The Most Famous Anime Creators and Voice Actors in the World (Alive), August 2026Alive
Top 25 of 25 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.
Toriyama's absence leaves Miyazaki alone above the athletes in living anime
iFAMOUS Editorial Desk · 1 min read
The Alive reading for August 2026 loses the creator of Dragon Ball and the director Satoshi Kon, and the working animators find themselves outnumbered by sportsmen.
The living anime list for August 2026 begins and ends with a director. Hayao Miyazaki holds first at 15.8, exactly as he does on the standard scale, but the drop to second is steeper here because Akira Toriyama, who was second at 12.9, is no longer counted. Toriyama died in 2024, and his removal, together with that of Satoshi Kon, means only two of the 25 living names in the top fifteen are people who direct or draw anime for a living.
Those two are Miyazaki and Makoto Shinkai, the filmmaker and novelist born in Koumi, who rises to seventh at 9.2. Everything between them belongs to the adjacent figures the sector tag collects: Dennis Rodman at second, Usain Bolt third, Jakob Ingebrigtsen fourth, Hakeem Olajuwon sixth and Hicham El Guerrouj eighth. Seth MacFarlane, an American animator whose work sits outside the Japanese tradition, is fifth at 10.
Below Shinkai the reading gets closer to the medium. Karen Fukuhara, the American actress of Japanese descent, is ninth. Gosho Aoyama, creator of Detective Conan, is tenth at 7.3. Mackenyu, who has made a screen career of live-action adaptations, is eleventh, and Genndy Tartakovsky, the Russian-American animator, is thirteenth. Two names enter the top fifteen that the standard list did not show: Peter Cullen, the Canadian voice actor whose career spans more than five decades, at fourteenth, and the Malaysian badminton player Lee Chong Wei at fifteenth.
Yuna Kim of South Korea, twelfth, is the only woman apart from Fukuhara. The living list measures fame, not craft, and in this sector that attention still runs to one man in Tokyo far more than to anyone else.
| Rank | Name | Score | Live |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Hayao Miyazaki  celebrity | 15.8 | iFANN → |
| 2 |  Dennis Rodman  celebrity | 12.2 | iFANN → |
| 3 |  Usain Bolt  celebrity | 11.6 | iFANN → |
| 4 |  Jakob Ingebrigtsen  celebrity | 10.2 | iFANN → |
| 5 |  Seth MacFarlane celebrity | 10.0 | iFANN → |
| 6 |  Hakeem Olajuwon  celebrity | 9.8 | iFANN → |
| 7 |  Makoto Shinkai celebrity | 9.2 | iFANN → |
| 8 |  Hicham El Guerrouj  celebrity | 8.3 | iFANN → |
| 9 |  Karen Fukuhara celebrity | 7.5 | iFANN → |
| 10 |  Gosho Aoyama celebrity | 7.3 | iFANN → |
| 11 |  Mackenyu celebrity | 7.2 | iFANN → |
| 12 |  Yuna Kim  celebrity | 7.1 | iFANN → |
| 13 |  Genndy Tartakovsky  celebrity | 7.0 | iFANN → |
| 14 |  Peter Cullen  celebrity | 6.8 | iFANN → |
| 15 |  Lee Chong Wei  celebrity | 6.5 | iFANN → |
| 16 |  Conchita Martínez  celebrity | 6.5 | iFANN → |
| 17 |  Toni Kukoč  celebrity | 6.5 | iFANN → |
| 18 |  Tara Strong celebrity | 6.3 | iFANN → |
| 19 |  Zhao Xintong  celebrity | 5.9 | iFANN → |
| 20 |  Evgeni Plushenko celebrity | 5.8 | iFANN → |
| 21 |  Tite Kubo celebrity | 5.7 | iFANN → |
| 22 |  Surya Bonaly  celebrity | 5.4 | iFANN → |
| 23 |  Peter Mensah  celebrity | 5.4 | iFANN → |
| 24 |  Bryan Konietzko celebrity | 5.4 | iFANN → |
| 25 |  Saina Nehwal  celebrity | 5.4 | iFANN → |
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 25 of 25 names the rankings measured in this sector, frozen as the permanent record of that edition. This is the Alive reading: living people only. The standard reading ranks everyone, living or dead, on one scale, and is one click away.
Hayao Miyazaki is No. 1 on this list for August 2026. Behind Hayao Miyazaki come Dennis Rodman and Usain Bolt.
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 (Alive), August 2026", iFAMOUS No. 1 (August 2026), ifamous.org