Hiroshi Tsuchida’s Voice Is in Fool Night’s New Trailer. His Comment on the Role Was Given Before He Died

Hiroshi Tsuchida’s voice is in the new trailer for Netflix’s Fool Night, and the words he wrote about his character arrived with a short note attached: they were given while he was alive. The Japanese voice of Lightning McQueen died on 11 October at 54. On 5 November the anime named him, and four others, as its newest cast.

Bandai Namco Filmworks revealed the five additions on Thursday with a main trailer, a key visual and the theme song artists. Shion Wakayama plays Sumi Matsuno, Hiroshi Tsuchida plays Ken Hikasa, Nobuhiko Okamoto plays Nishi, Sayaka Sembongi plays Meg Okumura and Yumiko Kobayashi plays Ivy. All episodes stream worldwide on Netflix from 26 November.

Each actor sent a comment for the announcement. In the Japanese release, as Anime! Anime! and Cho! Animedia printed it, Tsuchida’s ends with one extra line: “This comment was received from Hiroshi Tsuchida while he was alive.” Anime News Network’s cast list simply reads “The late Hiroshi Tsuchida as Ken Hikasa.”

Image: Bandai Namco Filmworks, ©Kasumi Yasuda/Shogakukan/Fool Night Production Committee

A villain he wanted you to think about

Hikasa is secretary general of a political party that wants Transfloration abolished, the system at the heart of the story. Tsuchida’s comment, in the English version on the official Fool Night site, sounds like an actor who’d had fun with the part and taken it seriously at the same time. “Hikasa is a ruthless man who will stop at nothing to accomplish his goals,” he wrote. “What true motives are hidden behind those glasses of his?”

He didn’t pretend the man was nice. “This middle-aged man could not look more villainous if he tried, but his convictions will make you think deeply about the root of the many problems this world faces.” Then he signed off to the audience: “I’m eager to see how viewers will respond to the questions that Hikasa poses. I hope you will see it through to the end.”

Tsuchida died of heart failure, and his agency, 81 Produce, announced it on 20 October. As Voice Over Herald reported then, Japanese audiences knew him first as Ninja Blue in Ninja Sentai Kakuranger, then for two decades as the voice of Lightning McQueen in Cars, as Grisha Yeager in Attack on Titan and as the regular Japanese voice of Hollywood leading men.

Hear him as Hikasa

The main trailer, on Bandai Namco Filmworks’ YouTube channel, gives Hikasa one big moment. Just before the one minute mark, he gets his speech, and it’s the clearest chance yet to hear Tsuchida in the role. The release itself points to it: the trailer includes “the speech by Ken Hikasa,” who leads the opposition.

Hear the voice: Hiroshi Tsuchida as Ken Hikasa, about a second in. Video: Bandai Namco Filmworks, on YouTube

The rest of the trailer is built the way the series sounds. It opens on Yomiko Horai’s flat, unhurried narration explaining Transfloration, then cuts to riots, to Hikasa’s speech and to the first full look at Ivy, all set to Tempalay’s opening theme, “Shake! spit out.” Nowlu sings the ending theme, “Iki,” which means breath.

What the others say about the voice

Several of the comments are about exactly what working voice actors wrestle with: how much to show. Okamoto plays Nishi, who plots with Hikasa to end the Transfloration system, and he’s let those feelings stay under the surface. “Nishi is one of the most emotionally complex characters in the cast,” he wrote. “I think that because those emotions don’t surface in his voice, he comes across as somewhat mysterious.”

Image: Bandai Namco Filmworks, ©Kasumi Yasuda/Shogakukan/Fool Night Production Committee

Kobayashi had the opposite problem. Ivy is a man covered from head to foot in vines and tied up in a string of murders, and he can’t say much of what he feels. “I hope I was able to convey even a fraction of what Ivy can’t put into words, as well as what is left inside him,” she wrote. She also admitted the manga got the better of her: “I completely forgot about work and read all the way up to the latest volume.”

Image: Bandai Namco Filmworks, ©Kasumi Yasuda/Shogakukan/Fool Night Production Committee

Wakayama’s Sumi is a young pianist at a music university, looking for a father who became one of the plants. “Sumi Matsuno is a woman with very modern and human pains,” Wakayama wrote, describing a character “living what passes for a blessed life in this world, but suffering that no one around her can see eats away at her heart.”

Sembongi plays Meg, a junior high student who joins the anti-Transfloration protests with her father, and her comment is the one that sounds most like a day in the life. “The wait from dubbing to seeing the completed show has been a long one,” she wrote, “but now that the release date is approaching, I’m starting to get a little anxious about how I’ll react to seeing this story as an anime.”

A world that runs on people turned into plants

Fool Night is based on Kasumi Yasuda’s manga, serialised in Shogakukan’s Big Comic Superior since 2020. Thick clouds have blocked the sun for a century and most plants have died. To breathe, humanity relies on Transfloration: a seed is planted in the body of someone close to death, and the person becomes a plant. Toshiro Kamiya, ground down by poverty, chooses the procedure, and finds he can hear the voices of the people who’ve become flowers. For a show about voices, it’s quite a premise.

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Koki Uchiyama leads the cast as Toshiro, with Minako Kotobuki as Yomiko Horai, Junya Enoki as Akira Yatsuka, Aya Endo as Saeko Kanaeno and Kiyomitsu Mizuuchi as Jin Hiragishi. Atsuyuki Yukawa directs, Jin Tanaka writes the series, Yota Tsuruoka is sound director and Tatsuya Kato composes the music. It’s the first time Sunrise and SHAFT have made an anime together.

Yukawa’s own message on the official site makes a promise that sits neatly beside Tsuchida’s. “We are on the side of those who want to think,” the director wrote. Before the launch, a “Street Transfloration Piano” exhibition fills the atrium of Tokyo Midtown from 27 to 29 November, with a playable street piano buried in plants, according to Anime! Anime!

Kept as he wrote it

The production could have quietly dropped the comment. Instead it printed Tsuchida’s words as he sent them, added one plain line underneath and named him in the cast beside his colleagues. The official release images pair his photograph with Hikasa’s character design, exactly as they do for the other four.

For the people who’ve heard him for more than thirty years, as a ninja, a race car and Eren’s father in Attack on Titan, Hikasa will be a different sound: a cold, careful politician with a crowd in front of him. Tsuchida asked viewers to see the series through to the end. On 26 November, they can.

Sources: Bandai Namco Filmworks cast announcement as published by Anime! Anime!, Cho! Animedia and Eiga.com (5 November 2026); official Fool Night website, cast and staff comments in the site’s English version; Fool Night main trailer, Bandai Namco Filmworks on YouTube; Anime News Network (5 November 2026); 81 Produce (20 October 2026). The note on Tsuchida’s comment and the release’s description of the trailer are translated from Japanese by Voice Over Herald. Images: Bandai Namco Filmworks, ©Kasumi Yasuda/Shogakukan/Fool Night Production Committee.

Lee este artículo en español: La voz de Hiroshi Tsuchida está en el nuevo tráiler de Fool Night. Su comentario sobre el papel lo dio antes de morir

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