Voice acting in Japan

Voice acting in Japan is an industry where actors provide voice-overs as characters or narrators in media including anime, video games, audio dramas, commercials, and dubbing for non-Japanese films and television programs.

A voice actor (声優, seiyū) provides voice-overs for characters and narration for various types of media, including anime, video games, audio dramas, live-action stunt and puppet shows, and commercials.

According to a newspaper interview with a voice talent manager, "Since the Yamato boom, the word 'seiyū' has become instantly recognised; before that, actors and actresses who introduced themselves as seiyū were often asked, 'You mean you work for Seiyu supermarket?

The benshi would fulfill a role similar to ones in the Japanese puppet theater and magic lantern shows, where the narration would fill in dialogue and other story elements.

[citation needed] In 1941, NHK opened a training program to the public to prepare actors to specialise in radio dramas.

This was called the "Tokyo Central Broadcasting Station Actor Training Agency" (東京中央放送局専属劇団俳優養成所, Tōkyō Chūō Hōsō Kyoku Senzoku Gekidan Haiyū Yōsei Sho).

[citation needed] Starting in the 1950s, a rise in the popularity of radio dramas as well as foreign television and film created many new opportunities for voice actors.

[5] Actors that were famous for their roles in dubbing and radio were used for their star power to voice similar characters in several anime productions.

Because of problems with pay guarantees arising from the Gosha Agreement, cinema actors were prevented from dubbing foreign movies for television.

[citation needed] During the late 1970s, Akio Nojima, Kazuyuki Sogabe, Akira Kamiya, Tōru Furuya and Toshio Furukawa were the first to unite into a band, Slapstick [ja], and perform live.

In 1989, the voice actors of the five main stars of the animated television show Ronin Warriors (Nozomu Sasaki, Takeshi Kusao, Hiroshi Takemura, Tomohiro Nishimura and Daiki Nakamura) formed an all-male singing group called "NG5".

In the 1990s, a new boom centred on more personal ways of communication, such as radio shows, Original Video Animation, television quizzes, public events and the Internet, gave way to the publication of the first dedicated voice acting magazines, Seiyū Grand Prix [ja] and Voice Animage.

[citation needed] From 1994 (1994) to 2000 (2000), the world's first digital satellite radio broadcaster, St.GIGA, transmitted episodic video games with voice acted overdubs in a separate and continually streaming vocal track (a technique called SoundLink), to be played in Japan on Nintendo's Super Famicom video game console with its Satellaview peripheral.

[11] Prominent examples include Aya Hirano, Koharu Kusumi, and Nana Mizuki, all of whom were established actors or singers in mainstream entertainment before entering voice acting.

[12][11] The term "2.5D", which picked up frequent usage in the mid-2010s, was used to describe voice actors who would portray their characters in real life, such as television or stage plays.

[13] Over the mid-to-late 2010s, multimedia projects where the voice actors would appear as their characters in real-life became popular, such as The Idolmaster and Love Live!