Anime voice actor star of Cowboy Bebop marries former idol less than half his age

06:14 cherishe 0 Comments

Congratulations, space cowboy.

Some of anime voice actor Koichi Yamadera’s most memorable roles are characters who aren’t exactly lucky in love. As Ranma 1/2’s Ryoga Hibiki, he spends pretty much the entire series pining after a girl who only sees him as a friend (or a pet), and he’s got an even more tragic love life as Cowboy Bebop’s Spike Spiegel, a man eternally haunted by the memory of the lover he left behind when he broke away from a life in organized crime.

Yamadera himself, on the other hand, has a much more active love life, and this week announced that he’s gotten married.

“If you’ll pardon me for talking about a personal matter, I’d like to announce that Robin Shoko Okada and I have gotten married,” Tweeted Yamadera.

▼ Robin Shoko Okada

You might be thinking that Okada, a former idol singer and current media personality (or “talent,” to use the Japanese show biz term) looks surprisingly young for the spouse of someone who’s been an anime voice actor since the mid-1980s, and there is indeed a large age gap between them. Okada, who was born in the U.S., is 28 years old, while Yamadera is 59, and will be turning 60 on Thursday.

▼ Okada was a member of idol unit Ciao Bella Cinquetti (also known as The Possivo) from 2004 to 2018.

The couple became acquainted while co-hosting The Bay Line, a talk radio program for Chiba Prefecture’s bayfm, where their stint lasted from 2015 until March of last year. “After we both graduating from hosting the show,” says Yamadera, “I realized how important she’d become to me, and we started dating.” Okada mentions a similar timeline, saying “After we’d stopped hosting the show, he and I would talk about our careers, the things that are important to us in life, what makes us happy, and many other things,” and that her attraction grew from how earnest and sensitive she realized he is.

This is Yamadera’s third marriage, following previous unions to anime voice actresses Mika Kanai from 1994 to 2006 and Rie Tanaka from 2012 to 2018.

“We come from different generations and grew up in completely different environments, but we will support each other as we move forward together in life,” pledges Yamadera. “Considering my age, I feel nothing but gratitude that she agreed to marry me,” he says, while also adding that he plans to take increasing care to live a healthy life, which would probably be a wise decision for some of his other anime industry colleagues who’ve recently married women much younger than themselves.

Source: Twitter/@yamachanoha via Jin, Yahoo! Japan News/Sponichi Annex
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