Time for our third Free! -Eternal Summer- dub cast announcement—featuring Makoto Tachibana, the kind, sweet and sensitive Iwatobi Swim Club captain, and Haru’s best friend! Who’s the official English voice behind those gentle eyes and lovely trapezius muscles?
Makoto (played by Tatsuhisa Suzuki, singer of OLDCODEX, in the Japanese version) is played by Johnny Yong Bosch, who’s known for many other dub roles you might recognize from other anime—Lelouch Lamperouge from Code Geass, Ichigo Kurosaki from Bleach, Yukio Okumura from Blue Exorcist, Artemis in the new Sailor Moon dub, and more.
Johnny also provides the lead vocals and guitar for his band Eyeshine! Click here for more info about the band.
We asked Johnny a few Free! ES-related questions!
Question: Can you swim? If so, what’s your best stroke?
Johnny: Yes, doggy paddle.
Question: What’s your favorite marine animal?
Johnny: The walrus.
Question: When you were in high school, what did you want to be when you grew up?
Johnny: An action star…but that really came from me daydreaming about saving a cheerleader from some grab-happy jock and after that I’m allowed to sit at the cool table.
Check back tomorrow for our next announcement! We’re announcing new dub cast members every day this week until November 16! The announcements hit first on the Free! -Eternal Summer- Tumblr and Facebook page, so make sure you’re following them for the most up-to-date news! For more updates about Free! – Eternal Summer – be sure to also sign up for our newsletter here
Cast so far:
Rei Ryugazaki – J. Michael Tatum
Nagisa Hazuki – Greg Ayres
Makoto Tachibana – Johnny Yong Bosch
Check out the previous cast announcements by clicking this link.
(As a reminder, if you’re curious about the status of the Free! season 1 home video release and haven’t heard yet, be sure to check out this blog entry for the full explanation. We currently have no newer updates at this time.)
Amazing!
I am happy with the lineup so far! Now we need Vic, Todd, Bryce, Cherami, and Matthew Mercer to complete this cast! That would be an ideal lineup!
Not sure about Matt, because he’s an LA actor. I just think we got lucky with Johnny, and this dub won’t be FILLED with LA actors, like the AoT dub.
I was hoping for Johnny to play Rin and Vic Mignogna to play Makoto but not a bad chose. Who kniws Vic might be the one playing Rin! But I want Crispin Freeman to play Haru, please.
Crispin cant be in a non-union dub, so he he wont be showing up in this show
Funimation, I am proud of you for drawing in LA based voice actors to dub with you.
I LOVE this casting choice, but I was predicting Makoto to be voiced by Vic.
Oh my gosh, Johnny Yong Bosch! Perfect. His voice can be very gentle. He has also done other anime characters which require his more gentle voice, so him voicing Makoto can definitely work. So happy about this casting decision^-^
Awesome choice for Mokoto, I really wasn’t expecting him to be voiced by Johnny Yong Bosch. I can’t wait to find out who will be next. Nice cast so far, but I’m still not sure about Greg Ayres as Nagisa.
No updates on S1? ANN disagrees (their post today about Makoto’s casting: “Crunchyroll representatives said at Pacific Media Expo this past weekend that they do not intend to sit on the rights, and asked fans to look forward to future developments.”).
All this hype over a dub. Sorry I don’t care. I’ll never see what I want on the Eternal Summer release: subtitled track for the episode commentaries being done by the seiyuu on the Japanese releases.
There’s something called importing DVDs if you want the seiyuu commentaries.
Yes, I know and I have. My Japanese isn’t good enough to follow along though. Point is might have a DUB commentary which is not a sale point for me. A subtitled track for the original voice cast tracks is (but it’s never going to happen).
Wow. Johnny Yong Bosch in an official FUNimation Dub. Usually he would just come to FUNimation to reprise old characters. I did not see that one coming at all. Looking at the opening of Free! – Eternal Summer, Rin’s voice actor will most likely be announced tomorrow (13th November, 2014). The cast seems to be All-Star (well known) in a way.
So most likely Vic Mignogna will be voicing Rin.
I have a feeling that with Bleach done we get to see Johnny in more Funimation dubs. If so that would be awesome.
Good reasoning
If you guys Dub Season 2.. then can you please Dub Season 1 as well… just my wishing.
Read the article in the link on the bottom
I was hoping for Johnny to voice Haruka, but Makoto is fine. Johnny is a good voice actor, never disappointed me. I feel like I’m the only one waiting to see who gets to voice Haruka lol. He’s my favorite character and Makoto is my second favorite character in the entire anime. Just gotta wait and see.
I will never even watch the dubbed version because I hate dubs, but I’m stoked that I’ll be able to buy it!
I’m kind of curious to hear how he sounds as Makoto. I’ve only really heard him as bad guy like characters.