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by Luis Reyes
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For nearly nine months this assemblage of anime dub artists toiled in the studio to produce one of the best anime dubs in recent history. In March, Akadot hosted ADR (Automatic Dialogue Replacement) writer Marc Handler, ADR director Melissa Williamson [link to her Q and A], the voice of Ed, Melissa Charles, the voice of Faye, Wendee Lee, and the voice of Spike, David Lucas. Assembled together to talk about "Cowboy Bebop" for the first time ever, they elucidate the voice acting process and provide their insights on the series. How long has it been since you guys ended the recording of the "Cowboy Bebop" dub? Melissa Williamson: Almost a year. We started in the summer of 1999, and we finished up in April of 2000. We took
nine working days every month to record everybody and then had the rest of the month off. 'Bebop' was balanced so well between
the animation, the music and the dialogue that we really could take our time to make the voices sound just right.
What kind of questions do you get from the fan community? Williamson: They ask about the process. I think a lot of people have no idea about how this process works,
and how we do dub animation, and how different it is from original animation.
[American dub studios typically record English tracks one voice at a time, each actor getting booked
alone for studio time. That actor uses the script, the animated image and the director as a guide for their acting. Seldom do
they have other actors off of whom to play, which often accounts for the common criticism that English dubs are stilted and lack
the emotional depth of the Japanese original. By contrast, the Japanese recording process involves all the actors sitting
together in a recording room, a working environment that affords them the luxury of interacting something other than a
microphone and a glass wall.]
Williamson: As a director it's like, "...first day we're doing the first violins, and then we're doing the cello?"
We have to put together the dub one voice at a time.
Wendee Lee: But for this show we really did have a lot of time, and that made all the difference. We are usually on
such a tight schedule, slamming the work out, trying to pay attention to detail and quality. On this project there was so much
breathing room. We could sit back and look at a finished scene when we were done and just enjoy it, and tweak it, and fine-tune
it.
Williamson: It was a huge collaborative effort because we had the time. The easiest choice is to go over the top,
which happens with a lot of dubs. Since ZRO gave us the time, we were able to make clearer decisions and keep the nuances and
subtleties of the series in tact.
Working with Production Company ZRO Lee: The philosophy behind ZRO Limit has always been to honor the Japanese, use it as a guide.
Williamson: I think that when you translate a Japanese work to English you're dealing with a mythology that just
can't be translated; it's a different cultural vocabulary. If you're given a series like 'Rurouni Kenshin,' you have to honor
the material that is given to you. American producers can't just throw in references that don't deal with that historical
context.
Marc Handler: Working for these types of anime projects that are going straight to video, that are going straight to
the anime fans, we can honor the original Japanese voices and use them as guides. When you're working for Fox or a company like
that, they are not selling it to fans so their directive is do anything you need to do to this project to make it mainstream.
The directive I got from ZRO was, '...we like the spirit of the original so don't stray too much from it.'
Williamson: The naturalistic style was such a relief, all of us having done so much over-the-top voice acting.
People would come in and do incidental roles so glad that they could breathe and be themselves. All of us realized that in our
whole careers we had never been allowed to use our real voices.
As 'Bebop' was coming together, did any of you think that this was being done a lot better than other dubs? Williamson: Well, it was my first series ever as a director and I was terrified.
David Lucas: Yes, but these were some of the freest flowing sessions I've ever worked anywhere. And Melissa was
always so excited with the project. Every episode she would give me the whole back-story. And I didn't process everything, but
she took that personal investment and that made it much easier for me. I mean I had cigarettes in my mouth.
Williamson: Not to smoke but so that he would sound like he always had one in his mouth.
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