Rob
Paulsen, Tara Strong and Debi Derryberry (left to right) have only
limited experience in the world of anime dub acting. Derryberry has
voiced Ryo-ohki in the Tenchi-Muyo series for years, but the other
actors specialize in cartoon voice acting for North American audiences.
Guess what? The anime convention audience in San Francisco didn't care;
they were thrilled to see the performers who voice Pinky, Bubbles and
Jimmy Neutron. One of the members of the big audience for the panel
asked Paulsen to sing the song with the long list of countries that he
performed as one of the Animaniacs during that series, and Paulsen
rattled off that tongue-twister, a cappella, without missing a word.
Paulsen's career began 23 years earlier when he voiced the
strangely-named Snowjob character in one of the revivals of the GI Joe
series, and he's stayed busy ever since. "If you're doing Pound
Puppies, it's not Waiting for Godot it's waiting for a check," he joked.
Strong's
favorite roles were Bubbles from the Powerpuff Girls and a 101
Dalmatians character, a chicken named Spot who thought she was a dog.
Her most familiar role to anime fans is Raven in the anime-styled Teen
Titans animation from the Cartoon Network. "I already do Batgirl with
Warner Brothers, it's kind of my own voice but I didn't want to sound
too much like Batgirl," Strong said. "I didn't know what to do. In the
character description, they said she was depressed and dark. I did one
take and it sounded like Batgirl, only a little deeper. I was leaving
the audition and I had another idea. Since she was half devil, I gave
her that half rasp and that's what they wanted. That's part of
animation: you can't be afraid to take a risk. You have to trust in
your instincts and not worry about looking silly."
Derryberry,
who once sang in Nashville, got her first voice job in the role of
Tinker Bell in the animated Peter Pan and the Pirates. "I got to
actually play a little girl in it," she joked, referring to how her
career has featured plenty of boys' roles. There's more to that story:
Derryberry said that someone once watched her closely during her Peter
Pan recording sessions and told her, "Did you know that you go
crosseyed when you do Tinker Bell?" That happened because when actors
voice roles in original animation, their performances are videotaped
for animators to use as character references. No such practice is
needed for anime dubbing, for which Derryberry said she gets little
preparation time in her Los Angeles-based jobs. "When we go in to do
some of these anime projects, we don't get a script and we don't know
what we're doing." Derryberry did know enough at Anime Overdose to be
able to say that, on the week after the convention, she was scheduled
to record the mews of Ryo-ohki for more Tenchi-Muyo shows.
Rob
Paulsen, Tara Strong and Debi Derryberry (left to right) have only
limited experience in the world of anime dub acting. Derryberry has
voiced Ryo-ohki in the Tenchi-Muyo series for years, but the other
actors specialize in cartoon voice acting for North American audiences.
Guess what? The anime convention audience in San Francisco didn't care;
they were thrilled to see the performers who voice Pinky, Bubbles and
Jimmy Neutron. One of the members of the big audience for the panel
asked Paulsen to sing the song with the long list of countries that he
performed as one of the Animaniacs during that series, and Paulsen
rattled off that tongue-twister, a cappella, without missing a word.
Paulsen's career began 23 years earlier when he voiced the
strangely-named Snowjob character in one of the revivals of the GI Joe
series, and he's stayed busy ever since. "If you're doing Pound
Puppies, it's not Waiting for Godot it's waiting for a check," he joked.
Strong's
favorite roles were Bubbles from the Powerpuff Girls and a 101
Dalmatians character, a chicken named Spot who thought she was a dog.
Her most familiar role to anime fans is Raven in the anime-styled Teen
Titans animation from the Cartoon Network. "I already do Batgirl with
Warner Brothers, it's kind of my own voice but I didn't want to sound
too much like Batgirl," Strong said. "I didn't know what to do. In the
character description, they said she was depressed and dark. I did one
take and it sounded like Batgirl, only a little deeper. I was leaving
the audition and I had another idea. Since she was half devil, I gave
her that half rasp and that's what they wanted. That's part of
animation: you can't be afraid to take a risk. You have to trust in
your instincts and not worry about looking silly."
Derryberry,
who once sang in Nashville, got her first voice job in the role of
Tinker Bell in the animated Peter Pan and the Pirates. "I got to
actually play a little girl in it," she joked, referring to how her
career has featured plenty of boys' roles. There's more to that story:
Derryberry said that someone once watched her closely during her Peter
Pan recording sessions and told her, "Did you know that you go
crosseyed when you do Tinker Bell?" That happened because when actors
voice roles in original animation, their performances are videotaped
for animators to use as character references. No such practice is
needed for anime dubbing, for which Derryberry said she gets little
preparation time in her Los Angeles-based jobs. "When we go in to do
some of these anime projects, we don't get a script and we don't know
what we're doing." Derryberry did know enough at Anime Overdose to be
able to say that, on the week after the convention, she was scheduled
to record the mews of Ryo-ohki for more Tenchi-Muyo shows.
