Tessho Genda - biography

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Tesshō Genda (玄田 哲章 Genda Tesshō?, born May 20, 1948 in Okayama Prefecture) is a Japanese voice actor. He is employed by the talent management firm 81 Produce. When he debuted, he used his real name, Mitsuo Yokoi (横居 光雄 Yokoi Mitsuo?) as artist name. Because he had experience with ballet, he was known by the nickname "Pirouette Genda." Along with such well-known voice actors such as Akio Ōtsuka, Shigeru Chiba and Kōichi Yamadera, Genda is one of Japan's most prolific voice actors, with 234 roles credited to his name as of September 25, 2007. Among his other credits, he has performed the roles of Masami Iwaki (Dokaben), Suppaman (Dr. Slump), Gō Reietsu (High School! Kimengumi), Optimus Prime (A.K.A. Convoy) (The Transformers), Umibouzu (City Hunter), Ichimi Araiwa (Cooking Papa), and Action Kamen (Crayon Shin-chan) and is the current Japanese voice of Tigger in Winnie the Pooh media. Like his Canadian counterpart Peter Cullen, Tesshō reprised the role of Optimus Prime (Convoy) in the Japanese dub of the 2007 Transformers movie. He is best known as the Japanese voice of Batman in numerous animated television series and animated films. Like his American counterpart Kevin Conroy, Tesshō also reprised the role of Batman in the Japanese dub of Batman: Gotham Knight. He also voices Kratos in the Japanese versions of the God of War video game series. In February 2010, he received a Merit Awards from the 4th Seiyu Awards.