Mike McFarland, one of the founding voices of English-dubbed anime in America, died Wednesday at a care facility in Dallas. He was 56. The cause was glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer he'd been fighting since early last year.

McFarland's friend Brina Palencia, who had organised a GoFundMe for his care, confirmed the death to TMZ. She said he was surrounded by friends and family in his final days, with people from the voice-over community stopping by over the past few months to sing to him and swap stories to keep his spirits up. Palencia added that McFarland would have wanted donations directed to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital or the SPCA in his memory.

For a generation of anime fans, McFarland's voice was inseparable from two of the biggest franchises to come out of Japan. He played Master Roshi and Yajirobe in Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z, and from 2007 until his death he was the voice of Buggy the Clown across the sprawling One Piece catalogue of shows and films.

His range went well beyond the two he's best remembered for. McFarland voiced Jean Kirstein in Attack on Titan, Jean Havoc in Fullmetal Alchemist, Teppei Sugo in Psycho-Pass and Makoto Hyuga in the Evangelion films. More recent credits include Hiroshi Odokawa in Odd Taxi, the Big Bad Wolf in Date A Live IV and E.G. Mine in Trigun Stampede. TMZ also lists One-Punch Man and Tokyo Ghoul among his work.

A career that started in Texas

McFarland got his start in 1997 as one of the first voice actors Funimation hired in Texas, back when the dubbing outfit was still building the pipeline that would define how American audiences heard Japanese anime for two decades. He stayed on as the company evolved into Crunchyroll, working not just as a performer but as a line producer, ADR director and script adapter on a long list of Animated Dubbing Vision titles, including Lupin III: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine and Case Closed.

Crunchyroll's statement, shared with both Variety and Deadline, called him "an incredible talent, a good friend to so many of us" and said he would be "sorely, sorely missed."

McFarland's illness first became public in January last year, when he had to pull out of Central Florida Comic Con. Fellow voice actor Colleen Clinkenbeard later said it was a brain tumour, and he underwent surgery within days. Variety reports that co-stars J. Michael Tatum and Brandon McInnis set up the GoFundMe to cover a live-in medical assistant, while TMZ credits Palencia with organising the fund. Either way, the anime community rallied around him through multiple surgeries before the tumour was confirmed as glioblastoma in August 2025.

No funeral details have been made public. For now, the tributes are arriving the way McFarland's characters always did, in a chorus of familiar voices from people who worked alongside him for close to three decades.