Gedo Senki (Tales from Earthsea)

1st May 2006

Number 82 - Okada Arren Appears!

From Saturday of last week, post-recording, which gives voices to the characters in the film, commenced.
Last time, I wrote about the main character Arren and the animation director Mr. Inamura. This time I'm going to start with Junichi Okada, who plays Arren's voice.

Mr. Okada's voice recording went very smoothly and we were able to finish recording half of the total [lines for him] already. This was his first experience with animation post-recording, but as learning the script, he has a really sharp instinct. In many cases we were able to use the trial run just as it was. In a word, superlative.

To give one line that left an impression, this was Arren's first words:
"Are you my death...?"

This line symbolizes Arren's character.
The voice, which suggests inside a sense of resignation a faint hint of joy, gave me goosebumps.
Even apart from that, he acted the role [of Arren] (from his introversion and the feeling of a faint hint of shadow inside him, to his sometime out of control emptions and occasional hints of boyishness) naturally, as if the natural essence of Arren's character was bubbling up.

In the scenes together with Aoi Teshima's Therru, who had already recorded in prescoring[1] everybody there, from Producer Suzuki down, couldn't help crying out [in excitement] it was that good.

At every stage of the production progress, I feel that I'm writing the same things.
Still, by breathing a voice into [a character], that character seems to gain a richer personality. And it makes me realize things I hadn't noticed myself, " this scene had that meaning eh?"

After this, I am really looking forward to the rest of postrecording, which will continue to the end of May.

Translator's Notes

[1]: Recording the [songs] before the animation is created. This is so the character's mouth and movements match the song.