Takaya Kuroda

is a Japanese voice actor. He is affiliated with AXL-One, and was formerly with Mausu Promotion and 81 Produce He is best known for his bass voice, which has usually seen him cast in villainous roles such as the voice of Yaiba in GoGo Sentai Boukenger. He is best known to western audiences for providing the voice of Kazuma Kiryu, the protagonist of the Yakuza series. Because of his vocal resemblance to the late Hirotaka Suzuoki, he was chosen to replace Suzuoki as the voice of Starscream in Transformers: Cybertron as Suzuoki's health deteriorated. On the other hand, he was not chosen to take over Suzuoki's role as Sakaki (known to Western audiences as Giovanni) from Pokémon, with Kenta Miyake taking over the role instead.