| Since the beginning of the Star Blazers reunion tour with Amy Howard
(left) in 1997, the woman who voiced Nova in the American version of Space
Cruiser Yamato has graced this page on several occasions. At Anime Expo,
a couple of new faces joined the tour. One was actor Ken Meseroll (right),
who supplied the voice of Derek Wildstar on Star Blazers. Meseroll, who
lives in Los Angeles and has continued his acting career (including an
appearance on Star Trek: The Next Generation, made his first anime convention
appearance at Anime Expo (he'd been at the convention only an hour and
a half before the Saturday panel began). |
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| Another addition to the reunion tour was a man who was with Star Blazers
before it took that name: Noburo Ishiguro (left), who directed many of
the series' episodes. His appearance at Anime Expo set up this remarkable
first-time meeting of people from the Japanese original and the American
version of Star Blazers. |
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| Star Blazers fans love all of the long series, from the TV version
to the Space Cruiser Yamato movies. Not so Ishiguro, however. "Yamato should
have ended with the first TV show," he said. "We were forced to make `Arrividerci
Yamato.'" Ishiguro said the producer of the TV series had gotten tired
of Yamato and decided to kill off all of the characters in one of the movies,
"in order to have no possibility of any sequels at all." However, all of
that producer's subsequent projects were flops, so Yamato was reborn. What
about the series' popularity in the U.S. as Star Blazers? "This is something
I couldn't believe until I saw it," said Ishiguro. |
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| Meseroll has enjoyed the atmosphere on the Next Generation sets (which
are smaller than they look on TV, and it's strange having to act to a blank
screen on stage before the effects are added). Still, Star Blazers has
a special place in his acting memories because it was a well-written series.
"The human elements in Star Blazers meant something to me," Meseroll said.
"The other [animated cartoons] are just full of things being blown up.
They pay me to grunt and die." As for the differences between American
and Japanese voice acting - and the differences between Yamato and Blazers
- Meseroll defends his work, saying "We do it the way we do it." He didn't
take any cues from the Japanese voice actors, noting that "It sound the
same to me being rewound as going forwards." |
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