that some listeners hear a nasal edge in the energetic roles, Lina among them. Critics otherwise agree with one another about her, and on the evidence of Evangelion we agree with them.

She has been dry, since, about the medium she came up in, saying the anime of the 1990s had an ambition the imitations that followed cannot match. She now runs her own agency, Woodpark Office, and still works in the booth, on radio and on record. If you only know Rei from the English dub, you have not heard the performance. Put the subtitles on.

## Biography

Megumi Hayashibara is a Japanese voice actress, singer, lyricist and radio personality. She was born on 30 March 1967 in Tokyo.

Hayashibara began voice work in 1986 with small roles in *Maison Ikkoku*. She is known for voicing Rei Ayanami in *Neon Genesis Evangelion* (1995) and Faye Valentine in *Cowboy Bebop* (1998), as well as roles in *Ranma ½*, *Slayers*, *Detective Conan*, *Pokémon* and *Shaman King*. She is also a qualified nurse.

She is affiliated with Woodpark Office, which she founded.

*Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.*

## On Fi1m (1)

- *Neon Genesis Evangelion* (1995), Fi1m 86, as Rei Ayanami (voice) — [page](https://film.one/tv/neon-genesis-evangelion.md)

## Also credited on (not yet reviewed)

- *Cowboy Bebop* (1998), Actor

## Also known for

- *One Piece* (1999), Rebecca (voice)
- *Castle in the Sky* (1986), Woman in Blue (voice)
- *JUJUTSU KAISEN* (2020), Kaori Itadori (voice)
- *Paprika* (2006), Paprika / Atsuko Chiba (voice)
- *Wolf Children* (2012), Sohei's Mother (voice)
- *Pokémon* (1997), Musashi (voice), Rabifutto (voice), Musashi / Rabifutto (voice)
- *Sword Art Online* (2012), Yūki Kyōko (voice)
- *Slayers Return* (1996), Lina Inverse (voice)

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© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/megumi-hayashibara