Kikunosuke Toya (Japanese: 戸谷 菊之介, Hepburn: Toya Kikunosuke, born November 30, 1998) is a Japanese voice actor and musician affiliated with Sony Music Artists.[1] After spending some time doing comedy, drama, and piano as a high school student, he won the Special Award at Sony Music Artists' 6th Anistoteles' audition in 2017, and he made his debut in 2022 as Denji, the main character of the anime Chainsaw Man. He has starred as Akira Kiyose in Sony Music Entertainment Japan's UniteUp! project, Donny in Four Knights of the Apocalypse, Mikoto Yuzuki in The Yuzuki Family's Four Sons, and Fubuki in The Elusive Samurai. In 2024, he won the Best New Actor Award at the 18th Seiyu Awards.
Early life
Toya, born on November 30, 1998,[1] is a native of Tokyo[2] and of Kanagawa Prefecture.[3] Toya has an older brother and older sister. As a young child, he lived for years in Thailand due to his parents' work.[4] He began playing the piano at the age of three, and he was invited to accompany a chorus competition while in junior high school due to his skills and once unsuccessfully auditioned to play jazz piano for a school club.[4] While in high school, he posted covers on YouTube and Nico Nico Douga, was the keyboardist of an all-male Princess Princess cover band, and was part of a volunteer comedy group who performed at school festivals and graduation parties.[4][5]
Career
After spending some time in a high school drama club, he was offered both a lead role and the opportunity to be screenwriter and director for a school festival class play.[4] Auditioning for several comedians' offices and training schools, and going to acting workshops, he learned that he could make people laugh through acting, so he decided to pursue acting.[4][5] In October 2017, when he was 18 years old, he won the Special Award at Sony Music Artists' 6th Anistoteles' audition;[6][7] he had been inspired to participate by Inori Minase's win of the Anistoteles' Grand Prix.[4] He subsequently decided on a career in voice acting.[8] Afterwards, in 2019, he was part of the first graduating class of Megumi Ogata's private acting school Team BareboAt, which opened in the same year.[7][9]
In October 2018, Toya was cast in DMM Games' Wind Boys! project.[10] In 2019, he appeared in the music video for Owarikara [ja]'s song "Fetish!".[1] In 2022, he starred in his first main role as Denji in the anime Chainsaw Man,[7][11] with Ogata herself giving him words of encouragement.[9] In his Anime News Network review for "Rescue", the fourth episode of Chainsaw Man, James Beckett praised Toya's performance as Denji, saying that Toya "nail[ed] Denji's particular mix of ferocity, mania, and brazen idiocy".[12]