I don’t often choose to shine the spotlight on a voice actor but I have decided to make an exception and discuss the legendary Kiyoshi Kobayashi. I feel that his long career covering a wide range of media such as anime, live-action dubbing, video games etc. is well worth highlighting.
Easily his most famous role is Daisuke Jigen from the Lupin the Third franchise. An expert gunslinger and best friend to Lupin the Third, Jigen might possibly be my favourite character in the series with many of the episodes focusing on him among my favourites (I often joke that Jigen might be one of the few anime characters I could cosplay). This is helped with an outstanding performance from Kiyoshi Kobayashi who portrays Jigen with a very layered performance, managing to balance stoicism, humour and emotion all at once.
Kiyoshi Kobayashi is also noteworthy for being the only voice actor from the original series to continue voicing his character. He first voiced Jigen in the original 1969 pilot film for Lupin the Third and has continued to voice the character to this day (with the 1987 OVA The Fuma Conspiracy being the only exception due to budgetary reasons). His voice performance as Daisuke Jigen in the CGI anime film “Lupin the Third: The First” marked fifty years of voicing the character, a near unprecedented achievement.
Speaking of Daisuke Jigen, Monkey Punch reportedly based the character on American movie star James Coburn. I bring this up because, interestingly, Kiyoshi Kobayashi was the Japanese dubbing voice actor for James Coburn in over 20 of his films! He’s also dubbed Lee Marvin and Tommy Lee Jones amongst others and took over dubbing for Clint Eastwood after the death of fellow Lupin the Third voice actor Yasuo Yamada.
With regards to other anime, he has appeared in relatively few other TV series although his roles of Kouga Danjo in Basilisk and Watari in Death Note are worth noting. One of his more notable OVA roles was that of Vice Admiral Aiguille Delaz, leader of the Delaz fleet, in Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory. For Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure fans, it’s also worth pointing out his role as Muhammad Avdol in the 1993 OVA series.
Besides these, his career has also included anime films, dominated by the Lupin the Third franchise but also including Gundam, Doraemon, Crayon Shin-chan and Case Closed. He has also worked in a variety of tokusatsu series usually as the narrator as well as video games, again dominated by the Lupin the Third series but also including Blood Will Tell, an adaptation of Osamu Tezuka’s Dororo, as the narrator and as Odin in World of Final Fantasy.
I find the career of voice actor Kiyoshi Kobayashi fascinating and I hope that this spotlight has whetted your interest in his filmography. Let me know if you’re familiar with Kiyoshi Kobayashi, what roles of his are your favourites and any other interesting facts about him.
Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and, if you wish to seek any of the works I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk or amazon.com for all of your needs!