Sally Amaki talks about her anime career and social media jokes
Lev Shevtsov11
September
2026
02:29
In Tokyo, Japan, American voice actress, singer and idol Sally Amaki spoke about the start of her anime career, working in the industry and management’s reaction to her English-language social media posts. The interview took place ahead of the 10th Crunchyroll Anime Awards ceremony, which Amaki hosted for the fourth consecutive time, Channel NewsAsia reports.
From Gintama to voice acting
The 26-year-old Amaki was born in Los Angeles and moved to Japan as a teenager to become a voice actress. After initial difficulties at auditions, she joined 22/7, an idol group and multimedia project produced by Yasushi Akimoto, who is also known for his work with AKB48 and HKT48.
Amaki named the anime Gintama as the work that had the greatest influence on her professional choice. Through the series, she learned about voice actors and became interested in the work of Tomokazu Sugita, who voiced Gintoki Sakata. Amaki’s first anime role was in the sports series Dive:, where she delivered a line for the character Boy A, who represented a character voiced by Sugita.
Roles and humor on social media
In 2017, clips of her English-language streams began circulating online. Audiences noticed the contrast between the artist’s reserved Japanese-language manner and her English-language humor featuring memes, dark jokes and direct observations. Amaki later launched a YouTube channel where she posts videos about the life of a voice actress and idol, as well as comedy sketches.
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Among her notable roles is Carol Olston in the anime Tomo-chan Is A Girl!, whom Amaki voiced in both Japanese and English. She also voiced Kiriko in Overwatch 2 and Peni Parker in Marvel Rivals.
Jokes, translation and anime teams
The actress said that her English-language posts on X had repeatedly led to conversations with management because translating jokes into Japanese or other languages could change how they were perceived. According to Amaki, over time the team became more relaxed about her communication style.
She also stressed that anime production staff, apart from voice actors, often do not receive proper recognition. In her view, an anime’s quality is determined not only by spectacular action scenes or visual style, but also by the story, so viewers should not dismiss series solely because of their first impression of the artwork.
