Anime Boston - Clarine Harp and Christopher Bevins - 2006
Actor
Clarine Harp and voice director Christopher Bevins are enthusiastic
about their latest dub project for Funimation, the Speed Grapher
series. They've just started on the shows, and already they're addicted
to the series on which they're working. "It's addictive from the first
episode," Harp said. "I can't say honestly that I went in blind - I'm a
DVD researcher for Funimation - but coming from an actor's standpoint,
it was that rare show when you sit down and look at the first episode,
you're hooked. You want to understand what's happening." Bevin said
Speed Grapher is much like the "film noir" movie melodramas of the
1930's and 1940's, but it also carries the best of the anime
storytelling styles, especially how the series holds back its
exposition or explanation of its world and characters. "It's one of the
best paced shows that I've seen in a long time, said Bevin. "They're
sneaky about how much information they give you...there are a lot of
adult themes. There are these horrible people. There are a lot of
people in anime who have a heart of gold, but in this series everyone's
proud of being the schumck that they are. Its all about the suspense
and the `who's screwing who over.'"
While
Speed Grapher is film noir, the Burst Angel series on which the two
also worked was like a spaghetti western out of the 1960's, except that
those Italian-made films didn't have giant robots. The most unusual
part of the Burst Angel series was when the episodes feature characters
from Osaka, a part of Japan that has a character and way of speaking
that's far different from the Tokyo region. Dubbers and translators
have struggled to find the best way to express Osakan speech in
English, but that was a simple decision for a db company based in
Texas; they turned all of the Osakans into Texans. "We went to town on
that," Bevins said. "There's always the debate, how do you handle the
Osaka accent? Because of the spaghetti western feel mixed with hot
girls and mecha - there's this feel of spaghetti westerns - Osaka in
the show really is treated like the wild west and Tokyo is treated like
the dark corrupt city - we decided these Osaka guys were like the west
and we decided to go with the Texas accent." So the voice actors, most
of whom had trained for years to stop talking like Texans, were
directed to untrain themselves. "We said it's okay to speak the way you
do with your family. We wanted to make it like a caricature," he said.
Actor
Clarine Harp and voice director Christopher Bevins are enthusiastic
about their latest dub project for Funimation, the Speed Grapher
series. They've just started on the shows, and already they're addicted
to the series on which they're working. "It's addictive from the first
episode," Harp said. "I can't say honestly that I went in blind - I'm a
DVD researcher for Funimation - but coming from an actor's standpoint,
it was that rare show when you sit down and look at the first episode,
you're hooked. You want to understand what's happening." Bevin said
Speed Grapher is much like the "film noir" movie melodramas of the
1930's and 1940's, but it also carries the best of the anime
storytelling styles, especially how the series holds back its
exposition or explanation of its world and characters. "It's one of the
best paced shows that I've seen in a long time, said Bevin. "They're
sneaky about how much information they give you...there are a lot of
adult themes. There are these horrible people. There are a lot of
people in anime who have a heart of gold, but in this series everyone's
proud of being the schumck that they are. Its all about the suspense
and the `who's screwing who over.'"
While
Speed Grapher is film noir, the Burst Angel series on which the two
also worked was like a spaghetti western out of the 1960's, except that
those Italian-made films didn't have giant robots. The most unusual
part of the Burst Angel series was when the episodes feature characters
from Osaka, a part of Japan that has a character and way of speaking
that's far different from the Tokyo region. Dubbers and translators
have struggled to find the best way to express Osakan speech in
English, but that was a simple decision for a db company based in
Texas; they turned all of the Osakans into Texans. "We went to town on
that," Bevins said. "There's always the debate, how do you handle the
Osaka accent? Because of the spaghetti western feel mixed with hot
girls and mecha - there's this feel of spaghetti westerns - Osaka in
the show really is treated like the wild west and Tokyo is treated like
the dark corrupt city - we decided these Osaka guys were like the west
and we decided to go with the Texas accent." So the voice actors, most
of whom had trained for years to stop talking like Texans, were
directed to untrain themselves. "We said it's okay to speak the way you
do with your family. We wanted to make it like a caricature," he said.
