Today, Hideo Kojima revealed via his Japanese Twitter another voice actor working on the Japanese dub of Death Stranding: Houchu Ohtsuka.
大塚芳忠さん、津田健次郎さんと。芳忠さんは何の役でしょう
pic.twitter.com/u18KV8yJo3
— 小島秀夫 (@Kojima_Hideo) January 30, 2019
The photo tweeted by Kojima features Houchu Ohtsuka at the left, Kenjiro Tsuda, who voices protagonist Sam Bridges/Norman Reedus at the right, and Kojima himself.
For now, we don’t know which character will be voiced by Houchu Ohtsuka. Kojima, however, confirmed in another tweet that Ohtsuka is not Mads Mikkelsen’s character’s Japanese voice:
大塚芳忠さんはマッツさん役ではないです。
— 小島秀夫 (@Kojima_Hideo) January 30, 2019
Important note, when writing such stories related to Japanese voices, I may inadvertently use the term “seiyuu”. The term simply means “voice actor” in Japanese, but is quite a convenient term as it’s genderless and is used to designate any Japanese voice actor and actress.
Like with most of the other seiyuu on Death Stranding, Houchu Ohtsuka already worked with Kojima in the past. He was the Japanese voices of Ramón Gálvez Mena in Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker, and Evangelos Constantinou in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.
Houchu Ohtsuka is also widely popular as the voice of Jiraiya in Naruto, and mecha anime fans may recognize him as the voice of Yazan Gable in Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam, or the infamous villain Gates in Full Metal Panic. Ohtsuka is a veteran seiyuu, with a particularly recognizable and awesome voice, so his inclusion in Death Stranding is great news.
My personal bet is that Houchu Ohtsuka is voicing the character modeled after Guillermo del Toro. Kojima already confirmed at Tokyo Game show 2018 he’s a fun character who chats and jokes a lot, and that’d definitely fit Ohtsuka.
One thing certain is that I’ll definitely be playing Death Stranding in Japanese at some point, but I’m still not sure if I’ll play it in English first or not. You might think I’m one of those people who think Japanese is inherently superior, and I actually do. I believe it’s one of the most beautiful languages on Earth, but when it comes to cultural products, I tend to prioritize experiencing them with the original voices first, which are the English voice-overs in the case of Death Stranding. This is also why I’ll have to make a good one hour trip to go watch ARCTIC in the next few days, as cinemas in Paris suburbs tend to only schedule French dub screenings.
Death Stranding‘s development is going smoothly and some industry insiders, including Decima Engine developers Guerilla Games, have reported being stunned after seeing private footage of the game. Mads Mikkelsen was also recently asked about the game, but he can’t say anything without risking the visit of “Six Strong Japanese Guys”.
While part of Death Stranding‘s Japanese cast was revealed at Tokyo Game Show 2018 with a live event we’ve summarized, full-scale Japanese dubbing of the game only began in December. Be sure to read our story about it which includes an explanation of how Japanese games’ dubbing usually works, and why Death Stranding is different.
Death Stranding has no release date, but might be coming in 2019. You can pre-order it via Amazon, and I’d say a good way to occupy yourself for now is to learn Japanese.
The post Death Stranding’s Japanese Cast Grows Bigger with Veteran Voice Actor Houchu Ohtsuka by Iyane Agossah appeared first on DualShockers.