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Kenjirō Tsuda Celebrates 30 Years of Iconic Voices

Kenjirō Tsuda is known today as one of the most prolific voice actors in anime, and he sat down at Anime NYC to discuss his 30-year-long career in acting. Tsuda revealed that he first got into acting through doing theatre in middle school and that he was a big fan of American films and directors like Spike Lee. He had initially wanted to get into filmmaking and was admitted into a film school, but said that he wasn't a particularly great student and was unable to put together a film script. He then decided to study acting to learn more about film, but gradually became more involved in acting and eventually started working as a theatre actor. In time, he eventually received an offer for a voice role in an anime called H2. After transitioning between theatre work and voice acting roles, he eventually landed the role of Seto Kaiba in Yu Gi Oh!, which was the big launching point for his career in anime.

He also spoke a bit about some of his work outside of anime, which includes theatre, dubs for live-action American films, and some roles in live-action Japanese films. He said that while he does sometimes employ different acting methods depending on the type of project he's on, he tries to keep the core of the work the same in every role he does. He has also managed to achieve his dream of working as a film director. He said that while he doesn't have a lot of experience in it yet, he feels that it's very different from working in front of a camera and that he has to have more awareness in a production. One thing he said that's important to him as a director is to maintain a stress-free environment for all live-action and voice-over actors that he works with. He also said that while his career hasn't led to him working in any live-action American films, he hopes he gets the opportunity someday.

When asked more about his career in voice acting, he revealed that he was never actually trained in voice acting and basically dove headfirst into the field. As such, he initially found it challenging to figure out how to match the tempo of his voice to animation, but now that he has more years of experience, he's noticed how animation staff sometimes changes the animation of a scene to match the tempo of a particular performance. After lending his voice to so many anime productions, he believes that the work that animators do to bring characters to life is just as valuable as voice acting, and he respects a lot of the work that they do. When preparing for a role, he said that he usually tries to do as much research as possible, and that if he's playing a major character, he pours a lot of energy into their first appearance. He believes that giving a strong first impression of a character is very important to voice acting. Despite his long career, Tsuda mentioned that people don't usually recognize his face, but joked that he is often recognized by his voice instead. He also took notice of how he's voiced a lot of animals over his career, but a lot of them tend to be grumpy.

Once he finished answering questions, Tsuda was then asked to give out some random motivational speeches to the audience, which drew a lot of laughs from the crowd. His final words to the audience were to thank them for their support and for their positive words on social media. He claims that he actually receives a lot of messages from English-speaking fans, and getting so many of them was a major reason he wanted to come to the United States to do a panel. He said that he was grateful that his decision to keep up his acting career had allowed him to meet so many enthusiastic fans, and hopes that those fans will continue to support anime.

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ANN's coverage of Anime NYC 2025 is sponsored by Yen Press!