// KOTAKU — GAMING
Snake’s Japanese Voice Actor Wants Another Metal Gear, But Won’t Do It Without Kojima
Solid Snake’s Japanese voice actor, Akio Otsuka, has had an expansive voice acting career playing everyone from Master Xehanort in the Japanese dub for Kingdom Hearts to Blackbeard in One Piece, among others, making the 66-year-old an accomplished veteran in the field. He sat down for a multi-part interview with Japanese tabloid Weekly Bunshun to discuss his full career, including how he got into voice acting and how his loyalty to Kojima leaves him conflicted about the potential return of the Metal Gear franchise.
The actor stumbled somewhat into the career of voice acting, having dropped out of college and started working as a truck driver for Nissan. He was even encouraged by his father, a former theater actor, to become a tuna fisherman, which he planned to do before dental procedures he was yet to complete left him unable to take the voyage. That led him to follow his father as a theater actor.
“I had no money and no education, and my options for the future were shrinking,” says Otsuka of his life at the time. “If I wanted a fun life, I felt I had to become either a musician or an actor. It sounds good to say I put it all on the line, but I wasn’t really thinking about anything. I was a bit of an old-era fool.” Doing theater led to voice acting. Though he preferred the idea of movie acting to become famous, someone with a large home and wealth, he thought he would take the voice acting opportunities that came along, and found himself sold on the idea of getting a full day’s pay for speaking lines in an air conditioned room.
For the role of Solid Snake, Otsuka was chosen by Kojima for the original Metal Gear Solid and continued playing the character in every subsequent entry. He remembers the early sessions well, which is where the pair recorded Snake’s catchphrase, which in English is typically translated as “Kept you waiting, huh?” To this day, the voice actor sees Snake as one of the roles he is most attached to. “No matter what happens between Director Kojima and Konami, to the fans, Snake will always be Akio Otsuka,” he says. “When I think about those fans, in a way I feel a little trapped in the middle.”
He’s referring, of course, to the public feud between Kojima and Konami that led to the prominent director leaving the company to form his own studio, Kojima Productions. Since then, aside from the spin-off Metal Gear Survive, only a remake utilizing the existing voice lines and content for Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater has come from the Metal Gear Solid franchise. The actor has not recorded new lines for the character in the years since, not even for his appearances in Super Smash Bros. He did, however, reunite with Kojima on Death Stranding, and was moved to tears at the game’s launch event.
“When Kojima left Konami, he must have felt really lost, right?” asks Otsuka. “He lost work on projects he never finished. So he built a small boat named Kojima Productions and set sail, facing turbulence on his travels. Sony then came to his aid, and the destination he found was Death Stranding. He went through a lot of hardships leaving that company, and managed to finish such a big project. When I think about it, it brings tears to my eyes. We’ve been working together for so long, after all. Kojima is the same age as my younger brother, so he’s only a little bit younger than me. We lived and grew up during the same era, so our mentalities are similar. He’s in a position where he has to lead his team, but he had just gone independent with no money. I think he was fighting a fear of what might happen if Death Stranding failed. If it did, he could have had debts that he wouldn’t be able to pay off even if he worked his whole life.”
Otsuka’s relationship with Kojima leaves him with a stronger sense of loyalty for the director and Snake than he has for his other roles. While he would have recorded new lines for Snake in Super Smash Bros. as that would be a different circumstance than a new Metal Gear game being made witho