Ryōtarō Okiayu is a Japanese voice actor affiliated with the talent agency
Aoni Production. His official X account is
@chikichikiko
AnimeJapan 2024:
We're bringing you a series of comment videos from the Pokémon Anime Paldea Elite Four announced at AnimeJapan 2024: "Hassaku desu, yoroshiku onegaishimasu desu yo."
Here is the comment video from Ryotaro Okiayu-san, who plays Hassaku:
Hello, everyone at AnimeJapan 2024. This is Ryotaro Okiayu. This time I will be playing Hassaku, one of the Elite Four, in the Pocket Monsters anime TV series. When I first learned I had been cast as Hassaku, I couldn't believe it. See... you know the fruit hassaku orange, right? Just recently I had started eating hassaku again for the first time in forever, and I actually ended up sitting there every morning peeling hassaku. And when I posted about that on Twitter, some people that saw it commented that I'd make a good Hassaku. So at first I seriously thought that was the reason they had cast me! Since Hassaku is a teacher, I figured he'd be someone that watched over his students, and it seems he also has a passionate side to him... or well, it says so in the reference material and in-game text, so I hope I'm able to properly show both those aspects of the character. At the dubbing studio they instructed me to just "do my best to be a teacher". As a teacher, Hassaku has some very serious sides to him, but he also makes a number of cute facial expressions, and I hope I managed to get those fun aspects of the character across. With that said, the new chapter "Terastal Debut" that my character Hassaku appears in will start Friday April 12th. Make sure to watch it. In addition, the Pocket Monsters anime TV series airs every Friday at 6:55pm on the TV Tokyo Network. This has been Ryotaro Okiayu, the voice of Hassaku. Bye bye. Please watch!
Interviews:
Famitsu - July 26th, 2024 - PM2023 59