Shūichi Ikeda

Ikeda is my personal benchmark for how much authority a human voice can carry. He began as a child actor and has been working with that voice for well over half a century, and the range he gets out of it without ever raising the volume is remarkable. Whether he is playing Char Aznable in Gundam or Shanks in One Piece, one line is enough to establish that this character outranks everyone else in the room. What impresses me most is the restraint. The timbre is distinctive enough to be a gimmick in weaker hands, but he keeps pulling back, lets the pauses do half the work, and drops a single low sentence exactly where it matters. I suspect that comes from starting out on camera, acting with his whole body, rather than in a recording booth. At seventy-six, still getting new performances from that voice feels like a small luxury.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Name (English)

Shūichi Ikeda

Name (Japanese)

池田秀一

Reading

いけだ しゅういち

Born

December 2, 1949 (age 76)

Origin

Tokyo, Japan

Weight

60 kg

Occupation

seiyū / actor / child actor / television actor

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Sagittarius / Ox

Blood type

O

Agency

Tokyo Actor's Consumer's Cooperative Society

Works summary

Appearances

758

By year (titles with a known year)

1959: 1, 1960: 4, 1962: 2, 1963: 1, 1964: 2, 1965: 1, 1966: 1, 1967: 1, 1968: 7, 1969: 2, 1970: 3, 1971: 8, 1972: 3, 1973: 8, 1974: 7, 1975: 3, 1976: 3, 1977: 6, 1978: 4, 1979: 2, 1980: 3, 1981: 1, 1982: 2, 1985: 1, 1987: 2, 1989: 3, 1990: 1, 1993: 1, 1994: 1, 1996: 4, 1997: 1, 1998: 3, 1999: 3, 2000: 1, 2001: 4, 2002: 1, 2003: 1, 2004: 2, 2005: 2, 2006: 2, 2007: 4, 2008: 5, 2009: 1, 2010: 8, 2011: 5, 2012: 7, 2013: 2, 2014: 4, 2015: 8, 2016: 8, 2017: 6, 2018: 6, 2019: 6, 2020: 2, 2021: 6, 2022: 7, 2023: 2, 2024: 2, 2025: 1, 2026: 1, year unknown: 559

Filmography / notable works

• Official sitehttp://haikyo.or.jp/PROFILE/man/10587.html
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sh%C5%ABichi%20Ikeda
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B1%A0%E7%94%B0%E7%A7%80%E4%B8%80
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q922430

Tags

• Tokyo
• seiyū
• actor
• child actor

Last updated

November 2, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. Works and profile fields sourced from Wikipedia reflect content as of 2026-08-26. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.