Hannah Alcorn -
Anime
Convention Personality of the Week - January 6, 2008
There may be no greater voice
acting challenge, regardless of language, than getting a lead role in a
"Nabeshin" series. Shinichi Watanabe is one of the great auteurs of
anime, a director who finds a way to place his personal stamp on any
series he handles. Actors in his series know they're going to be put to
extremes. That was what Hannah Alcorn faced when she got the role of
Sunako Nakahara in the reverse-harem series "The Wallflower." Alcorn's
character is a mysterious young goth who may or may not be prettier -
or uglier - than the pretty boys who inhabit the mansion where she's
been invited to stay. Alternately reclusive and intense, scary and
weepy, Sunako covers a wide range of emotions, sometimes from line to
line. It's a role that requires a wide range in the first episode, and
the challenge grows as the character develops in the series.
Ironically, voice actor Alcorn previously had a stage role of a
character who could not hear. She had the lead in "The Princess Who
Could Not Be Heard," a Houston production in which she played a woman
who communicated only in sign language. The real Alcorn hears just fine
- and sings nicely, too, as she demonstrated in the "Voices for"
concert at SugoiCon in 2007.
There may be no greater voice
acting challenge, regardless of language, than getting a lead role in a
"Nabeshin" series. Shinichi Watanabe is one of the great auteurs of
anime, a director who finds a way to place his personal stamp on any
series he handles. Actors in his series know they're going to be put to
extremes. That was what Hannah Alcorn faced when she got the role of
Sunako Nakahara in the reverse-harem series "The Wallflower." Alcorn's
character is a mysterious young goth who may or may not be prettier -
or uglier - than the pretty boys who inhabit the mansion where she's
been invited to stay. Alternately reclusive and intense, scary and
weepy, Sunako covers a wide range of emotions, sometimes from line to
line. It's a role that requires a wide range in the first episode, and
the challenge grows as the character develops in the series.
Ironically, voice actor Alcorn previously had a stage role of a
character who could not hear. She had the lead in "The Princess Who
Could Not Be Heard," a Houston production in which she played a woman
who communicated only in sign language. The real Alcorn hears just fine
- and sings nicely, too, as she demonstrated in the "Voices for"
concert at SugoiCon in 2007.