When the forthcoming volumes of the newest animated OVA version of Hellsing are released in the U.S., fans of dubs will have a chance to watch a fight between two of the actors on this Anime Punch panel. Crispin Freeman, on the far left, returns as the voice of Alucard, and Patrick Seitz, to Freeman's left, will voice Luke Valentine in the new dub. The two also battled in the first series, and the outcome of the second fight may be the same. "Better than you could ever Imagine," was how Seitz described his fight with Freeman. "Are we going to do this the same way? I keep a record of the way that Crispin kills my characters." When asked what it's like to kill Seitz in an anime dub, Freeman got a room full of laughs when he responded, "He's tasty." More seriously, Seitz noted that voice acting is like theater in the demands the technique places on a performer. "It's being able to control your voice in order to get emotions across," Seitz said. Seitz recalled how he needed all of that control in what some still say was his best dub role, Onishi in Texhnolyze. "That show was like a big box of onions in a darkened room," Seitz said about the series that featured major switches in its plot and characters. "I wish I'd had the gumption to watch the show from the beginning, because it's so cryptic."

Freeman agrees with the idea that voice acting is more theatrical than film or television acting, noting that the more intense theatrical style looks fake in the intimate space of a camera frame.  "The microphone doesn't pick up your movements, but it picks up your thoughts, said Freeman. " You have to be believable, but you have to make it bigger. If you're in anime, you may have to fill in a lot more of the emotions...each medium has different demands for what's believable." Freeman has worked in three markets during his career - Los Angeles now, New York previously. It got started for him when he was introduced to the backstage world of an opera house in Chicago; Freeman realized he was more fascinated by the transition from the real world of the street to the fantasy world of the stage and wanted to be part of that world. "These people would come in off the street, they'd go to their dressing room and when they'd come down, they'd be Henry the 8th. I thought, `that's cool. I'd like to be part of that,'" Being an effective actor means you have to be part illusionist and know what sort of performance gets a reaction from the audience, Freeman noted. "It absolutely is work. I hate to say this, but the hooker doesn't have the orgasm, it's the john. It doesn't matter if I cry, it matters if you cry -  the magician doesn't get to enjoy the magic."

Tristan MacAvery, back at an anime convention for the first time in a while, also talked about the overplay-versus underplay question. For his best-known role, Gendo Ikari in Neon Genesis Evangelion, voice director Matt Greenfield and MacAvery had to decide how intensely to play the role, and the choice was to downplay the performance. "It wasn't even evil, it was controlled. There was no emotion, it was very flat. Then I started looking at things and decided he was a bastard - and then I understood why he was a bastard. At first I underplayed it until it was time to shout. Both of (those times) had to do with Rei, $when she was in danger. MacAvery also is familiar with voice acting's demands. "When all you have is your voice, whether it's a commercial or voiceover, everything focuses here (he said, motioning to his mouth). You can't do something funny or a gentle gesture or a shrug - they're not going to hear that. They have to hear the question mark in your voice."

Chase Watkins, video game director, looks at voice acting from a different angle. Improvements in game consoles mean that game producers can replace text messages with spoken dialogue, as seen in the Final Fantasy series of games. "Only in recent games has the memory space been available," he said. "With good voices, you can convey so much more with a human voice than with the written word...if you can find the right people to tell the story and if you find the right voices in these, it clicks. It's a lot like an anime when you have the right voices." When it doesn't go right...well, he had the story of an actor who was recording battle sounds, got too enthusiastic, fell and nearly damaged the recording booth. The response: "Let's try this again with a little less suck."