 |
He's Roy Fokker of Macross, Shutaro Mendo of Urusei Yatsura and Ryo
Saeba of City Hunter (his favorite role). He has millions of fans in Japan
and in the U.S. - even though only a handful of those American followers
can understand a word he says. He's Akira Kamiya, one of the leading voice
actors in the anime world and a favorite at Anime Expo, returning for his
second year at the California convention. Kamiya does his voice acting
in Japanese, and most of the fans at the convention speak only English. |
 |
In the never-ending sub-versus-dub conflict, a large number of anime
fans prefer to hear the timbres and inflections of the original Japanese
voice actors, despite not being able to understand the spoken dialogue.
That intrigues Kamiya, who notes that there is no support for English-speaking
actors in the American films shown in Japan. "I figured this must be true
of Americans as well," Kamiya said through an interpreter, "but I found
that Americans liked hearing my voice. I couldn't believe that, but I was
very happy to learn this." |
 |
That American appreciation for Japanese voice acting may further interest
Kamiya because he feels anime acting is unnatural. "In animation you always
have to exaggerate. It's totally the opposite from being natural. this
is kind of dangerous," he said. An example of that exaggeration is the
screams he developed while playing the male leads in giant robot epics.
those screams were popular among female viewers, who flooded Kamiya with
fan mail. |
 |
Kamiya said his character interpretations come from a reading of the
script and not always from the director's instructions, although he will
defer to the director if there's a disagreement. He feels censoring anime
is worthless because those likely to be influenced to bad behavior by anime
would also be easily influenced by other factors in life. And Kamiya worries
about a trend to pick female voice actors for their looks rather than talent.
"A lot of girls say `I'm ugly but can I become a voice actor?' I say, why
should that matter? If you can act you can succeed," said Kamiya. |
