Makoto Koji

is a Japanese illustrator, animator, and voice actress. She voiced Hornet, a major character in Australian studio Team Cherry's video game Hollow Knight, and the protagonist of Hollow Knight: Silksong (2025).

Early life and education Makoto Koji was born in Hiroshima, Japan, on 7 March 1987.

She moved Goomeri, Queensland, Australia, when she was three and grew up there.

Career In her final year of university, Koji traveled to Adelaide for work experience with The People's Republic of Animation. After graduating, she began working for them, Paper Rabbits' first directed animation was "Ko-Oni (Little Troll)" (2013).

Around , during the early development of Team Cherry's Hollow Knight (2017), Koji began voice acting for the character Hornet. Initially, that role was planned to go to a friend of hers, but once Koji learned that her friend was going to move overseas, she offered to voice-act herself. Koji, not a trained voice actress, explained in an interview with The Verge that she "did a lot of making up [her] own gibberish" while voice acting, and used made-up words that felt "instinctual". She reprised her role as Hornet in Hollow Knight: Silksong (2025), completing voicework by March 2022. Her performance as Hornet, especially in Silksong, has been praised, with Matt Patches of Polygon praising its showcase of emotion, and Liz Ledden's Everyone Wants an Octopus Book (2024), described by The Guardian as having "vibrant illustrations [which make] important themes of representation fun".

Personal life

Koji is married to Ari Gibson, co-founder of Team Cherry; they began their relationship in 2007. As of 2018, she shares her office with Team Cherry.