Sore ga Seiyuu Episode 7: Dubbing

This week we take a break from the character’s daily lives and struggles and instead focus on the more informative approach these types of shows do that I ultimately love, in the form of various types of dubbing! Foreign films, audiobooks, and video games. How fun! The girls go to the studio where they dubbed the mecha anime where the three of them will do their respective jobs, all of which are the first for each of them. I’ll go in the order of what I found least interesting to most interesting.

Not that it’s not interesting, but dubbing audiobooks just seems so straightforward. Ichigo is off to record for an audiobook. For this, she just sits alone in a small booth with a giant script in front of her. I think most people know what audiobooks are. They’re just CDs used to follow along or just listen to a book. It can be for many books, like novels or instructional books. I’m actually not too sure what kind of book Ichigo was reading for. Recording for this was a little tough for Ichigo as there were many large words she didn’t know and had to look up and she even read some of them wrong. She also needed to change her tone of voice from the cutesy one she always uses for anime and use a more low and serious one. This is completely different from anime, as really she’s not playing any type of character. She’s just narrating. I found it funny when the director pointed out her Strawberry Planet princess persona, which made Ichigo embarrassed, but also really happy that someone knew about her character. We didn’t focus too much on Ichigo this episode, as I assume that recording for audiobooks isn’t the most thrilling. But Ichigo is still the best.

Next we have Rin, who for the first time for her she’s going to record for a video game. From what I assumed later on when she mentioned the small, medium, and big punches, I guessed she was recording for a fighting game. I’ve always wondered how they recorded video games, and I thought that the voice actors would record together but to my surprise Rin was all by her lonesome (I’m also not sure how they dub games in America). She was in a pretty spacious studio, but she was sitting alone in front of a desk with a mic in front. Because she was alone, she only read for her lines. And it was difficult for her because she didn’t understand the context of her lines. Also, she struggled with the small, medium, and big punches she had to do. It was funny how Ichigo straight up punched Futaba during their break to help Rin, and it was funny how she was imagining getting hit by them while she was recording.

And last but not least we have dear Futaba, who went in to record for a foreign film. This is something I had no idea on and I was so happy learning about it. I’m sure this process is done the same way in other countries when they dub foreign films and shows. For foreign films, the actors put on headphones where they listen to, in this movie’s case, the English dub and talk over it when recording in their respective language. I actually find that really hard, and I had thought that they would do the same for anime, where they would just deal with the muted footage and just match their lines with the mouth movements. Futaba found this all amazing, but what she found most amazing was the A-list voice actor she’d be working with whom she’s a huge fan of.

Rikiya Koyama. Some roles I’ve heard him in are Kiritsugu Emiya (Fate series), Will A. Zeppeli (Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood), and Ging Freeccs (Hunter x Hunter). And plenty more famous roles. And Futaba is practically enamored with the guy, and I found it hilarious that she had these cool imaginations of him drinking beer when really he drinks veggie juice. With him around, it was a driving force for Futaba to really go out in her acting and do well.

The movie Futaba had to voice for was a horror flick. She’s terrible with horror and freaked out when she reviewed the movie at home, though I think she should have figured it out when she read the title. And even when that rude ponytailed jerk from episode one was there, Futaba still did pretty well. Paralleling what happened in the first episode, Futaba had to do bit parts like voice for a cheerleader and a little boy with a couple lines. For the cheerleader she had to lower her voice because her regular voice was too similar to the girl next to her and she was able to do that just fine. The zombie parts that scared her before she was able to pull off as well, so I’m proud of her! You can tell she’s really improved and that just makes me so proud of her. If Koyama gave her compliments throughout the day, then I’m sure she’ll leave her own mark in the industry and not be kicked out from her agency.

Next week it’ll look like Earphones might perform live somewhere so that should be a treat to watch. More new experiences for the girls. It looks like Rin is having some trouble, juggling her voice work and school work. When Ichigo mentioned Rin not having to take an entrance exam, Rin got all quiet and vague. We had episodes dedicated to Futaba and Ichigo, so one for Rin is due!