As a young boy, Fukushi Ochiai was already in the spotlight because his father, Hiromitsu Ochiai, was a superstar in professional baseball. The baseballer's son, now 30, has achieved his childhood dream of becoming a voice actor. He is currently playing his first lead in an anime about the professional baseball world.
On a recent visit to a recording studio in central Tokyo for "Gurazeni," which is being aired on BS SKY PerfecTV! channel at 10:30 p.m. on Fridays, four microphones were placed side by side, with the far right one set a head taller than the others to match Ochiai's height. Each time he said his lines, the voice actor puffed out his chest as he held the script in his hand behind the microphone. The voice from his large stature -- 185 centimeters tall, and 90-plus kilograms, after losing 30 kilograms on a diet -- sounds generous and refreshing.
I praised his voice, to which Ochiai humbly said with a shy smile: "I've never felt that my voice is attractive."
The voice actor makes sure he arrives at least an hour before the schedule for any assignment. Throughout the interview, he was also nice and polite.
A graduate of Kokushikan University, Ochiai has belonged to Aoni Production, a renowned management office for voice actors, since April 2015. He also works as a narrator and provides his voice for foreign films, in addition to anime.
"Gurazeni" is the first anime adaptation of a manga with the same title currently running in the Morning weekly published by Kodansha Ltd. The original story was written by Yuji Moritaka, with illustrations by Keiji Adachi.
Protagonist Natsunosuke Bonda, voiced by Ochiai, is a left-handed sidearmer and reliever. His family name Bonda is a homophone of "routine out" in Japanese.
The story depicts the harsh professional baseball world where only results matter, as seen from the viewpoint of Bonda, who has an annual salary of just 18 million yen. "Gurazeni" is an abbreviated expression that means "money is buried in the ground."
Starting young
Looking back on his childhood, Ochiai recalled how he considered the media and his father's fans his "nemesis."
Ochiai was born in 1987, the year after Hiromitsu Ochiai won his third triple crown, a first in Japanese professional baseball history. Hiromitsu Ochiai was in the prime of his career, and the family's house was always visited by reporters assigned to cover the star, even on Mondays, when there were no games or tours.
Once, when Ochiai returned from kindergarten, his father said to him, "Let's go to the zoo right now!" The boy was excited, but as soon as they went out, Hiromitsu Ochiai was surrounded by a dozen reporters and disappeared from sight. When they managed to get to the zoo, his father was frequently stopped by visitors who asked for autographs. "I ended up looking around [the zoo] with his manager," Ochiai recalled.
Nevertheless, the young Ochiai had a great time watching films with his parents. "I still have a vivid memory of watching 'The Terminator' with my father on my right and my mother on my left," he said.
At that time, he came to know about voice acting work. "Why do they speak Japanese so well?" he asked his parents while watching a Japanese-dubbed version, and was told that Japanese voice actors were speaking. "I was amazed," he said. "At the same time, I got interested in doing it myself."
After starting elementary school, he did voice acting for fun as a daily routine. He wrote down the lines from his favorite scenes in a notebook while rewinding the video numerous times. He then said the lines out loud while he muted the original.
When he was a junior high school student, he pretended he was in a dubbing studio for foreign films at home by saying the Japanese lines while playing the original.
"I still make sure to watch one film each day to do voice acting practice," he said. "It doesn't feel like work because it's so much fun."
When Ochiai auditioned for "Gurazeni" last year, he shouted "Third!!" as he was requested. The line sounded powerful and clear with a great presence, proving that he actually had experience playing baseball -- Ochiai used to play baseball until high school. That performance eventually helped him to win the program's lead role.
When he was an elementary school student, he told an older friend about his dream to become a voice actor. "That's a good idea," the person said to him. "But you had better play baseball to get an idea of what it's like. It'll help you play the role of a baseball player when the time comes."
Ochiai also has some experience as an entertainer, such as writing a column for a weekly magazine and singing, and spent seven years at university.
"Now I feel it was right for me to play baseball," he said. "I may have taken a long, roundabout way, but experiencing various things has made me who I am now."
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