Masako Nozawa Voice Talent - Dragon Ball
Masako Nozawa (born Oct 26, 1936 in Nippori, Arakawa, Tokyo, Japan) is a Japanese voice actress affiliated with Aoni Production and Office Nozawa who voices the protagonist Son Goku in the anime series Dragon Ball, a Saiyan sent to Earth originally to conquer and destroy, but becomes the hero of the human race. Masako Nozawa has voiced several other characters from this anime and its adaptive sequels, including (but not limited to) Son Goten, Son Gohan, and almost all of Goku’s male relatives.
Masako Nozawa has been appearing in the Dragon Ball anime series as a voice actress since its debut in 1986. Before Dragon Ball found mainstream popularity on the American television channel Cartoon Network’s Toonami block in 2001, there were two attempts made to release the anime to the American public. The first was in cooperation with Harmony Gold in 1989, and the second, slightly more successful attempt in 1995 was an in-joint production between Funimation, BLT Products, and Seagull Entertainment. However, these attempts were ultimately underwhelming, and several changes to the anime were made before being released on Toonami, re-dubbed in English, and commercially distributed in the U.S. The complete series aired for three years, ending in December of 2003. In the years between the second and third attempt of release and several years after, several Dragon Ball sequels, specials, and and movies were produced, including Dragon Ball Z: The World’s Strongest, Dragon Ball Z: The Tree of Might, and Dragon Ball Z: Super Android 13!.
Start of Career
Masako Nozawa has performed many roles throughout her career, beginning with her debut as a child actor in the movie ‘Rockman Holic’ in 1939, at the age of just three years old. Her most notable roles are all male characters, earning her the nickname of The Eternal Boy. Her more recent roles, however, are mainly elderly female characters.
She took on her first voice acting role at the age of 27 in 1963, playing the voices of the international telephone station robot and the children of the Queen of Tailed People in the popular Japanese TV series, Astro Boy (also referred to by the original translation; Mighty Atom). She went on to play many more roles in notable, extremely popular television series other than the Dragon Ball franchise, such as the voice of ‘Doraemon’ in 1973, the character ‘Tetsuro Hoshino’ in *Galaxy Express 999’ in 1979, and the character ‘Masamune’ in Pokemon in 2005.
In April of 2006, Masako Nozawa resigned from the voice talent management company 81 Produce to found the talent agency, Office Nozawa, which closed down several years later in 2010. In March of 2013, Nozawa was given a distinguished award during the 7th Seiyu Awards for her numerous and talented contributions to the film industry.
Since then, she has voice acted in several other productions under the talent management of Aoni Production, playing herself in Seiyu’s Life!, ‘Sanpei’ in the short film, Like the Wind, and has recently voiced Goku, Gohan, Goten and Vegeta in Dragon Ball Super from 2015 to 2018, Dragon Ball FighterZ and Dragon Ball Super: Boly in 2018, Super Dragon Ball Heroes in 2019, Jump Force the video game in 2019, and Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot the video game in 2020.
Achieving Fame
Masako Nozawa has been awarded several awards for her talents and contributions in the film and creative industry, the first being in 1997, in the 2nd Animation Kobe, under the ‘Special Award’ category.
In 2013, Nozawa was awarded the ‘Achievement Award’ in the 7th Seiyu Awards. In 2017, Nazawo won both the Guinness World Record award for ‘Best Voice Actor’, and the award from the 26th Japanese Movie Critics Awards ‘Longest Time Voicing a Character in Video Games’. Nozawa had been voicing Goku for over 23 years when she received this award.
Other Roles
Masako Nozawa has had roles in thirteen video games, these being the following:
- J-Stars Victory VS, as ‘Goku’
- PoPoRoGue, as ‘Gilda’
- The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, as the ‘Old Woman’
- The Kingdom Hearts Series, as ‘Merriweather’
- Final Fantasy Type-0, as ‘Commisar’
- Egg Monster Hero 4, as the ‘Four-Dimensional Empress’
- Dragon Ball series of games, as ‘Goku’, ‘Bardock’, ‘Gohan’, ‘Goten’, ‘Turles’, ‘Vegetto’, ‘Gogeta’, ‘Gotenks’, and ‘Goku Black’
- Digimon Battle Chronicle as ‘Guilmon’
- Digimon Racing as ‘Guilmon’
- Digimon Tamers Battle Evolution as ‘Guilmon’
- Digimon Park as ‘Guilmon’
- Super Robot Wars series as ‘Oreana’ and ‘Ropet’
- Battle Stadium R.O.N. as ‘Son Goku’ and ‘Son Gohan’
Masako Nozawa has also performed on radio shows, live-action roles, theatrical animations, computer and video games, puppet shows, and on CDs. Nozawa has also done live action and animated dubbing for notable movies such as The Goonies, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Avengers Assemble, The Lion King 1 ½, and Sleeping Beauty.
Marriage
Masako Nozawa was married to her late spouse, Masaaki Tsukada, who was also a notable Japanese voice actor, until his passing in 2014. It is unknown how long they were married.
Masaaki Tsukada primarily voiced roles in animated television shows, though he also had many roles in overseas dubbing, as well as theatrical animations and original video animations.
Links
Dragon Ball Series
Dragon Ball Z Series
Dragon Ball Kai Series
Dragon Ball Super Series
Dragon Ball GT Series
Super Dragon Ball Heros
Akira Toriyama