Anime dub production may be going through a bit of a Renaissance, with anime's popularity attracting a wider audience for whom high production value is key. Amanda Winn Lee, best known for her voice acting roles as Rei in "Evangelion" and Rio in "Burn Up W," and Jason Lee, best known for his roles as Mamoru Kusanagi in "Blue Seed" and Yuji in "Burn Up W," have set out on their own into the rocky terrain of dub production by establishing their own production company. The couple has already contracted the next "Burn Up W" project from ADV and have started work on many of their own independent projects. Akadot sat down with them at a Starbuck's in beautiful downtown Burbank, California, known affectionately to residents as the Valley, to chat about this bold step in their careers and what it might mean for the wider anime community.

Amanda: Our production company is called Gaijin Productions. I am the President and Dictator-For-Life. Jason is CEO and First Emperor. These titles are actually listed in our company meeting minutes. Basically what we do is get sub-contract dub work from American anime companies who have acquired licenses from Japan. And the really cool thing about our company is that we are a signatory of SAG (Screen Actors Guild).

Akadot: Have you two rented a studio or have you built your own studio?

Amanda: We have a partner, PCB Productions, it's down in Cypress.

Akadot: How did this endeavor start?

Amanda: I've been directing and producing for A.D. Vision for a while as well as doing some directing gigs out here. Acting is a very passive profession and we got tired of waiting for stuff to come to us. We know what we're doing, Jason is an excellent writer, I've been directing and producing - so why don't we just form our own studio?

Jason: It originally started when we were talking about the "Burn Up W" production. We were thinking of going union on it, Amanda's a member of the union so she's not supposed to do non-union work. We said we wanted to do this anyway. One thing led to another and we became a SAG signatory. So, for the project, we are going to hire union actors.

Akadot: Until recently, it seemed that AFTRA handled voice acting, so what role does SAG now play in the anime dub saga?

Amanda: A lot of anime is going into television, especially with the "Pokemon" series and its couple of theatrical releases. SAG covers television and movies.

Jason: You can release a movie that's non-union. It all depends on the kind of pressure the union exerts on particular titles. "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" were non-union for years and SAG put pressure on Saban who finally succumbed to it. So the actors up until now didn't get a union slice of the pie even though the title was huge.

Akadot: To what extent is anime or cartoons in general categorized by the unions?

Jason: Sound is currently covered under the Dub Agreement, which actually expires in March, something we just recently found out. To boil it down to its meat and bones, the Dub Agreement is $50 an hour, with a minimum session of two hours. So no matter what, whether you have three lines or three hundred, you are at least going to make $100 for a session at union scale. At our worst, our non-union work pays more than that. So the only reason it doesn't make sense for the anime companies not to go union is the paying out of residuals to actors. For home video releases an actor only gets the session fee. That is why a lot of companies still stay non-union regardless. They are going to stay until this thing becomes way too huge that they can't do it that way any more.

Amanda: The way the Dub Agreement reads now, an actor gets an original session fee for the recording and if the company releases on video it doesn't deal with residuals. But as soon as the title goes to a television or theatrical release you have to re-negotiate the rights with SAG.

Amanda: They're strictly non-union.

Jason: I would imagine, especially with a title like "Pokemon" that was so huge, that the union probably puts pressure on the companies up in New York.

Amanda: But a lot of the things that SAG has focused on is the live-action stuff, especially with the commercial strike having just passed and the upcoming theatrical and television strike and the writers' strike. Dubbing has always been the poor, neglected stepchild of the acting biz.

Akadot: How is the SAG signatory status beneficial to your company?

Jason: Primarily we get to hire actors that we wouldn't normally be able to hire.

Amanda: It's not a matter of quality because there are plenty of talented non-union actors.

Jason: However, out here the logical progression of your acting career is to become a member of the union. If you are a production company in L.A., then, your talent pool shoots up tenfold as a SAG signatory.

Akadot: Would you have to pay residuals if any of these titles went to television?

Amanda: Since we contract work from distribution companies, for example "Burn Up W" is an A.D. Vision project, the distribution companies have to pay the residuals. There's a piece of paper that we get them to sign saying that they accept the fiscal responsibility attached to doing the title with us.

Jason: They would have to re-negotiate with SAG themselves. Ours is just the dub work, the initial session. But the percentage of anime that's dubbed and released on video as compared to the percentage released on TV is colossal.

Akadot: But what if ten years from now a hip, new and improved, revitalized MTV picks it up, how would the situation look?

Amanda: It would still fall under the SAG agreement. I don't believe that there's a statute of limitations.

Jason: When the studios purchase the rights, they have a window of time to release it on TV or in theaters. Rights expire all the time on titles that are hot property. So if the company wants to get it on TV but doesn't do it in time, they then have to re-bid for the title they have already done all that work on.