INTERVIEW: ‘My Hero Academia’ voice actors sound off on anime’s new season
Image courtesy of Funimation / Provided with permission.
If 2020 and 2021 were anything close to business-as-usual, fans of anime and manga would be piling into arenas and hotel lobbies for their beloved fan conventions, and no doubt some serious cosplaying from My Hero Academia would be present and accounted for. The property, which is a successful manga series and anime series, continues to dominate the world of television and publishing.
Recently, Funimation launched the fifth season of the SUB (subtitled) version of My Hero Academia, featuring voice actors Justin Briner, Clifford Chapin and Anairis Quiñones.
For the uninitiated, who are probably not reading this article anyway, My Hero was originally created by Kohei Horikoshi and follows a world of people who have unbelievable (and awesome) superpowers. Well, almost everyone has superpowers. Deku, the main character, was actually born without a superpower, called a “quirk” on the show, but that doesn’t stop him from dreaming of becoming a hero one day. In English, he’s voiced by Briner, while in the Japanese version, he’s voiced by Daiki Yamashita.
Chapin plays Bakugo in the English-language series (Nobuhiko Okamoto provides his voice talents in the Japanese version). This character is pivotal to the overall plot of the series; he’s Deku’s childhood friend who tries to become the top hero in the academy. Quiñones plays Mirko, a fellow hero whose quirk allows her to have the strength of a rabbit. In the Japanese version, the character is voiced by Sayaka Kinoshita.
All three actors, who are quite successful in the voice acting business, came to the anime series after auditioning for Funimation.
“For my personal audition story, I was asked to come in, read for the project, and I personally was a little familiar with it,” Briner said in a recent Zoom interview. “So I tried out for just about anyone I could get my hands on. Then I left, and that was that. I think that’s sort of typical for most auditions. You throw it out there, and maybe it will come back. There’s nothing too hopeful, so yeah, I’m really glad how it worked out.”
Briner, who has nearly 70,000 followers on Twitter, has also voiced Luck on Black Clover, Ginro on Dr. Stone and Hanako on Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun.
“I was in the same round of auditions as Justin and just went in,” Chapin said. “The first two episodes I think had come out in Japanese at that point before we did the auditions and started recording. I went in, and I recorded for everybody. But, man, I was positive Justin was going to be Deku. I could just feel it. I was watching those first two episodes, and I was like, if that’s not Justin I don’t know who it’s going to be. I read for Deku, but I remember thinking I’ve got to really put my hat on this Bakugo audition and go for it. So I swung for it, but I live by a rule when it comes to auditions: Do it, and forget it.”
Chapin, who also has an impressive following on Twitter, is best known for his voice acting on shows like Dragon Ball Super, Attack on Titan, Evangelion, Tokyo Ghoul and Black Clover.
“I’m a more recent addition,” Quiñones said. “I got cast sometime around this time last year, and at that point I didn’t come into studio like these two did. … I didn’t expect to get My Hero auditions at that point, but I did get them. And I was so nervous. I was like, oh gosh, what should I do? I had read ahead in the manga, and I was already a fan of the series. So I already knew what was going on in the anime, making sure I understood Mirko as a character, and then by the time I submitted the audition, I felt content with it. I thought it was the best work that I could do for her because I very much live by the philosophy of: This is your one chance to be the character, so if it’s your one chance, make it the best, at least in terms of auditions.”
Quiñones, who keeps in touch with her many, many fans on Twitter, has voiced Nessa on Pokémon, Echidna on ReZero, Yelena on Attack on Titan and Yuki on Horimiya.
There is an added pressure that comes with voicing characters on a popular property like My Hero Academia. The manga and anime are so well known, with millions of fans throughout the world, and these voice actors wanted to ensure they got it right and that their performances would prove enduring.
“When we started, they kind of told us, ‘We think this is going to be a really big show,'” Chapin said. “We had concepts of what big shows were, what popular anime were, but very few anime in recent years had broken through just being an anime popular show to being a pop culture phenomenon. So when it started when we went to the first season, it was light. People liked it, but it didn’t explode. It wasn’t until the first season came out on home video and was on Hulu and other streaming platforms, while we were doing the second season, that’s where it really caught. I was at a convention, and everybody was cosplaying as my hero characters and coming up to me and talking to me about My Hero Academia. That was the moment. It wasn’t until season two that I was like, oh wow, it really did catch.”
Chapin and company watched as the My Hero fandom extended beyond the anime world and entered the general market. As it grew in leaps and bounds, he started feeling some pressure, but it was incremental. “The pressure kind of stepped in gradually as it went on, and by then I was a little bit more secure with my existence with the character,” he said. “So by the time that it felt like, oh my God, this is massive, we’ve got to do a really good job, I felt like, OK, I’m already here. I’m already doing the job, and we’re a part of it. It never felt like it was a monumental weight, at least in my mind because it kind of came in waves.”
Quiñones said she felt some pressure because she knew how popular My Hero was when she was added to the show’s creative team last year, but she was ready for the extra attention.
“Previously just before then I voiced for Pokémon before getting cast in My Hero, so I was kind of used to having that pressure,” she said. “And I guess the additional pressure of, oh, I’m voicing a dark-skinned character in anime, and so I don’t think I quite felt the pressure in the audition. … I have to do a good job because I want to do a good job, not so much pleasing the fandom at that point. But then when you get cast, at that point, it’s like, OK, I definitely need to do a good job. I need to be focused, but I think that’s with any job to be honest. I think you’re more aware of your audience if you know that the property is popular, for sure.”
Briner concurred.
“There’s a delayed pressure,” Briner said. “I think the level of community that surrounds this show exceeds my expectations every time. When an anime like this becomes so cool and pop-culturally relevant, I think it really helps to raise all ships around it, too. If My Hero Academia is cool, then all anime is cool, and you can get together with your friends and watch this and that. That’s a really great bridge into what is pretty much up until now a pretty underrepresented medium.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
My Hero Academia, featuring the voice talents of Justin Briner, Clifford Chapin and Anairis Quiñones, is now airing season five on Funimation. Click here for more information.
