Tokusatsu Actor Taiki Matsuno Dead At 56

Voice actor Taiki Matsuno has passed away on Wednesday, June 26th, 2024, due to cerebral hemmorrhage. He was 56.
To us in the tokusatsu fandom he was probably best known as the tsuika senshi of Ninpu Sentai Hurricaneger, Tenku Ninja Shurikenger, among his many roles throughout the genre where he primarily played villains. Apart from tokusatsu he was mostly known in the realm of anime as the titular Hajime Kindaichi of the Kindaichi Case Files, Jun Manjome/Chazz Princeton in Yugioh GX, Agumon specifically in Digimon Savers/Data Squad, and the Japanese voice of Spongebob Squarepants. He will surely be missed.

Rest In Peace, Mr. Matsuno, and thank you for all the characters that you've performed.

RIP.

Pierre and Shurikenger were one and the same (voice-wise, anyway)!?

Well, I feel dumb. All these years and I never put two and two together!

I'm thinking of "Tango Psyma", which was done by Pierre/Matsuno. Fun little villain theme.

RIP.

They don't call Shurikenger the 100-faced Ninja for nothing. I wasn't aware he shared a VA with Pierre either.

Shame to lose another Ranger so soon after Motohashi. R.I.P.

RIP Taiki Matsuno.

I've been currently watching Hurricanger, and when I got to Shurikenger's introduction, I already liked him.

And Jun Manjome in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX? What a legend. You will be missed.

Rest in Peace.

Yeah, he scored big I think with landing the role of Hajime in the Kindaichi Case Files back in the 90s, which if you're ever looking for detectice manga other than Detective Conan I would like to suggest giving it a go, and managed to fit in some decent chunky roles throughout his career. I think he really secured the win when he became the second to helm the voice of Spongebob in Japan because roles like that tend to go for a long time, which he did 9 seasons of I believe, and big name IPs like that are good to have on a resume mostly.