Members: Jack’s VA Ban Taito (🐺), Azul’s VA Tamaru Atsushi (🐙), Jade’s VA Komada Wataru (🐬), Floyd’s VA Okamoto Nobuhiko (🦈)
※Note: not literal translations, only summaries of the conversations.
Opening Talk
Topic decided last week: if you were beast-person, what kind of animal would you like to be based on?
🦈 Komodo dragon. Because the name is cool.
🐬 Rhino. They look really cool. With the horn and they are fast—not even a Komodo dragon would go after a rhino.
🦈 If I was a Komodo dragon, 🐬 as a rhino would be big—I wouldn’t go for him. Maybe just his pinky finger.
🐙 Capybara. I like baths. Capybara are always taking baths and look so comfortable.
🐬 A rhino and a komodo dragon and a capybara.
🦈 The capybara is on top.
🐺 None of this is what I’d imagined.
🐬 What did you imagine about us? I won’t hit you with my horn.
🦈 I won’t bite you with my poison teeth.
🐙 Let’s take a bath together.
🦈 The nuance is a little different for just one of us.
🐺 I’d imagined cats or dogs or something. Everyone goes for cool animals.
🦈 We all go for wild things.
🐬 The capybara?
🐙 One of us is not as wild as the others.
On the subject of the “Relaxing My Room” Birthday Series
🐙 Floyd could have just kept his hair like that and it would have been fine.
🐬 I thought Jade was the type to say “good night” and fall asleep immediately and then wake up again in the exact same position in the morning, but he moves! I was impressed. But those were exactly the pajamas I had imagined.
🦈 I imagine that 🐬 wears pajamas like Jade’s.
🐬 Incorrect.
🐺 Are you closer to Floyd’s, with the hoodie and the tank top?
🐬 I was until last year. It changed this year.
🦈 A bathrobe?
🐙 Do you sleep wearing the clothes you intend to wear the next day? So you can just wake up and go?
🐬 Efficient but no, that is not it. I wear recovery pajamas. They improve blood circulation and refresh you quicker. I’ve been wearing those all this year.
🦈 Those would be a good birthday present for someone.
🐺 What do you wear, 🦈?
🦈 Warm. I get cold easily. I wear down jackets on airplanes and things, even in summer.
🐺 What about you 🐙?
🦈 Something surprising, like a hoodie?
🐬 No, 🐙 might wear something like Jade’s pajamas.
🐺 I hope he wears a really embarrassing T-shirt.
🦈 Something that says TAMARU in hiragana or something.
🐙 I wear jersey pants and a T-shirt.
🦈 Half right.
🐙 I just wear clothes that I don’t want to wear outside and go to sleep.
🐺 My pajamas are like Jade’s.
🐬 What color?
🦈 Pink?
🐺 Not pink.
🐙 Checkered pattern?
🐺 Not checkered pattern. I wear sets of navy and black and brown on rotation.
🦈🐙 How adult.
🐺 This is embarrassing.
🦈 Can we turn that into an SSR 🐺-kun?
🐺 ME!?
🐬 SSR 🐺-kun, that’s good.
Impressions of Azul
🦈 A cute character you can bully
🐙 I don’t think Azul would agree.
🐬 He probably looks like that from the perspective of other characters but actually he puts in effort and does what needs to be done.
🐙 He wants to be perfect, and his passion for that is amazing, there is a lot about him that can be teased. That is one of the things that is likable about him. Azul himself probably doesn’t think so at all.
Impressions of Jade
🐙 Jade might be the one who is most difficult to read of the three. The most mysterious.
🦈 I thought he was the most normal one, at first.
🐬 He behaves elegantly. But the words he uses and his atmosphere are…unique.
🦈 When he laughs…the Leech siblings, they have jagged teeth. Jade doesn’t laugh much, at first. But in one moment he will smile and show his teeth.
Impressions of Floyd
🐙 When he is having fun he becomes excited, and when he isn’t his mood crashes. And that is easy to understand about him.
🦈 He might be the easiest to understand.
🐙 But we don’t know the catalysts. And that is an unreadable point about him—he has that mysteriousness.
🦈 He loves strong people. He gets excited interacting with them.
🐬 The reason Floyd is able to do whatever he wants is because of Azul and Jade.
🦈 Jade acts like he is restraining him but he doesn’t.
🐬 He enjoys it.
🦈 He will say “I’ll hold him back” and then releases him and says “go have fun.” It’s a little tough for Azul, though.
🐙 Azul gets annoyed a bit.
🐬 Azul comes close to saying “I won’t allow this anymore!” but we know just how to soothe him again before he reaches his breaking point.
🐙 He’s kind of being played with in that way.
🐬 He’s being played with.
Voicing Azul
🐙 Recently I have to be more careful not to overdo it. Azul uses strong vocal inflections, but when I start enjoying it too much those inflections become even stronger and they have to tell me to calm down. I have to say “I’m sorry, I was having too much fun.”
🐺 Has your idea of Azul changed?
🐙 It’s evolved. In Book 3 there were serious scenes? Normal scenes without jokes for the story, and I portrayed him as a serious-minded character, but as the story progresses the jokes are increasing. Especially Book 7.
🦈 Book 7 is fun!
🐙 When they let me read the script I was like, “what?”
🐬 I didn’t really understand what was going on, at first.
🦈 ”Am I reading this right!?” was my response.
🐙 When we receive the script it is just set, so I would wonder what the illustrations would be like.
Voicing Jade
🐬 Elegance. His vocabulary is very distinctive, and there will be sudden eeriness that makes you wonder “What did he just say?” He needs to be misleadingly portrayed as a gentleman. He is interesting because just when you think “This is what Jade is like,” something unexpected will arise. Even in normal conversations I have to navigate very carefully to include intentionally unsettling elements without going too far, which would compromise his core personality.
Elegance is key. The difficult thing about Azul and Jade is that they are both elegant. They’re both gentlemen. The way they deceive others with “we’re good people, we’re gentleman” is very similar, so in the beginning—it was right after 🐙 had settled on his portrayal of Azul–the team and I did a deep analysis into the way Jade should speak and the atmosphere he should create.
There was the risk of overlapping with Azul, so we talked about giving him a higher or lower voice, and various things, and through a lot of trial and error we settled on how to differentiate them. The beginning was rough. We were worried that he sounded too much like Azul, so I would listen to the recordings of Azul’s lines to better understand.
🐺 But your impression of Jade hasn’t changed?
🐬 No, but progressing through the story Azul has changed a lot, and Jade has had a lot of humorous instances, and I’m not worried anymore, but the dash at the start—we were worried that the image of the dorm would be set by that, since it was still the very beginning, and I felt that weight.
Voicing Floyd
🦈 He has a playful spirit, but it was a question of exactly how much of that can be put into the performance—I thought it would be good to voice him as if his mood changes are like a roller coaster, and that’s what I did, but…my first recording I did together with 🐙. And they really let me do whatever I wanted.
Coming in from what angles, sweetening the tone, there are parts where he gets a scary look so then I would put in more strength at the end of a line, or instead end gentle—there was a lot. But I probably overdid it. The opposite direction of Jade and Azul. The staff cautioned me, saying that balance is important. 🐙 and I recorded the first to third Books together, and I was recording Book 4 alone, and there is a part where his voice becomes very low.
A different VA did that part. But I got the idea that Floyd actually wants to have a deeper voice. There was a lot of variation in Book 4 but from Book 5 I have been looking more at balance.
🐙 It is actually more difficult because you have so much freedom.
🦈 I’ll overdo it. I can’t overdo it or speak too sweetly. Can’t speak with too much familiarity. Have to see how much I can do while keeping it within the scope of his playful spirit.
Also, we’re eels. We’re kind of scary in the ocean. So I would do things like adding a sense of intimidation or pressure at the ends of sentences. And all of that came apart in Book 7. That was all balance too, though.
They would tell me I was overdoing it. They let me match my performance to the illustration. But, yeah…
🐙 That face, after all…
🦈 Exactly, this face…I wondered if I could go full comical…
🐬 That was rude, right?
🦈 Jade is so rude.
🐬 He is looking closer than anyone, too.
🦈 Even now I can’t forget it. “Floyd…doesn’t eat live shrimp…?” There!? That’s what you notice!?
Wrap Up
🐺 December 18th is my birthday.
🐙 SSR 🐺
🦈 Send me a picture.
🐙 We’ll add filters for you.
🐬 In the morning it will be “Platinum Jacket.”
🐺 I have to prepare!
🐬 At night it will be Relaxing MyRoom.
🐺 Maybe I didn’t need to tell you that.
They talk about what they want to do for New Years. 🦈 says “eat 100 mochi”, 🐬says “go diving” and 🐙 says “go to an onsen.”
🐬You are a capybara to the very end!
Twisted Wonderland Reference Note 