Who has voiced Pikachu in the Pokémon anime’s original Japanese version?

Ikue Ōtani has voiced Pikachu in the original Japanese Pokémon anime. Her performance has remained one of the character’s most consistent features since Pikachu was introduced on television.

Unlike most Pokémon characters, Pikachu generally keeps the same voice across language versions rather than receiving a completely different local performance. Ōtani records Pikachu’s name with different intonations to convey emotions such as excitement, fear, determination, or affection. In the anime, Pikachu normally communicates by repeating variations of its own name rather than speaking ordinary human sentences.

Ōtani has also voiced Pikachu in many games and other Pokémon appearances. The games sometimes use a digitized cry instead of a full character performance, so not every Pikachu appearance has identical audio. English-language actors have occasionally supplied special lines, particularly when Pikachu speaks unusually in a film or spin-off. Those exceptions do not change Ōtani’s status as the character’s principal Japanese voice actress.