There has been over 3000 seiyuu in the history of anime; the list of seiyuu grows every year. Many of the newly-initiated actors are impressive, and a few make their inexperience obvious. Actually, the field has received some criticism lately that some of the "popular" seiyuu don't know how to really act and are just pretending that they do. With the idolization of seiyuu and the use of the job as a step-up into the entertainment industry, it's not too uncommon for someone cute and young to put out CD singles and hold concerts before they're even heard much on the air. Without a firm basis of talent and experience, one would think that these people would not be able to hold the job for long -- unless a certain market of fans themselves seek only the young, sweet voices without regard to their acting ability. In any case, here are two oldies seiyuu that would be a shame for fans not to know about.

1. Noriko Ohara

We heard her voice at CJAS recently as Ryuzu, the cyborg who controlled the time castle (whose name is probably taken from the word that means "the winder of a watch or clock" -- sneaky, eh?) in Galaxy Express 999. Although Ohara participates in very few anime these days, she has been doing a lot of work since the old, old days of anime. Her voice is recognized in all of Japan as Nobita, the main character of Doraemon (Doraemon -- the robot from the 22nd century with the 4th dimensional pocket -- is the title character), a show that is as familiar to any Japanese child as Sesame Street is here. She portrayed the ultimate weakling in Nobita, with his pathetic whining and tantrums, and yet also voiced Conan in Future Boy Conan, the ultimate super-powerful nature boy. She also did the voice(s) for the female boss of the bad-guy trio (the prototype of the Grandis gang in Nadia) in the various sequels of the Time Bokan series, where the trio always looked different and yet somehow still had the same voices. Other roles include, but are not limited to, Claudia in Macross and Oyuki in Urusei Yatsura.

2. Masako Nozawa

There is no doubt that she is the voice actress for young boys in anime. She's done countless main characters (does Rascal in Sterling North's Raccoon Rascal count as a main character?), not the least of which is Tetsuro in 999. She voiced Goku in DBZ, both his sons Gohan and Goten, and even his father Burdock, to span a total of 3 generations. Furthermore, she exhibited an unbelievable flexibility in acting when, in DB GT, the grown-up Goku turned into a little kid again (perhaps to avoid the problem of all of them sounding the same as the sons grew up?). Can you imagine all of these characters in the same scene?? In my opinion, there is no one else who sounds more male or more powerful in any of the young boy roles that are in anime.

Galaxy Express 999 had quite an impressive line-up of seiyuu from the first anime seiyuu boom of the late 1970's: Makio Inoue as Harlock -- also Goemon in Lupin III; Masako Ikeda as Maetel -- whose enchanting, beautiful voice is admired by many other female seiyuu; and Kaneta Kimotsuki as the conductor -- now the teacher at a seiyuu studio. One can go on and on -- but it would be a great loss if we stopped mentioning the oldies greats in favor of the younger, flashier crowd.