Chika Sakamoto

Biography

Early life

Sakamoto was born on August 17, 1959 in Tokyo, Japan. She was a bright child who by the age of two could read and memorize her grandmother's phone number. In kindergarten, she moved to Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture and moved to Totsuka Ward, Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture in middle school.

In fourth grade, she performed Kiyoko Suizenji's "Ippon Dokko no Uta" at a relative's wedding held in Ibaraki Prefecture. She was given Japanese yen as a thank you for the performance, which made her realize, "Oh, you can get paid just for singing? That's nice" and she has been hooked on singing ever since.

She was a self-described television addict growing up, and during her high school years she often stayed up watching live programming late into the night. This made her a habitual latecomer, and she was famously rarely on time for school. Ironically, her morning routine also included watching the preschool anime series Play with Mom! Pin Pon Pan, a show aimed at a much younger audience.

The highlight of her time at school was chapel time, as she would use it to practice her singing, focusing on the melody for the first verse of a hymn and on the harmony for the second.

She was a graduate of Soshin Jogakko Junior and Senior High School. Ever since she attended school as a student, she was interested in voice acting and singing, even taking vocal lessons at Yamaha's Vocal Mates during high school. Besides that, she joined the Yokohama Folk Village and would practice with her band.

As a high school student, she entered the Yamaha Popular Song Contest with a band she had founded with a group of friends and won the Outstanding Song Award.

During her high school years, everyone would tell her "you have a weird voice". To make the most of her "weird voice", she thought "maybe you should study acting", and started taking up acting. She loved anime and thought, "I'd love to try doing a voice like that."

Since she had been taking lessons in singing, she thought it would be "the ultimate dream" if she could do voice acting and also perform the theme song.

Once Sakamoto graduated from high school, she wanted to start working as a voice actress, so contacted a friend who was a fan of voice actors to receive advice. She was asked "isn't there anything else you'd like to do?", to which she replied, "I think I might want to become a kindergarten teacher", and was then told, "well then, become a kindergarten teacher." Figuring she had to study, she thought "Since you end up joining a theater company anyway even if you join a university drama club, wouldn't it be better to go straight to a training school?", so planned on going to Waseda University through a recommendation and "study theater" there, but her homeroom teacher shot the idea down, telling her, "with as many times as you've been late, there's no way."

Career

After graduating from high school, she aspired to become an actress and joined the Theater Echo training institute after being inspired watching a performance of theirs. She chose Theater Echo because voice actors such as Kazuo Kumakura, Yasuo Yamada, and Ryūji Saikachi were a part of it at the time. After spending two years at the training institute, she planned on becoming a research student, but quit by force due to not finding acting very interesting and issues with market demand. Her first play was an absurdist work where she wound up putting no emotions into her lines. Some of her classmates at the training institute were Masako Katsuki and Kiyomi Hanasaki, with Mayumi Tanaka and Mari Yokoo being one year ahead of her.

She graduated from the training school and transferred to the Tokyo Actor's Consumer's Cooperative Society because of her strong desire to pursue a voice acting career. She then ended up joining Arts Vision at the time it founded. Sakamoto had also been formerly affiliated with Shinkikaku.

In 1981, she made her debut as a voice actress, with her first voice acting role performing the line "ah, it's Tetsujin!" in The New Adventures of Gigantor. Later, in 1982, she passed the audition for the title character of Fuku-chan in the anime Fuku-chan, landing her first lead role.

From October 1983 to March 1985, she served as the third main personality for the Animetopia radio program alongside Miki Takahashi. In 1983, she formed a group called "Kiran Gekijo" with friends and held performances twice a year and in 1984, formed a group known as "Potato Power" with Kiyomi Hanasaki and Akari Hibino, with the three of them holding concerts.

In 1989, Sakamoto was part of the GALLOP group with Kazue Ikura and Chie Kōjiro.

Current activity

In 2011, after a 20 year hiatus, GALLOP held a comeback concert, with Sakamoto, Ikura, and Kōjiro reuniting. Since then, the group has been active once every two years.

In October 2024, she, Kōichi Yamadera, Yuki Kaji, Ryūsei Nakao, Mika Kanai, and other prominent voice actors formed the "No More Unauthorized Generative AI" group to oppose AI-generated voices and videos created without consent. A series of videos featuring voice actors speaking their thoughts out on the usage of generative AI were released on October 21 as part of the campaign.

Filmography

Video games

Super Robot Wars series (????–????) (Kappei Jin, Lieea)

Tokusatsu

Morimori Bokkun (1986) (Bokkun)

Chikyu Sentai Fiveman (1990) (Sairagin (ep. 7, 19))

Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger Dino Video (1993) (Dino-kun)

Ultraman Zearth (1996) (Digital Kanegon)

Engine Sentai Go-Onger (2008) (Wameikle (Chibi) (ep. 41))

Dubbing

Bad Santa – Thurman Merman (Brett Kelly)

Baggage Claim – Gail Best (Jill Scott)

The Crow – Sarah (Rochelle Davis)

Fuller House – D.J. Tanner (Candace Cameron Bure)

The Goonies (1988 TBS edition) – Lawrence "Chunk" Cohen (Jeff Cohen)

The Man Who Knew Too Little – Lori (Joanne Whalley)

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris – Ada Harris (Lesley Manville)

Near Dark (1990 TV Tokyo edition) – Homer (Joshua John Miller)

Happy Feet Two – Atticus

¡Mucha Lucha! – The Flea