In various guides across the site, including the Episode Guide and Movie Guide, fully translated opening and ending credits can be found for each specific episode, TV special, feature, or movie. Translated credits have become a staple of the site and provide valuable insight into the series’ production. These also include the specific voice acting credits, which we typically break out separately on individual pages. This general overview page is intended to summarize how typical voice acting credits are structured and how they can be interpreted. The page is broken up into multiple sections, including: Japanese name structures, name pronunciations, voice talent agency affiliations, and the actual credit structure itself.

Japanese Name Structure

To fully understand how credits are translated on Kanzenshuu, and where certain name pronunciations come from, it is important to understand how names are structured in Japanese. A traditional Japanese name is comprised of a family name (surname), followed by the person’s given name. This is the opposite of name structures in Western cultures, where the given name precedes the family name. In addition, Western names typically include a middle name, whereas in Japanese they are rarely used. For example, Akira Toriyama’s name in the traditional Japanese structure is written as “Toriyama Akira” (鳥山 明), where “Toriyama” is his family name and “Akira” is his given name.

As used in above and subsequent examples, “Yamada Tarō” (山田太郎) is a standard Japanese male placeholder name, equivalent to “John Doe” in English. It is also worth noting that in recent decades it has become normal when speaking or writing in English, or other Western languages, for Japanese people to provide their names in Western order. Therefore, unless noted otherwise, Japanese names written on Kanzenshuu are presented in their Western order (i.e. “Tarō Yamada”). For organizational purposes, some pages in this guide will list the family name first with a comma separating it from the given name.

Japanese Name Pronunciations

The majority of Japanese names are typically written in kanji, which are characters of Chinese origin, but Japanese in pronunciation. The kanji comprising a name can have a variety of possible Japanese pronunciations, of which only one is the correct pronunciation for a given individual. This makes the pronunciation and romanization of Japanese names very difficult. For this reason, additional phonetic kana will occasionally be provided as a reading aid to clarify the pronunciation of a name. This kana is referred to as furigana, literally meaning “assign phonetic value”, and appears next to or above respective kanji characters. Furigana is most often written in hiragana, though katakana is used in certain special cases, such as with an onomatopoeia or loan word.

Unfortunately, in the case of credits, furigana is rarely ever used to clarify proper pronunciations. However, unlike much of the production staff, the proper pronunciation of voice actor names are readily available and documented in official interviews, guidebooks, and online talent agency profiles. Therefore, we have provided each voice actor’s associated furigana throughout the profile pages in this guide.

Voice Talent Agency Affiliation

Most voice actors are typically represented by a talent agency, which serves as a “middleman” between the voice actor and potential clients to secure work opportunities. It is common for many animation studios to partner with a specific talent agency to provide the voice talent for their animation projects, although some may partner with multiple agencies depending on the breadth or significance of a given project. Toei Animation, the animation production company behind the Dragon Ball franchise, has traditionally partnered with Aoni Production, a talent agency headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. Aoni Production has been credited in nearly every animated production for the franchise since the first episode in 1986.

It is common for a voice actor’s talent agency affiliation to change throughout their career. However, once an actor has been cast in a specific series’ role, it is common practice in Japan for that actor to still retain that role even if later associated with a different talent agency. This can be seen in the main legacy cast profiles, where many of the legacy voice actors are no longer affiliated with Aoni Production, or at one point had been affiliated elsewhere, but still remained as a member of the cast. Some voice actors, including Masako Nozawa (Son Goku) and Kenji Utsumi (Shenlong), have even at one point or another established their own talent agency. Most roles are typically only recast following a voice actor’s retirement, health-related issue, or if they voluntarily leave the role for a variety of reasons.

Credit Structure

The main structure for crediting voice actors and their roles has remained relatively the same across the various TV series, TV specials, features, and movies throughout the franchise, and often within the animation industry as a whole. As the “Voice Performance” (声の出演) credits are considered episode-specific credits, rather than series credits, they typically appear in the associated production’s ending credits. The credit structure used by Toei Animation is laid out by the hierarchal order of character roles, with some modifications for special circumstances (typically in movies or features). Below is a breakdown of the credit structure typically seen in a weekly episode:

On occasion, some voice actors would provide the voices for multiple roles within an episode. In this case they are only credited for their primary role, or the more significant role. For instance, Jōji Yanami was the series narrator, but also performed many other roles which mostly went uncredited, such as Kaiō, Brief, and Bobbidi. Another example would be Takeshi Kusao, who portrayed Hyssop and Vuon during the Tournament of Power in Dragon Ball Super, but was not officially credited as doing so as he was also portraying Lavenda in those episodes. However, this situation does not seem to apply to an actor when portraying multiple leading roles, such as Masako Nozawa and the Son family.

For information about specific voice actors, please check the Voice Actor Profiles page found within this guide.