One Piece probably has the best voice acting of any series. In just the last few eps we've gotten to hear Akira Ishida play as Cavendish and Showtaro Morikubo as Bartolomeo, while Hiroshi Kamiya has been an amazing Trafalgar Law. But for a while now I've been neglecting a duo that's at the very heart of the series:
Hiroaki Hirata, Sanji's voice actor, is great as both a charming gentleman and a foolish clown. He also happens to be the seiyuu behind Klein in Sword Art Online.
Meanwhile, Kazuki Yao, Franky's voice actor, has an extremely distinctive voice but still manages to give a different feel to the characters he plays with it -- there's a lot of difference between Jango, Bon Clay, and Franky's personalities that you can hear in how they talk, and yet it's all done by the same seiyuu. That's some great acting on his part, and deserves to be recognized.
One Piece is really long, so if someone's only notable for their performance in One Piece, that's still a longer and deeper voice acting career than virtually anyone else in the business. One Piece wouldn't be nearly as good without all the great voice actors who have supported it now with the last 15 years of their life. It's about time both of these boys were given a medal. And to top it off, this brings the ratio of great girl voices to great boy voices back to a balanced 2:1 ratio.
Hiroaki Hirata and Kazuki Yao, welcome to the club!
Here's to One Piece reaching ever further heights and honors for decades to come.
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