Voice Actors

[MasterOfPuppets]

Any chance we have a list of their names?

[MadHatter]

I know this is probably not needed any more, but just for the record:


BS The Legend of Zelda
Kobayashi Kiyoshi (Narration)

BS The Legend of Zelda: MAP2
Kobayashi Kiyoshi (Narration)

BS The Legend of Zelda - Ancient Stone Tablets
Isobe Hiroshi (Narration, Main Movies)*
Endo Moriya (Soldiers, Main Movies)
Kouda Mariko (Princess Zelda, Main Movies)
Takato Yasuhiro (Fortune Teller)
Yada Koji (Ajina)

I'll post the source for this when I can find it again...

[MasterOfPuppets]

Actually that did help! I need the narrator's name for BS Zelda, thanks! I'm closer to closing the project now!

[KiddoCabbusses]

BS Zelda Map 1 had some other VAs, no? Who did Zelda, Old Man, and Ganon?

[MadHatter]

Here's the best source I've found for SoundLink voice actor info.
This list is organized alphabetically by voice actor.
It covers a large number of Satellaview titles.

I really wish I knew who did the voice-acting for other characters in BSZ1, but this list only has the Narrator...
If anyone can find the names of the others I'd be really interested.

I just looked a little online and I see there's a fair amount of discussion of voice actors in this thread, but it's slow work to translate, and most of the responses are people either saying they also wish they knew who did the voices or making wild (and wrong) guesses.

This post has been edited by MadHatter on Nov 4 2009, 01:20 AM

[MadHatter]

I just got confirmation back from a friend who lives in Japan about the names of the voice actors MoP and I worked on. I had told MoP before that I was concerned some of the kanjis especially in the voice actor section were screwed up, but my friend came up with the same names just from the screenshot so I'm pretty positive about the names now.

So there seems to be evidence all over the place online that Kiyoshi was the narrator, so by process of elimination, and for the sake of posterity, here's the final voice credits:

Seizo Kato (Ganon)
Kobayashi Kiyoshi (Narrator)
Naomi Fujisawa (Zelda)

This post has been edited by MadHatter on Nov 24 2009, 03:49 PM

[KiddoCabbusses]

Seizo Kato seems to have a long seiyuu history, but I unfortunately am not familiar with many of his roles.

Kobayashi Kiyoshi was much easier to identify, because his narration in this game matches his various voiceovers in the Samurai Shodown games, including the voice of Yagyu Jubei and the SS4 announcer.

Could you maybe check the "Naomi Fujisawa" name again? I can not find a listing of any Seiyuu with that name... It'd seem odd to mix two veteran seiyuu with a nobody.

This post has been edited by KiddoCabbusses on Nov 25 2009, 09:42 AM

[MadHatter]

I agree about the Naomi Fujisawa thing. MoP had speculated that perhaps it was Naomi Kai Sawa (階沢　直美 - credited on a 1997 Chunsoft SFC Sound Novel), and I was holding out some hope that maybe it was Naomi Nagasawa (長沢　直美 - credited on numerous animes and known to have changed her stage name in the past), but the characters just don't match up.

What gives me the greatest hope that Naomi Fujisawa is correct is the fact that I sent a screenshot to friend in Japan and without seeing our guesses, he translated it the same way that we had (i.e. as Naomi Fujisawa).

One thing I can say for sure is that in the 4-character name (藤沢　直美), I was unsure about 2 characters (the 1st and 3rd), but the 1st character actually shows up in Seizo Kato's name as well (加藤　精三 - second character). So assuming Kato is correct for Ganon, then the "Fujisawa" portion of the Zelda-actress' name is correct. I haven't found any other seiyus named Fujisawa who have a first name similar to Naomi (直美) and really the only problem with the "直" character is that it looked like the box on the inside of the character (yeah I know I'm being real technical here... ) had only one subdivision on the screenshot whereas "直" has two. As I type this, though, with the tiny characters on the screen it actually looks exactly like it only has one subdivision, so I think Naomi (直美) may actually be correct but the characters in the screenshot are just suffering from screen effects.

So I'm pretty confident that Naomi Fujisawa is correct.

I wish there was more about her online. I did some digging and found out that there was a beauty contest finalist with the same name from around the same era (1991). She had won in the Riho Maseki (マセキ里穂) Event apparently. I looked up Riho Maseki and found that it was some sort of concert event held by All Night Nippon. So perhaps that's our connection. I really don't know for sure. I wonder if this was something Fujisawa was awarded as a prize or if fans got to vote on who they wanted (you recall the Satellaview Tsushin magazines featured a centerfold girlie each month) or if it's an entirely different Naomi Fujisawa - perhaps a St.GIGA employee or DJ? I don't know.

I think Seizo Kato is almost definitely right given that he played Megatron in the first transformers series and Sher Khan in the Jungle Book. I can easily see this being the same "big, evil, and mighty" sound required for Ganon.

[KiddoCabbusses]

Well, with those two voices down... I guess we just need to figure out, do we have the Old Man's...?

[MadHatter]

Isn't the Old Man the same as the Narrator? If so then it's Kobayashi Kiyoshi. The end credits in the video only have three names listed for voice actors so there has to be some duplication if we're describing more than 3 roles.

[KiddoCabbusses]

I don't really know... I don't recall many of Kobayashi's roles that sound like anything of than "Feudal era Samurai".

[MadHatter]

Well Kobayashi's definitely in the credits. There are sources online that directly state that he was the narrator for BS Zelda (links above), and the Kanji characters that makes up his name appears to be virtually identical to the characters making up the second name listed in the video's credits.

Since the video only has three voice actors credited, I'd assume that if we have the four roles of...
1-Narrator
2-Zelda
3-Old Man
and
4-Ganon
...and if we know that Kobayashi was #1 and we can probably assume that the only female voice actor was #2 then all we have left is #3 and #4 to be split between Kobayashi and Kato.
Since Kato seems to play the parts of big and powerful evil characters like Megatron and Sher Khan, I think it's a pretty good guess that he was #4.
As far as the Old Man, I would strongly suspect it was either Kobayashi or Kato. The only other option is that it was an uncredited fourth person.

So is the voice of Old Man more similar to Narrator or Ganon? I think that's the central question.