Life and career
Naoki Bandō was born in Asahikawa, Hokkaido, Japan on December 12, 1957. During his junior high and high school years, Bandō lived in Hakodate.
He moved from Hokkaido to Tokyo to attend the Department of Japanese Literature (Evening Division) in the Faculty of Letters at Hosei University [ja]. However, he spent the tuition money provided by his parents on the Evening Division of the Seinenza Theater Company Actor's Training Institute and dropped out after two years.
Aspiring to become an actor, he graduated from the regular course of the Gekidan Seinenza Theater Company's Actor Training School and then joined the Gekidan Shinjinkai Theater Company. However, his small stature made him look overshadowed on stage, so he rarely got good roles.
The reason he started voice acting was because he held an academic complex deep down, still carrying a bit of a bitter, cynical attitude, thinking, "After all, I'm just a theater person who never properly learned voice training for voice acting." While helping with sound effects during a stage production, he developed a deeper interest in sound, which ultimately led him to pursue voice acting. A senior from the theater company, who used to voice act, found out and said to him, "If you're good with sound, why don't you give it a shot?"
Around that time, the television anime City Hunter had started airing. With a massive list of antagonists appearing every week, they needed all the extra talent they could get, leading to Bandō being called in for recordings almost every week. In 1991, he passed an audition and secured his first regular voice role as Guard Star in The Brave of Sun Fighbird.
A founding member of Kyu Production [ja], he was affiliated with Mausu Promotion, Liberta, ALBA, and Production Ace [ja] throughout his life. When he started to get voice work once per week, it became difficult to fit two-month stage performances into his schedule. Believing that juggling both would be difficult, he made the decision to transfer to a voice acting agency.
In 2011, Bandō established the voice acting academy Shovel Tech and began to mentor younger talent.
Bandō died on September 28, 2026, at the age of 68. His death was publicly announced days later on October 2 of that year by Production Ace [ja].
