Shin Oishinbo Casts Six More Voices. Its New Kaibara Is Taking Over the Role From His Late Father
Shin Oishinbo has filled its newspaper office. The 2027 remake of the classic food anime revealed six more voices this week, from Nobuo Tobita as the paper’s fearsome owner to Hiroshi Naka as its proud editor in chief. They join a lead cast with a family story at its centre: Akio Ōtsuka is now the voice of Yūzan Kaibara, the gourmet tyrant his late father, Chikao Ōtsuka, voiced in 1988.
VoiceEditSuiteNewAuto Clean Up now learns you.Learns from numbers, never your audio. Never used to train AI.See how it worksThe official Shin Oishinbo website announced the six new cast members on Thursday, October 29, with a character card for each. Every one of them works at the Tōzai Shimbun, the newspaper whose “Ultimate Menu” project drives the story, and every one of them takes over a role that a different actor voiced in the first anime, which ran for 136 episodes on Nippon Television from October 1988 to March 1992.
The new series is being made at Shinei Animation, the studio behind the original. It’s due to air in 2027, and the official site sells it with one line on the key visual: after 35 years, “that man” is coming back.
The Tōzai Shimbun’s new staff
Here’s who joins the paper, with each character as the official site describes them:
- Tōru Furusawa plays Hideo Tanimura, deputy editor in chief and head of the culture department. He shields his staff from the owner’s unreasonable orders, stays calm, and is well liked.
- Kōsuke Echigoya plays Tomio Tomii, the culture department’s deputy head, who flatters his bosses and is tough on his staff. He’s terrified of his wife and a messy drinker, but he’s a good man underneath, so nobody hates him.
- Nobuo Tobita plays Daizō Ōhara, the paper’s owner, who dreamed up the Ultimate Menu for the company’s 100th anniversary and treats the rival Teito Shimbun and its “Supreme Menu” as the enemy.
- Hiroshi Naka plays Kyōichi Koizumi, a company director and the editor in chief, proud and well travelled. He bows low to the owner and throws his weight around with everyone else.
- Kyō Yaoya plays Kinue Arakawa, a culture department reporter, a former girl gang leader and Yūko’s dependable senior, now married to the photographer Arakawa.
- Hiroko Ushida plays Noriko Mitani, a reporter with a soft spot for celebrities who settled down after marrying Mitani, the owner of a rice cracker shop, and having a child.
Fans of the old show will know Kinue and Noriko by their maiden names, Tabata and Hanamura. With Yūko Kurita they made up the culture department’s “flower trio”, and the new official profiles use their married names.
Nobuo Tobita and Daizō Ōhara. Image: Shin Oishinbo production committee / Shinei Animation
Anime News Network, which reported the new cast, lists the staff: Ken’ichi Nishida is directing at Synergy SP and Vega Entertainment, Takahiro Nagano is in charge of the scripts, Nozomi Kawashige is designing the characters, and Shinei Animation is producing.
A son takes his father’s seat at the table
The bigger casting news came first, on September 24, when the site named its three leads. Yōhei Azakami plays Shirō Yamaoka, the idle, unremarkable reporter with more passion for food than anyone in the building. Hitomi Sasaki plays his colleague Yūko Kurita. And Akio Ōtsuka plays Yūzan Kaibara, the potter, gourmand and estranged father whose “Supreme Menu” Yamaoka has sworn to beat.
In the 1988 series, Kaibara was voiced by Chikao Ōtsuka, Akio’s father. Chikao, who died in January 2015 at 85, was famous in Japan as Nezumi Otoko in GeGeGe no Kitarō and as the Japanese dubbing voice of Charles Bronson. Father and son sometimes worked together, in Black Jack 21 and Mobile Suit Gundam 0083 among others. Akio, now best known as Solid Snake, Black Jack and Batou, told fans earlier this month he still wants one more Metal Gear.
Yūzan Kaibara in the 1988 series, voiced by Chikao Ōtsuka. Image: official Oishinbo YouTube channel / Shinei Animation
His comment for the cast announcement opens like a man who knows exactly what the audience is thinking. “Hello, this is Akio Ōtsuka. I’m doing Yūzan Kaibara,” he wrote. “Yes, it’s me again. I’m taking over.” Then: “I’m sure you’re all thinking, ‘Him again!’ but yes, ‘again’!”
And then the best line of the lot: “Maybe I should just go ahead and change my name to Chikao Ōtsuka.”
He’s honest about the character, too. “He was a stubborn old man even when it first aired, but watching it now, wow,” Ōtsuka wrote. “He’s a me-first emperor to a slightly alarming degree. It’s a tough role that also has to fight modern compliance rules, so I’ll do my best!”
Akio Ōtsuka and the 2027 Yūzan Kaibara. Image: Shin Oishinbo production committee / Shinei Animation
His message to fans hints at where the new version will land. “I don’t know how far we’ll be able to go with extreme expressions, but being extreme isn’t the goal,” he wrote. He hopes to keep “the flavour of those days” while showing what tastes good now. His one firm food rule is short: “Good food is good food!”
Two leads who grew up with the old show
Azakami watched the original as a viewer. “As someone who watched the old TV anime series, I really feel how big and how heavy it is to play Shirō Yamaoka,” he wrote. He also gave the nicest description yet of how he’s playing a man who seems to do nothing at work: “I play him every episode as if I’m wandering around looking for a place to eat tonight.”
That’s present tense, and it isn’t the only clue that recording is already under way. Sasaki describes the studio as a happy one. “Surrounded by such an impressive cast, what I felt was less nerves and more how comfortable it was,” she wrote. “Lots of people were Oishinbo fans, and we got excited about our favourite scenes and lines.” She called it “a recording studio overflowing with love for Oishinbo.”
Yōhei Azakami and Shirō Yamaoka. Image: Shin Oishinbo production committee / Shinei Animation
Her Yūko isn’t quite the type she first expected, either. At first she saw a charming, sensible young reporter, she wrote, but some of Yūko’s lines made her want to shout, “Wait, she’s naturally savage!!”
Songs, and a long wait for 2027
The site also named the theme songs this week. Yui Makino performs the opening, “PROMISE ME”, and the band Skoop On Somebody performs the ending, “Akashi” (Proof). Makino wrote that her uncle is a huge Oishinbo fan and that she read his copies of the manga as a child, and she still remembers a Hong Kong showdown in it that showed her there were ways to eat fish other than as sashimi.
The story picks up with the Ultimate and Supreme menus at war and a new arrival: Ichirō Dan, the young new president of the company Daikensha, becomes the referee of the showdown and falls for Yūko at first sight. The official site promises Yamaoka and Yūko’s slow romance will finally start to move.
No broadcaster, month or overseas streaming deal has been announced. The original manga by Tetsu Kariya and Akira Hanasaki has sold more than 135 million copies, according to the official site, and Viz Media has published volumes of it in English.
Sources: Shin Oishinbo official website (cast announcement, October 29; lead cast and comments, September 24; theme songs, October 29), Anime News Network, Wikipedia (Oishinbo, Chikao Ōtsuka). Quotations from Japanese are translated by Voice Over Herald. Images: Shin Oishinbo production committee / Shinei Animation, and the official Oishinbo YouTube channel.
Lee este artículo en español: Shin Oishinbo suma seis voces más. Su nuevo Kaibara hereda el papel de su difunto padre
Know something about this story, or spotted an error? Tell the newsroom.