Nobuyuki Hiyama

**Nobuyuki Hiyama** (檜山修之) is a voice actor involved in Bottleman. He voices George Muto in the Japanese dub of Cap Revolution Bottleman as well as Leo Kinjishi in the Japanese dub of Cap Revolution Bottleman DX.

## Biography

Nobuyuki Hiyama was born August 25th, 1967 and works for Artsvision. His hometown is Hatsukaichi, Hiroshima. He has a wife.

Born in Hiroshima at the Japanese Red Cross Hospital (now the Hiroshima Red Cross A-bomb Hospital), Nobuyuki Hiyama grew up playing baseball with his friends. His mother was born in Taiwan at the end of World War II, and was evacuated back to Japan after the war.

Hiyama was influenced by his father and enjoyed studying history, and he also excelled in history and social studies. But despite his studiousness, he didn't like engaging in after-school activities. Since it was mandatory for every student to participate in at least one after-school activity in his middle school, Hiyama said that he reluctantly joined the Go Club and Shogi Club in his 7th grade and the Radio Club in his 8th grade. He also confessed that the broadcasting club experience during middle school was really awful as he was so bored that he voluntarily withdrew from the club at the beginning of his 9th grade. As a result, he joined the calligraphy club for the rest of his middle school life.

When he entered high school, Hiyama thought he would finally be able to live the life he had always dreamed of as a recluse, but he was forced to join the broadcasting club by a classmate he was close with, who persuaded him that he wanted to join the school's broadcasting club but was afraid to sign up by himself. Hiyama admitted at first he was very reluctant to join the broadcasting club, and pointed out that in addition to his dislike of after-school activities, he was very self-conscious about the changed quality of his voice during puberty, so he hardly spoke until he was urged by the classmate to join the club. However, Hiyama soon realized that the high school broadcasting club was a much more interesting experience than the one he had in middle school, and had the power to decide the themes for classroom and flag-raising ceremonies, and even to produce his own radio dramas.

During his high school years, he had the chance to represent his high school school in several national radio drama competitions held by NHK. As a result of his encounter with radio dramas and the second boom in the voice acting industry created by popular animations, Hiyama's interest in the voice related industry increased dramatically and confirmed his career goal about further studying in the voice acting industry during his school's career counselling guidance.

Hiyama remarked that his first ambition in his 12th grade was to go to college to study history and become a historian, followed by a job related to voice acting. He also explained that he thought, "Since it's a profession that I have to live in for the rest of my life, I'm going to choose the profession that I love". Because of the time consuming and difficult process of applying to the history department, Cypress decided to take the second route and discussed it with his parents. Since his parents were not familiar with the voice acting profession and both believed the risks were too high, they decided not to give their son money and tuition assistance so that he could venture into the business on his own. Hiyama quickly obtained a scholarship for journalism in Japan and graduated from the Tokyo Broadcasting Institute (now Technical Tokyo Broadcasting Institute) in the Department of Broadcasting Voice. He used his scholarship from Japan News Agency due to not being financially supplied by his parents.

He later followed his teacher's footsteps to further study in Artsvision. He was then scouted during his first stage performance, and he was officially recruited as an Artsvision member. He then debuted as a voice actor in the *Kaiketsu Zorori* OVA as a very minor mummy. However, during his first five years as a newbie voice actor, he still had to attend graduate school and deliver newspapers whenever he had no roles to accept.

Hiyama's first official and prominent voice acting role was the top villain, Sindoromon, in the environmental protection cartoon "Environmental Protection Pioneers" produced by Gallop, Inc. from 1992 to 1993, which was recorded in six months. During the recording period of the "Environmental Protection Pioneers", Hiyama was living a financially unstable life, and when he couldn't find out when he would receive another role, his agency called him to attend a casting session for *YuYu Hakusho*. Higashiyama had only participated in the screening for the character Kurama, so he had only prepared the information for said character. However, he suddenly received a call from his agency, saying that a second audition would be held for *YuYu Hakusho*, so he was asked to go back to challenge for voicing another character Hiei. He was worried about the change in situation, because he didn't have time to prepare and didn't know how the character was set up, so he was advised by his agency to try out with a lower voice. His role of Hiei then became one of his most famous works.

He has also become renowned due to his involvement in *The Brave Express Might Gaine*. In addition to being acclaimed as the "hotblooded hero's spokesperson", he is also known in the Japanese acting industry as the "King of Braves in Voice Acting".

## Trivia

* His nicknames are Hiichan (ひーちゃん) and The King of Braves (勇者王, Yūsha Ō).
* His Blood Type is A.
* Although Hiyama has little experience on stage performances, he said that he would like to continue to perform if there is an opportunity to improve on his performing arts.

## Gallery

### Notable Characters

Hiei (*YuYu Hakusho*)Palmer (*Pokémon the Series: Diamond and Pearl*)

## Links

### References

1. ↑ https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/word/person/%E6%AA%9C%E5%B1%B1%E4%BF%AE%E4%B9%8B/