Atsuko Tanaka, who died in August, was already thirty years old when she got her big break, providing the Japanese voice for Madeleine Stowe in Unlawful Entry. She had spent the previous decade moonlighting as an occasional dancer and movie extra, while holding down a humdrum job as an office lady. It was only in her late twenties that she resolved to turn her childhood passion for drama into more than a hobby, retraining at the Tokyo Announcement Academy. Her parents heartily disapproved of her throwing away six years of office work, but she was adamant. They would eventually relent when she landed a role in Lupin III, which even they had heard of.

Throughout the 1990s, she lucked into a series of Hollywood voicing roles with up-and-coming young actresses whose stardom would keep her active – Kate Beckinsale, Jennifer Lopez, Gwyneth Paltrow, and her own personal favourite, Nicole Kidman.

In the anime voice community, her nickname was “The Major”, deriving from her most famous role in 1995, for which she initially considered herself ill-suited, and whose philosophical dialogue she often didn’t understand. As Major Motoko Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell and its various spin-offs, she became a memorable audio icon for tough, steely femininity, repeating the type in numerous anime and games, most memorably as the eponymous Bayonetta.

That’s not to say she couldn’t bring the ditz when she had to, also providing the Japanese voice of Phoebe from Friends, and the more sinister Dolly in the Toy Story franchise. She also added a note of invisible continuity to the Japanese version of The Mummy – whereas Rachel Weisz was replaced in the third movie by Maria Bello, Tanaka provided the voices for both, making the transition somewhat more seamless for Japanese audiences.

In the English-speaking world, the original English voice of Bayonetta, Hellena Taylor, found herself controversially edged out, partly because she was apparently “too old” now that she was in her fifties. Tanaka was already pushing 60, and still merrily barrelling along in the role of the demon-hunting witch.

Outside the voice-acting booth, she lived a relatively private life, known only for a couple of things – her fandom for the Nippon Ham Fighters baseball team, and her role as one of the “godmothers” of pandas donated to Japan by the People’s Republic of China. Her death was announced on social media by the actor Hikaru Tanaka, only then revealing that he was, in fact, her son.

Jonathan Clements is the author of Anime: A History. This article first appeared in NEO #244, 2024.