On Saturday, voice actress Megumi Ogata won the “Best Lead Actress Award” for the 16th Annual Seiyū Awards. The award is given to the best leading performances from an actress during the year. In her acceptance speech, Ogata called for the voice acting world to become more “gender-free,” saying that the time has passed for voice acting to be separated by gender.
She remarked that she was surprised to receive a “best actress” award this year, not only because of her age and the number of younger talent doing excellent work, but also because around 70% of her roles are young boys. “I have never really thought of myself as actress, per se,” she said. “These days, we live in what’s called a gender-free society, and in the voice actor world there are people who have come out [as…
