Anime Herald: In fairness, I have to ask the questions I asked Natsuki Hanae (the Japanese voice actor for Okarun). If you were throwing a party, who would you rather invite: ghosts or aliens?
Aleks Le: I think aliens would know how to throw it down. They’ve got all of these fancy LED lights.
AJ Beckles: I know, right?
Aleks Le: So, I would say “aliens.”
AJ Beckles: Yeah, I think Aliens is a good answer.
Aleks Le: But, ghosts have the ability to turn the lights on and off.
AJ Beckles: True. A little bit of free strobe action.
Aleks Le: It depends on what kind of lighting effects you want for your party.
Anime Herald: Next up, and this is mostly for AJ and Abby, but Aleks, feel free to answer as well. If you were to win a bet against the other and have them be your errand runner, what errands would you have them run?
Abby Trott: Pick up cat litter. That’s always a pain. Those bags are so heavy.
What else… get me coffee? I’m pretty low maintenance. Those are the two main things.
AJ Beckles: I feel like dog walking is always a good thing. Sometimes you are not in the mood, but of course you have to do it. So Abby would be doing it.
Abby Trott: I’d have no problem, though. I’ll walk your dog.
(Editor’s note: I find it adorable that both of them are focused on pet care.)
AJ Beckles: Gosh, I don’t know. Maybe laundry?
Aleks Le: I was just going to say, laundry is a big one for me. The way I operate is I just go until my closet is empty and then I’m like “I guess I have to do laundry now.”
AJ Beckles: Same. “I have no clothing to wear.”
(Editor’s note: Laundry day is rough.)
Anime Herald: When voicing your respective characters, which of their qualities did you want to focus on, to make sure that they carried over from the manga to the anime?
AJ Beckles: For Okarun, I think this general insecurity with who he is as a person. I think that there’s a big part of himself that he blocked off to avoid getting hurt. Now that he has more people in his life, he’s starting to open up and discover who he is. How to deal with people, and social interactions, and everything. I think it’s very important to make sure that that insecurity and that anxiety was in there when it needed to be.
Abby Trott: For Momo, she was written with this “gyaru, tough girl” archetype in mind. So, definitely making Momo sound tough and sure of herself when speaking out. That’s one thing I think Shion Wakayama really nailed in the Japanese performance. She’s so incredible at that specific archetype. It’s tricky to maintain that when translating from Japanese to English, because the same archetype does not exist in English, or American culture, at least.
I definitely wanted to keep that about her. Also, we see these tender moments where Momo is still learning to express herself, and Okarun is helping her to do that. There are lots of moments where she’s struggling to say her truth, emotionally. She has a difficult time doing so, but she does get it out eventually. So, that kind of emotional struggle I wanted to portray as best I can in the English version.
Aleks Le: For Jiji, I feel that one of the core elements from the manga, and then also from season one of the anime, is that everybody around him knows that the antics that he gets up to are embarrassing and hard to watch. It’s cringe. But he never really cares about that stuff, because he has a lot of personal struggles. It seems to me like he’s the type of person who tries his best to stay positive. In order to do that, you can’t be bothered with what anybody else thinks. I wanted to portray that fun side of him with no limits. If I did a take that sounded embarrassing to me, I’d be like “Keep that, it’s perfect.”
Sometimes, if your voice cracks, or you do something that’s not intentional, and it doesn’t make you sound good, I was still like “Keep that. I like that a lot.”
There’s this element of roughness about him, that unfiltered vibe of him that I wanted to portray in the show.
Anime Herald: I’m gonna follow up on that, in the sense that two of you play actually two characters in the show, because Jiji is Evil Eye Jiji, and Okarun is Turbo Granny Okarun. How did you decide how to voice those characters?
AJ Beckles: In terms of, like, vocal quality-wise? There are some previous performances that I looked up to from my childhood that I thought would be cool. I was just trying to go for the coolest thing I could think of, for my own voice.
In terms of his personality, I think Natsuki Hanae does a great job of setting that framework. In general, I feel like it’s everything that Okaron would probably want to say, in his day-to-day. In my own headcanon, that maybe he was raised a little too polite, he would never say the stuff he says. I think there’s a line where he goes, “Saving girls is so not my thing.”
So, I feel like, even though he wants to help the folks around him, he’d rather… not. I don’t know. That’s my own headcanon for him. I wanted to make sure I got that “I don’t want to do anything” vibe across.
Aleks Le: It’s different for me, because Evil Eye Jiji is not Jiji. It’s somebody else completely. It was hard to capture because we didn’t know we wanted to go the route where he’s kind of like a child, and he doesn’t know anything, so his speech is kind of stunted. But on the same note, this child is from hundreds of years ago, so the diction is not modern in the slightest. Something we did was get rid of any contractions like “I’ll” or “Don’t.”
We tried our best to stay away from them as much as possible. We would have him say “I will,” or “I shall.”
For his vocal quality, there’s this cool guitar distortion effect. I like it a lot. We were going for something that was menacing, and scary, and completely different from the regular Jiji demeanor. I’m excited to hear it because I haven’t heard it yet.
Anime Herald: More than anything, Dan Da Dan is a series with tremendous drip, as personified by Seiko Ayase and Momo Ayase. In fact, one of the tells that the Alien Serpos are bad is that they have no drip whatsoever. How has Dan Da Dan helped inspire your fashion choices?
Aleks Le: I have this sick sweater right here! This is Momo’s sweater, so I guess you could say it is very Dan Da Dan inspired.
Abby Trott: I’ll have a costume change later. Momo’s always stylish.
Aleks Le: She’s probably the most stylish.
Abby Trott: Definitely. She has a line in the show where she says, “Looking fire puts me in the mood to fight.”
AJ Beckles: Yeah.
Abby Trott: I can relate to that. When you’re looking good, it changes your whole outlook. The whole Attitude.
AJ Beckles: Yeah. [And] when we first see Okarun I don’t think he’s that drippy at all.
Anime Herald: Agreed.
AJ Beckles: I think that, as he gets to know Momo, his outfits kind of get better and better. I would say I’m on the same route. I’m going through the process of going through my closet and changing everything. Maybe Okarun inspired me a little bit to do so.
Aleks Le: Yeah, I only have graphic tees in my closet.
AJ Beckles: Graphic tees are fun, though.
Abby Trott: Yeah, that’s my default outfit.
Anime Herald: What were each of your reactions to Dan Da Dan dropping a “Jurassic Bark” on us with episode seven, “To a Kinder World.”
Abby Trott: Yikes. I had read ahead in the manga, and I knew that this was coming, but man, did they really hit you in the feels with that one. I feel like they, when they animated it, they made it longer, and they added more to the story of Acro Silky’s background that really like…
I’m not gonna lie. I just watched it again this morning because I was trying to get in the mood, and even though I’m passively watching it, it still made me cry. It’s just such a heart-wrenching, relatable, sad story. I knew it was coming, but it still got me good.
AJ Beckles: Yeah. Exactly what Abby said. It’s such a beautiful story, and I feel like, in a story that is so fictitious, with the aliens and the ghosts and everything like that, there’s still this element of real people. In the middle of all that, they throw in this episode that’s completely real. There are situations like that that happen in real life. Watching the story about a mother that just wants to take care of her child is something I feel like a lot of people can relate to, whether it be as mothers themselves, or as people that love their mothers or their parental figures. The whole concept that they will do anything for their kid to smile is really beautiful.
Aleks Le: Yeah, I cried.
(Editor’s note: Speaking of crying, I’d like to congratulate AJ Beckles and Anairis Quiñones on their engagement.)
Anime Herald: Abby, you mentioned reading ahead. Are you fully up to date?
Abby Trott: I’m not. I know the Shonen Jump manga is ahead of the published volumes. I’ve been reading along with the published volumes, but that’s gonna change because I’ve had something spoiled for me.
AJ Beckles: Oh no!
Abby Trott: So now I need to read ahead and get all the way caught up so that doesn’t happen again.
Anime Herald: Are either of you up to date, Aleks or AJ?
AJ Beckles: Yeah. I’m right there.
Aleks Le: I’m pretty up to date.
Anime Herald: Trying to stay spoiler-free. Is there any arc or any particularly scene that you’re very much looking forward to getting to?
AJ Beckles: I can’t allude to what’s gonna happen past season two. Because, honestly, we have no idea. But as a manga reader, I really like the arc that follows this one.
Aleks Le: Yeah.
Anime Herald: I look forward to seeing how it’s animated.
Abby, you gave a tremendous quote. Referring to voice acting anime versus voice acting video games:
“I like both. As a voice actor, it’s whatever will pay me more.”
Anime Herald: Can you elaborate on that?
Aleks Le: Yeah, man! Whoever will pay me more. (Laughs)
Abby Trott: I think it was a joke. There are different things I like about both. And that was a joke. But, if we’re talking about paychecks, video games will pay more per session. But then, if you’re working on anime for a longer time, maybe cumulatively, that’s more.
What I like about anime is that you do usually get to dub along to the animated finished product, or close to it. You have that luxury of seeing and hearing the near-final product, and it really makes our jobs as actors easier because we don’t have to fill in the missing information. We can contribute our point of view, but most of it is already established there.
Whereas, a lot of times with video games, we are doing pre-lay dialogue. Meaning, when we are recording the dialogue, there aren’t a ton of visuals. We may get character art. It depends on what it is, because sometimes it’s different, if you’re doing something like performance capture.
But, for the majority of video game scripts that I record, it’s line-by-line script, where I’m recording my lines. I sometimes get to see other characters or hear how they’re responding to my character, but there’s a lot of missing information that we have to fill in with our imaginations, and the help of the production team and the director.
That’s very fun for me. One of the things I love about acting is using my imagination. And it can change. It can change your read when you come in with a specific point of view or perspective. It can change things drastically. It’s fun to have more control over a character or the game and how it’s perceived. So I like both, paycheck excluded.
Anime Herald: To bring it back to the current arc, this is a question for AJ: If a lucky cat had misplaced your testicles, how far would you go to get them back?
AJ Beckles: I’d go to the ends of the Earth to retrieve them.
Aleks Le: It depends. Would the lucky cat stick around and give you luck in exchange for your testicles?
AJ Beckles: True. Actually, maybe then I wouldn’t.
Aleks Le: Because if it did stick around and bring me luck, I’d be like “Have those.”
AJ Beckles: I’ve got goals to achieve.
Abby Trott: I can’t relate.
Anime Herald: Again, trying to stay spoiler-free, is there anything coming up this season that you’d like our readers to know about?
AJ Beckles: I think Aleks does a great job as Evil Eye, and that everyone should watch his performance.
Aleks Le: Thanks!
Aleks Le: I think everybody does a great job. I’m excited to hear some of the new characters, and I’m also excited for people to hear the sound effects, because that was the thing that really caught my attention this time around. The sound design is insane.
Abby Trott: Yeah. I’m super looking forward to some of the new character performances, and also the animation for some of the fighting. Sick!
AJ Beckles: Oh, my gosh! So good.
Anime Herald: In terms of sound design, do you feel like there was a glow-up between season 1 and season 2?
Aleks Le: I think it’s more so just that the introduction of some new characters and their powers also means new sounds and power-ups. So, I feel like, if this is the route they’re gonna continue to take, I’m very excited to see each new character that gets introduced.
AJ Beckles: Yeah.
Anime Herald: Is there any particular character who’s sound design impressed you?
Aleks Le: Evil Eye. It’s crazy when he kicks the ball. There’s a really cool sound. I’m like, “dude that’s insane.”
I think they showed it off in one of the trailers. When he kicks it, and there’s this screech from a ghost. It’s really cool. I can’t wait for people to see it.
AJ Beckles: I think it’s no small feat, because Science Saru did an incredible job on that first season. Like, every episode is beautiful. There’s some parts in this where I’m like, “Oh, my, gosh! Does this look better?”
I don’t know how. But yeah, they’ve done an amazing job once again.
Anime Herald: Thank you for speaking with us.
AJ/Abby/Aleks: Thank you.
Special Thanks to GKIDS for making this interview possible.
