Japanese · b. 1959 · 32-bit / 128-bit
The Japanese voice of Solid Snake in every mainline appearance, whose gravelled baritone became so inseparable from the character that Kojima's team modelled Snake's movements and even his smoking habit on the actor himself.
Akio Ōtsuka, born 24 November 1959, is a Japanese actor, voice actor, and narrator, and the son of the veteran voice actor Chikao Ōtsuka. Beginning his career in the late 1980s, he became known for a deep, resonant voice ideally suited to stoic heroes, commanding leaders, and villains — a register that would find its definitive expression in a cardboard-box-wearing infiltrator. Ōtsuka has voiced Solid Snake in all of the character's main appearances, along with Solidus Snake in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and the younger Big Boss in the series' prequels. His name has become almost as synonymous with the Metal Gear Solid series as that of Hideo Kojima himself, and for Japanese players he simply is Snake in a way that no recasting could dislodge. What makes the relationship unusual is how far it ran in both directions. Much of Solid Snake — and later Naked Snake, or Big Boss — was modelled on Ōtsuka rather than merely voiced by him, from the way the character moves to his smoking habit, which was drawn from the actor's own. Ōtsuka has described the characters as his alter egos, noting that he spent a long time with them and that his own feedback was incorporated into the games. Few performers in the medium have had such direct authorial influence on the characters they play. His career extends far beyond Kojima's series. He is the second-generation voice of Daisuke Jigen in Lupin III, the title character in Black Jack, Shunsui Kyōraku in Bleach, Batou in Ghost in the Shell, and Blackbeard in One Piece — a body of work that places him among the most recognisable voices in Japanese animation. But within gaming, his legacy rests on a single character, and on a collaboration in which the actor and the role shaped one another so completely that they became difficult to tell apart.