One Piece, Bleach, Naruto, and Dragon Ball have some of the biggest fandoms, who also love to bicker with each other. “Who is the strongest?” is the favorite question to ask for some of you guys.
But while you were wasting time on these petty fights, you failed to notice a legendary voice actor who has played a part in every big anime. With a huge list of dubbing and VA works under his belt, Ryusei Nakao is a heavyweight in the industry.
A Legendary VA Voiced Characters for All the Big 3 Shonen Anime Plus Dragon Ball
Ryusei Nakao is a famous Japanese voice actor, actor and singer. At the age of 73, he has voiced probably more than a hundred characters for anime, video games, and other media. He also has a major hand in dubbing films and series into Japanese. He landed his very first voice acting gig for Uchu Petrol Hopper in 1965 and has thus been in the industry for almost 60 years.
Nakao has also voiced characters from renowned anime like Dragon Ball, Bleach and One Piece. He voices Caesar Clown and Indigo for One Piece. He was also cast as Mayuri Kurotsuchi, the mad scientist of Bleach. One of his most famous works is voicing Frieza in Dragon Ball. He also voiced Nekomata in Naruto Shippuden. Thus, Nakao has experience with all of the Shonen Big 3 anime club and more.
One unique characteristic of Ryusei Nakao is his high-pitched voice. Thus, he is often given the roles of characters who are supposed to have a high-pitched tone. Unfortunately, he also voices a majority of characters with sadistic personalities. You might have noticed that all of his roles are those of shady or antagonistic characters.
Ryusei Nakao Considers Frieza the Perfect Enemy for Goku
Dragon Ball is characterized by Goku’s frequent transformations as he gets more and more powerful with the arrival of stronger enemies. While most enemies get kicked out of the franchise as soon as Goku defeats them, only one of them has shown the zeal to consistently upgrade himself after every battle, and it’s Frieza.
In a question and answer session at Animzement, Ryusei Nakao, the voice actor of Frieza expressed his views on the villain. According to Nakao, Akira Toriyama might have wanted to create the strongest of all villains with Frieza.
I think he wanted to come up with a villain that would change forms all the time against Goku. That’s probably why Frieza has his stages 1 through 3, and also his final form.
-Ryusei Nakao
Since Nakao’s Animazement interview is from the early 2010s, he could only talk about Frieza’s first four forms. However, the character received plenty of transformations afterward. The ones that aren’t on Nakao’s list are Mecha Frieza, Golden Frieza, and Black Frieza, the last two transformations being featured in Dragon Ball Super.
Dragon Ball manga is available to read on Viz Media, and the anime is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.
