Toshiyuki Morikawa



Toshiyuki Morikawa, born in 1967, is one of the seiyuus who has been around since the old days, and currently still lends his voice to the job. He has quite a huge fanbase too (due in part to being one of the more attractive seiyuu around). He is also the current voice of Sephiroth and attended the same voice acting class with Kotono Mitsuishi. His voice range is versatile, ranging from calm and cool characters to Hot Blooded young men to psychopathically cold villains. From Badass to Bishonen, he does them all just fine. Regardless of morality, if the character is a White Haired Pretty Boy, there's a good chance he's voicing them.

Best buds with Nobuyuki Hiyama, went as far as spreading a "Hiyama abandoned me!" mass phone call to other collegues while drunk once (when all Hiyama did was to send this guy a 20-minute taxi ride home by himself), he is also good friends with fellow seiyuu Fumihiko Tachiki and has a lot of co-workings with Nobutoshi Canna and Nozomu Sasaki.

Tropes associated with Morikawa:

 * Boke and Tsukkomi Routine: Morikawa's the boke, while Nobuyuki Hiyama is the tsukkomi.
 * Call To Voice Acting: As he himself recalls, he was out drinking with his friends one night when someone stepped up to him and said "You. You're D-Boy."
 * Cool Teacher: Guess what? Morikawa was actually one of the voice instructors of Tomokazu Seki, Katsuyuki Konishi, and Daisuke Hirakawa before they debuted.
 * Now, he's opening up his own voice acting school.
 * Dumb Muscle / Dumb Is Good: Coming from a sportsman background (American football and tennis to be exact), he's a simple-minded sweet guy from cuckooland. A far cry from the characters he usually portrays.
 * Fan Nickname: Morimori, also 'The Emperor' amongsts Yaoi Fangirls due to his prolific number of appearances in BL Drama CDs.
 * Kiai: To prove that he's still got it even at his old age, he screams so hotblooded that everyone thought he's gonna break a mic again.
 * Man of a Thousand Voices: Takes on an average of 3 characters per anime project, take that.
 * The Chosen Jock: Since he's a sports guy, Morikawa was originally pursuing to be a Physical Education teacher until a critical injury of fate prevented him from doing so. Out of curiosity (and possibly a hope to become at least a sports game announcer,) he took up the path of voice acting, which ended up with him becoming... Sephiroth~!
 * You Fail Video Games Forever: He doesn't know that the Play Station 2 he brought needed memory cards to save files, and when he brought a Nintendo DS as a gift for himself, he promised his fans in public to remember to buy memory cards for it...

Notable roles by Toshiyuki Morikawa:

 * Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, Last Order: Final Fantasy VII, the Kingdom Hearts series, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII and Dissidia Final Fantasy.
 * Griffith in Berserk
 * Shagia Frost in Gundam X, Super Robot Wars Alpha Gaiden and Super Robot Wars Z
 * Kyosuke Nanbu in, Super Robot Wars Impact, Super Robot Wars Original Generations and Super Robot Wars Original Generation Gaiden
 * Takaya Aiba/D-Boy/Tekkaman Blade in the Tekkaman Blade franchise (Not only is this his debut role, this is also the role where he gained a lot of infamy by breaking a recording microphone on two separate occasions while screaming VOLTEKKKKKAAAAAAA!!!!!)
 * Mitsurugi Heishiro in Soul Calibur
 * Katsuya Jonouchi (Joey Wheeler) in the Yu-Gi-Oh first series anime. Succeeded by Hiroki Takahashi.
 * Kurosaki Isshin, Tousen Kaname and Tsubaki in the Bleach franchise
 * Dante in Devil May Cry the Animated Series (This is the only time Dante is voiced by a Japanese seiyu)
 * This continues to Marvel vs. Capcom 3.
 * Also becomes a Casting Gag when he voiced... Dante Alighieri, the one who gave the DMC's Dante his namesake, in Dantes Inferno.
 * Kimimaro Kaguya and in Naruto
 * Naraku in the Inuyasha franchise
 * Mummymon, Yukio Oikawa, and BelialVamdemon in Digimon Adventure 02
 * Conrad Weller in Kyo Kara Maoh
 * Eneru and Hatchan in One Piece
 * Mitsuomi Takayanagi in Tenjho Tenge
 * Duke in Brave Police J-Decker
 * Forbessi, the King of Demons in Shuffle
 * Roberto Miura in Rival Schools
 * Katakura Kojuro in Sengoku Basara
 * Dhaos in Tales of Phantasia (Succeeding the late Kaneto Shiozawa)
 * Yuan in Tales of Symphonia
 * Tyki Mikk in D Gray Man
 * Ryu Suzaku (Rick Wheeler) in F-Zero Falcon Densetsu (GP Legend)
 * Kei/Nate Nanjou in Persona 2 (Was also him in the Drama CD of the first game)
 * Ryu and Charlie in the Street Fighter Alpha series and the Marvel vs. series
 * Kyousuke Iwaki in Haru wo Daiteita
 * Gen'ichiro Tsukuomi in Martian Successor Nadesico, Super Robot Wars Impact and Super Robot Wars Advance Portable
 * Bashou (Hun) and Mikuri (Wallace) in Pokémon
 * Suitengu in Speed Grapher
 * Mr. Chang in Black Lagoon
 * Rai in the game Lamento-BEYONDTHEVOID
 * Gohyaan in Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash Star
 * Leonardo da Vinci in Assassin's Creed 2
 * Goh in Saint Beast
 * Terrific Forelock in Lightning Legend Daigo no Daibouken
 * Leonard Scheitenberg in the infamous Yaoi OVA Legend of the Blue Wolves
 * Sanada Yukimura in Brave 10
 * Ravage in Beast Wars
 * Optimus Prime in Transformers Prime
 * Marco Owen in King of Thorn

He is also quite popular in Western movie-to-Japanese dubbing industry, being the dub voice of Obi Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) of Star Wars, Ennis del Mar (Heath Ledger) in Brokeback Mountain, and Neo in The Matrix (whoa). The Other Wiki states that he has been the dub voices of many leading roles in western movies when it is dubbed to Japan. He also has quite some role in the Western dubbing of Spider Man. He is the dub voice of Spidey himself in the 1994's animated series, and in the third movie, he is Venom (Topher Grace).

I should've filled those roles with  LIIIIIIGGGHHHHTT---  *bzzt!* Aw man! That's the 100th microphone broken already!