Biography
Daisuke Jinbo was a sound effects designer, credited in Japanese as 音響効果, and if you grew up watching Pokemon you know his work better than you know almost anyone else's on this list. Sound effects design is not the music and not the voices. It is every other noise: footsteps, doors, wind, explosions, the specific electronic crackle of an attack, the specific rustle of a creature moving through grass. Those sounds are built, one at a time, by a person choosing and layering recordings. In a franchise about fictional animals with fictional powers, the sound effects designer is effectively inventing the biology.
He worked the entire Pokemon anime franchise, from the 1997 television series through to 2023, plus the theatrical films. [3] The 2003 feature Jirachi Wish Maker is among the film credits recorded on Eiga.com. [2] Sound director Yoshikazu Iwanami, marking a year since Jinbo's death, described him simply as the person who made the Pokemon anime sound effects, which is as good a one-line summary as exists.
His verified career runs from around 1987 or 1988 to 2023, roughly thirty-five years. [3] His earliest television credit is Hello! Lady Lynn in 1988, and the early years include Akazukin Chacha and Tekkaman Blade II in 1994 and Nurse Angel Ririka SOS in 1995. [3] He is associated with the sound-effects house Swara Pro, founded on 4 May 1976, whose own record repeatedly marks OVA and film credits as co-handled with him, going back to Bubblegum Crisis from 1987 and Dangaioh. [3][4]
The rest of his credit list is a reminder of how wide a single specialist's reach can be. Sorcerous Stabber Orphen in 1998, Gravitation in 2000, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex in 2002, R.O.D -THE TV- in 2003, Blood+ in 2005, Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit in 2007, the Inazuma Eleven franchise from 2008, K-On! in 2009 and its 2011 film, and Tamako Love Story in 2014. [2][3] Stand Alone Complex and K-On! are about as far apart as two shows can be, and the same person built the sound for both.
One detail is worth keeping because it says something about how the job is done. On BanG Dream! in 2017 he created the band-related sound effects himself, because he could play guitar. [3] That is the whole craft in miniature: the person who can actually make the noise gets a more convincing result than the person searching a library for it.
Jinbo died on 28 July 2023, as recorded in the encyclopedia. [1] There was no obituary in the trade press. There is no published birth date; a date of 17 April 1971 circulates on aggregator databases with nothing behind it and is not published here. There is no interview with him in any language.
That last point deserves to sit at the end rather than be buried. A man spent thirty-five years designing the sounds of one of the most widely watched children's franchises in history, and nobody recorded a conversation with him about it.