The Most Famous Anime Creators and Voice Actors in the World
Top 29 of 29 ranked · August 2026 · See today's live standing →
First issue under methodology v5.62. Movement begins with the next issue frozen under the same version.
Miyazaki tops a small anime list where sprinters outrank studio directors
iFAMOUS Editorial Desk · 1 min read
Only 29 names are measured in the sector for August 2026, and the sector tag pulls in athletes whose fame the world has grouped alongside the medium.
Hayao Miyazaki, co-founder of Studio Ghibli, is the most famous figure in anime for August 2026 with a score of 15.8, and the man in second place is the one the sector lost most recently. Akira Toriyama, creator of Dragon Ball, died in 2024 and holds 12.9, a durable score that shows recognition of that kind does not fade in a year.
This is one of the smallest lists in the issue, 29 names across 16 countries, with Japan supplying eight and the United States five. It is also one where the sector tag gathers a striking number of adjacent figures, athletes whose fame the world files next to the medium rather than inside it. Dennis Rodman is third at 12.2, Usain Bolt fourth, the Norwegian runner Jakob Ingebrigtsen fifth, Hakeem Olajuwon seventh and Hicham El Guerrouj ninth. Yuna Kim, the retired South Korean figure skater, is fourteenth.
Among the people who actually make animation, Seth MacFarlane is sixth at 10 and Makoto Shinkai, the filmmaker and novelist behind some of the medium's biggest recent films, is eighth at 9.2. Satoshi Kon, the director whose compact body of work reshaped psychological storytelling in animation, is tenth at 8.2 and the second dead name in the top group. Gosho Aoyama, creator of the long-running Detective Conan, is twelfth, and Genndy Tartakovsky, the Russian-American animator, is fifteenth.
The performers are represented by Karen Fukuhara at eleventh and Mackenyu at thirteenth, the Japanese actor who has made a career of bringing manga and anime characters to live-action screens. Twenty-five of the 29 names are living, and the two who are not, Toriyama and Kon, together account for a large share of the sector's lasting attention.
About this list
This list ranks the most famous anime creators and voice actors in the world as of August 2026, by overall global fame rather than one month's attention. It is the top 29 of 29 names the rankings measured in this sector, frozen as the permanent record of that edition. This is the standard reading: everyone, living or dead, on one scale. 25 of the 29 listed are living; the Alive reading restricts the same ranking to living people.
Hayao Miyazaki is No. 1 on this list for August 2026. Behind Hayao Miyazaki come Akira Toriyama and Dennis Rodman.
What famous means here
Fame, in iFAMOUS, is how widely the world knows a name: how recognisable a person's name, face or work is, and how well people know who they are. It is assessed from extensive historical and current public data, some of it reaching back more than twenty years, and it is not merit, talent, importance or popularity on iFANN. The rankings model real-world global fame, not internet fame; the data is the instrument, not the subject. Activity on iFANN itself is excluded.
The month in the title is the date of this edition, not the period measured. The list is a snapshot of overall fame as it stood when the issue was frozen: a name does not lose its place because one month was quiet, and a trending moment alone does not put a name here. Trending attention is published separately on ifann.net.
How the list was ranked
The iFANN Global Fame Rankings combine worldwide Wikipedia readership across languages, worldwide news coverage and search interest anchored against stable reference names, with search history reaching back to 2004. A twelve-month baseline sits behind the current reading and short-lived surges are capped, so the list reflects durable recognition rather than one week of headlines. Rankings are computed daily on ifann.net and frozen on the second day of the following month as that month's issue; a published issue never changes.
About Anime
Anime is one of the sectors the journal ranks every month, alongside every country, origin and region list in this issue. Sector lists use the same rankings and the same scale as The 100, so a name can be compared across sectors and against the world. Anime: series, films, studios, voice actors and seasonal favorites.
Powered by iFANN
iFAMOUS is published by iFANN and powered by the iFANN Global Fame Rankings v5.62. Today's live standing for this list is on ifann.net; the journal freezes it once a month so it can be cited permanently.
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"Hayao Miyazaki, No. 1 on The Most Famous Anime Creators and Voice Actors in the World", iFAMOUS No. 1 (August 2026), ifamous.org