Are there any characters designed specifically for Norio Wakamoto?

Question

Norio Wakamoto is a veteran Japanese voice actor with a long portfolio of characters that he's voiced. His craft is such that he often times gets pigeon-holed into a certain character archetype that fits a particular acting style of his.

This acting style is so prominent that you often have people try to imitate his voice, other voice actors/actresses that try to imitate him for fun, and even competitions at conventions (like at Moe Culture Festival 2012) for imitating him. These characters are usually evil (but not necessarily an antagonist), funny, maybe a little crazy. Characters like Onsokomaru (2x2 Shinobuden), Victoreem (Gash Bell), Garuda (Magical Quiz Academy), Katakuriko Matsudaira (Gintama), Amagumo (Desert Punk), etc.

Are there any characters (whether they fit this archetype or not) that were designed specifically for Wakamoto to play? I know there's Commander Wakamoto from Virgin Fleet, which I didn't find really matching the archetype, but it's hard to imagine that the names were just coincidence. Was Commander Wakamoto designed to be played by Norio Wakamoto?

Answer 1

Norio Wakamoto is not the only (though he is one of the most famous) seiyuu who has been pigeonholed on a certain type of anime character personality (though he is also capable of portraying other roles), to be specific, a villain character, but actually, there are a lot. You can see those people in this list.

About your question (which kind of confuse me so), I'm going to answer it bit by bit.

Are there any characters designed specifically for Norio Wakamoto?

Are there any characters (whether they fit this archetype or not) that were designed specifically for Wakamoto to play?

Yes, there are.

According to this link,

It's even gotten to the point where, instead of having him "work his voice to fit a character", they work the character to fit his voice.

so we may conclude that there are characters that was built to fit his voice, though the link didn't specify which actual anime characters were designed for him. But to answer your question, yes there are.

As for Commander Wakamoto, I can't really find a reliable source to support my thoughts (and I'm not familiar with the anime and the character) but I think, Commander Wakamoto wasn't designed for Norio Wakamoto. First of all, the character wasn't on the list of the villain character Norio voiced on the link above. If Commander Wakamoto was designed for him, then he should be at least listed there and was highlighted to be specifically designed for him. Their names are probably pure coincidence. And based on what you said, the character wasn't matching with the archetype Norio Wakamoto was pigeonholed with. I don't think I'm convincing enough but what's the point of working the character to fit his voice if it's not the archetype he's pigeonholed with?

Well the bottom line is, there are characters that were worked to fit his grandiose villain voice.