Masashi Ebara (江原正士, born in Yokohama, Japan, May 4th, 1954) is a Japanese voice actor who provides voices in the Japanese narration of Thomas and Friends.
He is most famous for voicing Might Guy from "Naruto", Unadonman and Princess Dorian from "Soreike! Anpanman", Lord Voldemort from "Harry Potter", Caledon Hockley from "Titanic", Ratchet, Spike Witwicky, Skywarp from "Transformers G1", Gustave le Grand, Mulia Mild from "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic", Sylvester from "Looney Tunes", and Lumière from "Beauty and the Beast". He is also the official dubbing voice for Tom Hanks in Japan.
Voices
- James (Calling All Engines! onwards)
- The Thin Clergyman (twentieth season)
- Mr. Conductor
- The Magician
Songs
- Will You Won't You (performed)
- Be Who You Are, and Go Far (performed)
- Somebody Has to be the Favourite (performed)
- The Most Important Thing is Being Friends (performed)
Trivia
- He is one of the few voice actors to play a character in both Thomas and TUGS, in which he voices Top Hat and Zip.
- He is also the only Japanese voice actor to be associated with both David Mitton and Britt Allcroft.
- As well, he is the only Japanese cast member to span both the original and new voice cast.
- He, Hideyuki Umezu and Kōzō Shioya voiced characters together in "Animaniacs".
- Both he and Hiroshi Iwasaki voiced Binky the Clown from "Garfield and Friends".
- He worked alongside Katsunosuke Hori, Takeshi Aono, Masaharu Satō, Houko Kuwashima,Toshiharu Sakurai, Naoki Tatsuta, Takeshi Endo, Kiyonobu Suzuki, and Daisuke Gōri on "Master Keaton".
- Both he and Naoki Tatsuta voiced characters together from "The Angry Beavers" and "Looney Tunes".
- Both he and Alfonso Ramírez voiced Sylvester from "The Looney Tunes Show" in their respective languages.
- Both he and Salty's Lighthouse voice actor Scott McNeil voiced Hohenheim from "Fullmetal Alchemist" in their respective languages.
- Both he and Salty's Lighthouse voice actor Paul Dobson voiced Alastor from "Shakugan no Shana" and Richard Vincent from "Soultaker" in their respective languages.
- Both he and Gerardo Reyero voiced Might Guy from "Naruto" in their respective languages.
- Both he and Herman López played Logan/Wolverine from "X-Men: The Animated Series" in their respective languages.
- Shinobu Adachi and Rokurō Naya also worked on in "X-Men: The Animated Series".
- Both he and Mikołaj Klimek voiced Arthur Curry/Aquaman from "Batman: The Brave and the Bold" in their respective languages.
- Both he and José Luis Orozco voiced Lord Voldemort from the "Harry Potter" films in their respective languages.
- Geneviève Déry, Robert Wilfort, Rolando de Castro, Claes Ljungmark, Leyla Rangel, Ruth Toscano, Nathan Clarke, Humberto Vélez, Timothy Bateson, Simon Fisher-Becker, César Izaguirre, César Árias, Katsuji Mori, Yigal Mizrachi, Hideyuki Umezu, Jesse Grimm, Aryeh Cherner, Zuzanna Galia, Ángel Amorós, Tokuyoshi Kawashima, Octavio Rojas, Scott Maurstad, John Hurt, Jorge Santos, Irwin Daayán, Blas García, Dov Reiser, Albert Cohen, Hadar Shachaf Ma'ayan, Zvika Schwartzberg, Jamie Campbell Bower, Thomas Fritsch, Norma Iturbe and Rob Rackstraw have also starred in the "Harry Potter" films. Angela Kyriacou and Eddie Redmayne also had roles in it's prequel "Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them".
- Both he and Tzvika Shwartzberg voiced AUTO from "WALL·E" in their respective languages.
- Both he and Philippe Catoire voiced Captain Hook from "Disney" in their respective languages.
- He, along with Junichi Kanemaru, Kenta Miyake and Nobutoshi Canna, voiced characters together in "Sonic the Hedgehog".
- Both he and Gustavo Carrillo voiced Dewey Finn from "The School of Rock" in their respective languages.
- He, along with TUGS voice actress Yūko Mita voiced together in "Budgie the Little Helicopter". Mario Castañeda voiced in the Spanish version. Additionally Brian Trueman wrote for the show.
- He, Radovan Vaculík, Ringo Starr, George Carlin, Carlos Enrique Bonilla, Jorge Ornelas, Enzo Avolio, Víctor Delgado, Bohuslav Kalva, Daiki Nakamura, Aku Laitinen, Marjolein Algera, Jukka Voutilaninen, Shinobu Adachi, Pasi Ruohonen, Loretta Santini, Olga Hnidey, Don Nemitz, Bin Shimada, Reinder van der Naalt, Ángel Amorós, Gerardo Reyero, Luis Alfonso Padilla, Octavio Rojas, Louise Raeder, Humberto Vélez, Hadar Shachaf Ma'ayan, Chie Kōjiro, Samuel Harjanne, Keiko Toda, Pierce Brosnan and Alec Baldwin all worked on "The Simpsons".
- He, Analiz Sánchez, Mikołaj Klimek, Héctor Moreno, Enrique Cervantes, Susana Moreno, Michał Podsiadło, Claudia Motta, Javier Olguín, Simen Sand, Klaudiusz Kaufmann, Justyna Bojczuk, Anna Gajewska, Ricardo Silva, Carlos Hernández, Ewa Serwa, Loretta Santini, Irina Índigo, Zbigniew Konopka, Isabel Romo, Raúl Solo, Zuzanna Galia, Kim Seung-jun, Grzegorz Kwiecień, Jacek Król, Benedikte Kruse, Eduardo Fonseca, Annie Rojas, Sergio Morel, Elsa Covián, Julia Kołakowska-Bytner, Susa Saukko, Kenta Miyake, Joanna Pach-Żbikowska, Moisés Iván Mora, Mia Kadosh, Igor Cruz, Norma Iturbe, Petri Hanttu, Hiroshi Iwasaki, Anna Apostolakis, Tiril Heide-Steen, Przemysław Stippa, Markus Bäckman, Leszek Zduń, Janusz Wituch, Talya Barkay, Edson Matus, Paweł Szczesny, Gerald Schaale, Leyla Rangel, Piotr Bajtlik and Tesshō Genda have all starred in "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic".