Japanese actor
Masakazu Morita |
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| Born | (1972-10-21) October 21, 1972 (age 51)
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| Years active | 1995–present |
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Masakazu Morita (森田 成一, Morita Masakazu, born October 21, 1972) is a Japanese actor, voice actor and singer. He previously worked for Aoni Production.[1] He is also the host of the radio show Bleach B-Station. He played Ichigo Kurosaki in Bleach, Maeda Keiji in Sengoku Basara, Marco the Phoenix in One Piece, Tidus in Final Fantasy X, Whis in Dragon Ball Super, Auel Neider in Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Destiny, Pegasus Seiya in Saint Seiya – Hades Chapter, Pod in Pokémon, Tenjuro Banno in Kamen Rider Drive and Li Xin in Kingdom. He won the "Best Rookie Actor" at the first Seiyu Awards.[2] He is also the official Japanese dubbing voice of Zac Efron.
Career
Morita attended Kyoka Junior and Senior High School.[3] When he was in high school, he joined the brass band club and was in charge of conducting the marching band, which led him to discover the joy of entertainment. He worked as an actor at NHK Promotion, studied under film director Yukio Fukamachi, and appeared in films, stage plays, and dramas.[4] His motion capture for the role of Zell Dincht in the 1999 PlayStation game Final Fantasy VIII was his debut as an actor.[5]
In 2001, he voiced and motion captured for the main character, Tidus, in the PS2 game Final Fantasy X, and since then he has mainly been active as a voice actor. While originally only in charge of motion capturing for Tidus, after more than 100 people auditioned and no voice actor was chosen, Morita was finally called in for an audition and was hired.[6] When he was chosen to play the role, he thought he could handle it because he only had to do a voice, but in reality, he was shocked when he heard his own voice on the recording and his motionless performance.[5] When he met Hideo Ishikawa, Kazuya Nakai, and Hiroshi Kamiya, his co-stars in the game, he came to respect the fun of voice acting and their attitude toward their work, and decided that he wanted to work in the same industry as them and join the same agency.[5] On September 1, 2003, after working as a freelancer, he moved to Aoni Production, his first voice acting agency.
In October 2004, Morita portrayed the main character Ichigo Kurosaki in the TV anime Bleach. Morita said that Ichigo was one of his favorite characters he ever played alongside Tidus,[7] and in 2005 he was chosen to replace Tōru Furuya as the voice of the main character Pegasus Seiya in Saint Seiya: Hades. Morita was said to have shed tears of joy when he was chosen at the audition.[8] He also voiced Ryūji Takane, the main character in Ring ni Kakero 1, and was thus selected twice to play the lead in works written by Masami Kurumada.
In 2007, he won the Best Rookie Actor award at the 1st Seiyu Awards. In 2008, he returned to the stage as a guest performer in a performance by the K-Show theater company organized by Kentarō Itō, and in October 2009, he played his first leading role and first performance as a chairman.
In 2012, Morita made his debut as a singer with RING BONES. In 2013, he confessed on his Twitter page that he was in a critical situation at one point, wavering between life and death due to anaphylactic shock.[9] He said he had "almost died three times" due to anaphylactic shock, myocardial infarction and side effects.[10] He was in a very dangerous state, but thanks to the efforts of doctors, he recovered.
On December 31, 2020, he announced on Twitter that he would be leaving Aoni Production, the company to which he had belonged for 17 years, and would be working as a freelancer from January 1, 2021.[11]
