Nozomu Sasaki

In Akira (1988), Nozomu Sasaki's Tetsuo sounds young even when the performance is at its most forceful. The high pitch of his early voice helps us hear a troubled boy through the intensity, rather than simply another source of noise in a violent film. Alongside Mitsuo Iwata as Kaneda, he gives the violence a personal interest that the film badly needs. We cared about the two of them because their changing friendship gave us something clear to follow when the wider story became crowded. The film's speed needs that sort of performance: someone has to make the people matter.

The youthful sound that served his early breakthrough in Akira also suited the directness of Yūsuke Urameshi in Yu Yu Hakusho (1992). Sasaki's own description is helpful: “Yusuke is totally open, or to put it another way, he says everything that comes to his mind, right?” That gives the energetic delivery a purpose: we need to hear how readily the character expresses himself. His later, deeper and huskier voice has found work in mature supporting characters and antagonists, including Johan Liebert in Monster (2004) and Mello in Death Note (2006). Those parts make it worth looking beyond the boyish leads when choosing what to hear him in next.

Akira also shows the limit of what we should credit to a strong voice performance. Director Katsuhiro Otomo gives Sasaki and Iwata a friendship that helps us care about the action, but the script he wrote with Izo Hashimoto does not give everyone comparable attention. Kei, voiced by Mami Koyama, is among the supporting characters we would gladly have spent longer getting to know. Sasaki can make Tetsuo's turmoil compelling; he cannot make the growing cast any easier to accommodate, and the storytelling still feels rushed. Start with Akira for the two central performances, with some patience for the explanations around them.