Lucien Dodge

Lucien Dodge’s Path From Ithaca to the Anime Dubbing Elite

Growing up in Ithaca, New York, Lucien Dodge found his way into performance through the Actor’s Workshop of Ithaca, where early stage work lit a fuse that eventually led him to Los Angeles and the world of voice acting. He relocated to L.A. in 2011 and quickly embedded himself in the city’s animation and dubbing ecosystem, working across Bang Zoom! Entertainment, Funimation, NYAV Post, and Studiopolis. Beyond performing, he has also taken on work as an ADR director and scriptwriter, shaping not just how characters sound but how their stories read in English.

The career that followed touched everything from commercial voiceover for Kellogg’s and Verizon to audiobook narration for Live Oak Media, convention panels at Otakon and NohCon, and guest teaching at NYU. That breadth of activity across formats has given Dodge a fluency in voice work that shows up differently depending on the material – playful in one session, ruthless in the next.

Waver Velvet and the Fate Franchise

The role that first put Dodge on the map for anime fans was Waver Velvet in the English dub of Fate/Zero, Ufotable’s 2011 adaptation of Gen Urobuchi’s dark fantasy prequel. Waver enters the story as a young and somewhat arrogant mage who quickly becomes one of the series’ most emotionally grounded figures, forming an unlikely bond with the massive Rider, Iskander. Dodge captured both the prickliness and the gradual humanity of the character, a performance strong enough that he was brought back years later to reprise the role as Lord El-Melloi II in Lord El-Melloi II’s Case Files: Rail Zeppelin Grace Note, picking up where the original left off with an older, more weathered version of the same man.

Upper Moon Three – Akaza in Demon Slayer

No credit defines recent years in Dodge’s career more than Akaza, the Upper Moon Three demon in Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba. The role required intensity at a sustained pitch that few antagonists in contemporary anime demand – a fighter who moves with terrifying elegance and carries a tragedy underneath the violence. Dodge carried that performance through the Mugen Train arc and into the Infinity Castle film, and in 2026 the industry took formal notice: he was named Best Voice Artist Performance in English at the 10th annual Crunchyroll Anime Awards, with 73 million votes cast globally. It marked a landmark moment for English dub recognition at a ceremony long dominated by Japanese-language performances.

Mahito, Dust, and the Range Between

On the other end of the villain spectrum sits Mahito in Jujutsu Kaisen, a cursed spirit voiced with something almost playful beneath the malice – a more unsettling register than the raw ferocity of Akaza. The contrast between those two roles illustrates something consistent in Dodge’s body of work: antagonists who carry emotional complexity alongside their destructive capacity.

Outside of anime, the title role in the indie video game Dust: An Elysian Tail stands as one of his most complete lead performances – an emotionally layered, standalone narrative that required carrying the story almost solo. Game credits also include K1-B0 in Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, Felix in Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Three Hopes, Yuma Kokohead in Master Detective Archives: Rain Code, creature voices in Diablo IV, and additional voices in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Spider-Man 2. The spread cuts across genres and tones with the ease of someone who has done this long enough that range isn’t a stretch.

Behind the Booth and Into the Community

Six consecutive appearances at the National Audio Theater Festival and regular convention guest spots paint a picture of someone invested in the craft as a discipline, not just a job. Dodge has shared panels with colleagues across the industry and taken that same interest in education to NYU, where he has appeared as a guest teacher. He is partnered with fellow voice actor Erica Mendez and represented by Atlas Talent, with work continuing to expand across animation, games, and beyond into 2026.