Tomboyish Voice

In fiction, often a female character will have a deep or raspy voice to emphasize that she is One of the Boys or The Lad-ette. This is more common with child/preteen characters than adults, but appears in all age brackets (and sizes). In Japanese media, this is often

Compare Action Girl, which is often a tomboy in her own right. Contrast with Effeminate Voice, which is a feminine male character with a high-pitched voice.

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Examples:

Anime

• Aoharu × Machinegun: Hotaru has a naturally low voice which, combined with her Bifauxnen looks and tomboyish attitude, cause her to often get mistaken for a boy.
• Asteroid in Love: Ao in the English dub has a soft but deep voice, befitting her nature of a Used to Be a Tomboy Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak who also has the demeanor of a Shy Blue-Haired Girl.
• Black Lagoon: Revy in the English dub has a very raspy voice that highlights her vulgarity. The Japanese dub instead gives Revy the lowest-pitched voice of any woman in the show (especially when she is in Whitman Fever) and also makes her use traditionally masculine speaking patterns (the latter has no appropriate English equivalent; Revy is the most foul-mouthed character in the English dub to compensate).
• Dororo (2019): Mutsu is androgynous and a capable archeress. She has a voice so deep that it can easily pass as a feminine-sounding young man.
• In Galaxy Angel, Forte has a raspy voice and a tendency to roll the R's courtesy of Mayumi Yamaguchi. She's The Lad-ette of the crew and resident Gun Nut.
• Midori Asakusa from Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! is the most tomboyish of the three main characters, and she has a low, raspy voice that sounds more fitting for a male shonen protagonist like Luffy or Naruto than a girl.
• Ryuko Matoi of Kill la Kill has a quintessential boyish rasp to her voice in both Japanese and English dubs courtesy of Ami Koshimizu and Erica Mendez.
• Akira from KiraKira★Pretty Cure à la Mode has a low, deep voice courtesy of Nanako Mouri, matching with her Bifauxnen nature.
• Nishina from Kiss Him, Not Me has a raspy voice courtesy of Miyuki Sawashiro, fitting for her Bifauxnen image.
• Madoka Kugimiya of Negima! Magister Negi Magi has a very tomboyish voice and her profile states this is one of the things she dislikes about herself.
• Kuromi from Onegai My Melody has a raspy voice courtesy of Junko Takeuchi, contrasting with My Melody who has a much softer high pitched voice.
• Kaoru (Buttercup) in Powerpuff Girls Z has a lower voice than Miyako and Momoko. She hates wearing skirts, though she's forced to wear one for her Magical Girl attire.
• Sailor Moon:
  • Downplayed with Makoto Kino. She's a Tomboy with a Girly Streak and a raspy, vaguely deep voice courtesy of Emi Shinohara and Ami Koshimizu. She has a low English voice in the 2010s dub as well.
  • Haruka Tenou has a voice so deep courtesy of Megumi Ogata and Junko Minagawa that it can easily pass as a teenage boy who hasn't broken his voice yet. This is to emphasize her Bifauxnen nature. Haruka's English voices are also deep.
• In the anime adaptation of A Silent Voice, Yuzuru Nishimiya has a low sounding voice for her age courtesy of Aoi Yūki and Kristen Sullivan. Yuzuru is a Bifauxnen who initially pretended to be her older sister's boyfriend because she's overprotective of her and didn't want Shouya to befriend her.
• Tomo Aizawa in Tomo-chan Is a Girl!, courtesy of Rie Takahashi (surprising some Japanese viewers) and Lexi Nieto, befitting her Tomboy nature and status as one of the strongest characters in the setting.
• Washio Sumi Is a Hero: Gin is the most tomboyish of the trio. She has a low, raspy voice.

Fan Works

• The tomboyish Vinyl Scratch has a low voice in I Am Octavia. Her voice is rougher than her more feminine friend Octavia's.

Films — Animation

• Encanto has Luisa, the older sister of Mirabel with the gift of Super-Strength who's built like a brick outhouse and has a very deep voice to match, courtesy of Jessica Darrow.
• The LEGO Movie: Wyldstyle/Lucy is a brooding Action Girl with a Tomboyish Ponytail and a rather gravelly voice, courtesy of Elizabeth Banks, to boot.
• Toy Story: Mrs. Jennifer Davis, Andy and Molly's single mom. Due to Laurie Metcalf voicing her since 1995, she sounds like a deep-sounding mix of a young woman and a young boy.
• Wreck-It Ralph:
  • Sergeant Calhoun is a badass, tough-as-nails Space Marine with a very masculine personality and has a gruff voice courtesy of Jane Lynch to match.
  • Vanellope Von Schweetz is a Badass Adorable tomboyish aspiring go-kart racer with a raspy voice.

Literature

• The Han Solo Trilogy: Bria is described as having a surprisingly low tone to her voice, sounding husky when singing once. She ends up being a crack Rebel commando and spy (she's undercover as a lounge singer when she sings).

Live-Action TV

• The Book of Boba Fett: Dash has a low, husky voice to go with her status as a tough cyborg gang member.
• Detective Rosa Diaz in Brooklyn Nine-Nine is a tough and violent Hell-Bent for Leather Badass Biker Lad-ette who is more masculine than the rest of the women (and most of the men) of the main cast, and has a deep and gruff voice that emphasizes this. Much laughs off the set ensue for fans who learn that her actor Stephanie Beatriz has a much higher and feminine speaking voice in real life.
• Sam Puckett from iCarly is an abrasive tomboy who speaks with a low voice for a girl.
• Punky Brewster was a tomboy in the first two seasons of her show, and her raspy voice complimented it.
• Yellowjackets: Even as a teenage girl, Natalie has a low and husky voice. She is the most action-oriented, aggressive and outwardly hard edged of the cast.

Music

• The YAMAHA Vocaloid, flower, is a female voicebank whose voice type is officially described as "androgynous" and is often used to sing male parts, such as in HoneyWorks' "Tokyo Summer Session" or "Inokori Sensei". Her v4◊ design is also quite masculine-looking.

Professional Wrestling

• Picturing a rough boxing basket player. She might not look like it, but she'd sound just like Jazz, who has a much deeper voice than her height and raspier voice than her age would suggest. In the latter case Jazz did eventually "grow" into though.
• Sweet Saraya couldn't sound more like a vulgar hard drinking blue-collar Blood Knight if she tried she. Her rasp has been described as "inimitable".
• Mercedes Martinez is like Jazz if she was taller and had more of a New England accent. In the early years Martinez didn't look the part as much, as she wore a lot of shiny clothing, and didn't sound it quite as much because she liked to let her actions do the talking, but as she gradually gravitated more towards duller ring gear, ran her mouth more often and started showing off her beer mug tattoos...
• Shantelle Taylor doesn't look the part, but her voice is much deeper than most people her size and coincidentally or not became raspier when she returned to the ring after bulking up and becoming a firefighter. Her selling could be mistaken for a teenage boy's if one listened but didn't see her.
• Shojo Machiko is more so a Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak, as she talks more about dresses and kitten than protein shakes binge drinking, still her tomboy streak is in no way surprising considering her voice is deeper than most boys and some men.

Theatre

• Elphaba from Wicked usually has a somewhat husky voice with a powerful belt when she sings. She is androgynous (the books even imply she is intersex) and is not particularly feminine, though she isn't particularly boyish either. Her singing voice is a mezzo-soprano.

Video Games

• In BlazBlue, Bullet was Raised by Dudes and thus she's a pretty rough mercenary; she also hates miniskirts. She has a deep, powerful voice.
• The female V in Cyberpunk 2077 has quite a deep voice, especially when angry, courtesy of Cherami Leigh, who makes her sound like a severely pissed-off/delinquent Rhea.
• Sakura Ogami in Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc has a guttural voice in all dubs. It causes her to come off as more intimidating to the other students.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Sully from Fire Emblem: Awakening has a deeper voice than the other girls in the game courtesy of Momoko Ohara and Amanda Céline Miller to emphasize her status as The Lad-ette.
  • Fire Emblem Fates:
    • Hinoka is the more militant and rough of the two Hoshidan princesses and has a rougher and deeper voice than her little sister, Sakura, courtesy of Kaori Nazuka and Elizabeth Daily.
    • In the English dub, Effe one of the deepest female voices in the game, and her aggressive traits, while present in the Japanese version, were played up a bit more in the localization.
• In Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams. Giana's more tomboyish Super Mode "Punk Giana" has a deeper voice than her normal self.
• Naoto Shirogane in Persona 4, especially given that she's a Bifauxnen detective whose character arc has her intentionally pose as a boy to avoid the sexism she would encounter in the police force. Doesn't hurt that in Japanese, she's voiced by Romi Park, the voice actress who made her name voicing young boys and tomboys alike.
• Senran Kagura:
  • Daidouji the 25-year-old third-year high schooler (It Makes Sense in Context) has a manly, muscular build and has an appropriately deep voice.
  • Murakumo of Gessen Girls' Academy speaks in a very low voice and she acts far from girly... with her mask on. Without it, she regressed into a moeblob with a very cute voice.
• This is used as The Artifact in Super Smash Bros. with Sheik. In the source game, Sheik was a Sweet Polly Oliver with a low voice to pass as male. She keeps her voice tone despite being a bifauxnen who is openly female.
• In Undertale, Undyne is a Hot-Blooded Action Girl and has some of the deepest Voice Grunting.

Web Animation

• Battle for Dream Island: Leafy, who is female, has a very deep voice. Characters like Black Hole, Bottle, Lightning, Gaty, and Saw also have deep voices.
• The Most Popular Girls in School: Deandra The New Girl; she's The Lad-ette, probably Asexual, and the resident Big Eater.
• Dr. Havoc's Diary: Gail has a rather deep and raspy voice.

Western Animation

• Fire from Adventurers Masters Of Time, who used it to her advantage in one episode when she secretly replaced the boy who was playing Titania in Shakespeare's first showing of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
• The Amazing World of Gumball: Jamie Russo being established as a tough bully is apparent in her changing voice, which started out as normal, got deeper in the second season, then became raspy in the third when provided by a new voice actress.
• American Dad!: Hayley has the deepest voice of the female characters, which befits her dominant, no-nonsense personality.
• Amphibia: Anne Boonchuy has a fairly raspy voice, and while she isn't as tomboyish as Polly, Marcy, or Ivy, she is still rather adventurous, headstrong, and athletic.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: Smellerbee has a raspy and deep voice and acts and looks boyish enough to be mistaken for a boy most of the time.
• Codename: Kids Next Door: The tomboyish Numbuh 5 has a fairly raspy voice.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy: Lee Kanker has the manliest voice out of all the female characters. Like her sisters, she's The Lad-ette and part of a female Gang of Bullies.
• The Legend of Korra: Brash and aggressive Avatar Korra has one of the deepest voices of the female cast.
• The Loud House: Aspiring rock star Luna, Lovable Jock Lynn, and enthusiast of all things disgusting Lana all speak in raspy and boyish voices, and they are the most tomboyish of the Loud girls.
• Lucky Luke: In the French version, Calamity Janes has a low and raspy voice courtesy of Micheline Dax.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Downplayed with Rainbow Dash and Applejack. Their voices, provided by the same actress, are feminine enough (not that that has stopped fans from thinking at least one of them is male), however they're both slightly more boyish sounding than the other mares.
  • Smolder, a dragon student who attends the Friendship School starting in season 8, has a raspy and very androgynous voice, to the point that many viewers thought she was a male dragon.
• The Owl House: Downplayed with Luz Noceda. Her voice is more boyish sounding than most of the other female characters, but it isn't exactly deep or raspy in and of itself. Nevertheless, it still fits her rather tomboyish personality.
• Peanuts: Peppermint Patty is the most tomboyish character and has a deeper voice than many of the other girls in animated adaptations. It helps that she was actually voiced by a boy in a few specials.
• Pepper Ann: Pepper Ann's younger sister Moose is very androgynous and has a low voice similar to a teenage boy.
• The Powerpuff Girls: Buttercup. Her original voice is somewhat raspier than her sisters. In the reboot, this is exaggerated and it's also deeper, to the point where she straight-up sounds like a boy.
• Recess: Spinelli has a raspy voice and is the toughest kid on the playground.
• Rugrats: Betty DeVille is a Lad-ette and has a fittingly raspy voice compared to the other mothers on the show.
• Shadow Of The Elves: Private Shil of the Elf army has a thick gravelly butch voice that sounds quite forced. It really is forced, and when a couple of Fairies let her smell perfume for the first time in her life, she loses the fake butch voice and slips into her natural feminine voice for a few seconds before catching herself.
• Steven Universe: Amethyst is a very crude, lazy, and hedonistic Big Eater whose voice is fairly boyish sounding. Similarly, Jasper — the most masculine of the Gems — has quite a deep, raspy voice.
• Voltron: Legendary Defender: Pidge's vocal range sounds very much like a young boy's, fitting her Sweet Polly Oliver appearance.
• Wander over Yonder: Sylvia, Wander's best friend and traveling companion, is not at all feminine, as shown by her love of fights, crass language (with her swear words conveniently left untranslated), and Big Eater tendencies, and she has the deep voice courtesy of April Winchell to match.
• Yogi Bear and the Magical Flight of the Spruce Goose: Bernice is a tough sports loving tomboy who stows away on the plane after she became separate from her family during a tour, she speaks in a gruff boyish voice.

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