Nothing that Jessica Calvello had done in her anime dubbing career
- Mink, Cutey Honey, Sukino in Kare Kano, a rooster in Gokudo - could have
prepared her for the lead role in Excel Saga. Twice in the previous six
months, Calvello had returned from her New York base to ADV Films studios
in Houston to voice the role of Excel, the part-demon, whacked-out fifteen-year-old
going on five who thinks ripping off her skin, then putting it back on,
is normal. And twice, Calvello returned to New York, exhausted, with a
scorched throat. "Suffering is not an understatement," Calvello panted
at Anime Central. "As much as I love voice acting, that first volume was
not fun. I screamed for 42 hours over a span of ten days - that's a lot.
When i'm in the recording booth, I'm in vocal pain. I'm breathing correctly,
I'm doing my vocal exercises, I know how to correctly use my instrument,
and I'm still in pain. That first series kicked my ass all over the anime
map."
The Excel character carries that series like few characters in any
sort of show. She's in most of the scenes, she has pages and pages full
of dialogue, and "...she never shuts up. Some characters have their low
points; Cutey Honey will have a nice calm-down scene where she's explaining
things, and then she'll get crazy and fight again. Excel never stops! I
have this love-hate relationship with Excel - I love her but she's killing
me. What kind of voice do you do for a woman who rips off her own skin?
I'm supposed to be crazy! I'm voicing skin being ripped off? I was stressed
out with what kind of voice i had to give her."
Most anime dubbing scripts are carefully written and timed to the second
so the actor knows what to say and how long they have to say it.
Of course, the wild Excel is different; in many places the script says
"not translatable - adlib." That's because the original actor adlibbed
lines and the ADV translators couldn't figure what the lines meant. Calvello,
who acknowledges she got the part because of her odd personality, admitted
that Excel "...represents a dark deep part of me. Do I want it to come
forward? No! Because i'm be blowing up construction sites and dying six
times in the first episodes...but I think I would like to do that." As
if Excel isn't enough, Calvello wants to play two other oddball roles,
Sana in Child's Toy and Ebuchu the hamster in Ebuchu Minds the House.
