Yoko Kanno is a Japanese composer, arranger, and musician who has achieved renown for her work on numerous anime soundtracks. While her career as a voice actor is exceptionally limited, she is confirmed to have performed a voice cameo in a single anime project.

Kanno's one known voice acting role is in the 2008 anthology film Genius Party Beyond, produced by Studio 4°C. She provided the voice for a character named Kuu in the short Dimension Bomb, which was directed by Koji Morimoto. This appearance was widely reported as her first known anime voice-acting role, distinguishing it from her extensive body of musical work.

The overwhelming majority of Kanno's professional contributions to the anime industry are as a composer and musician. She is celebrated for creating the scores for landmark series and films, including Cowboy Bebop, Macross Plus, The Vision of Escaflowne, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Wolf's Rain, and Darker than Black. She has also composed music for video games, live-action films, and television dramas. Her band, The Seatbelts, was formed to perform the music for Cowboy Bebop.

Kanno's work as a composer has been recognized with multiple awards, including the Tokyo International Anime Fair's music award on several occasions. Her influence extends to character creation, as the personality of the character Ed from Cowboy Bebop was famously based on Kanno herself by director Shinichiro Watanabe and character designer Toshihiro Kawamoto. Persistent rumors have circulated that a vocalist credited as Gabriela Robin on many of her soundtracks is actually Kanno herself, a claim she has denied.