JOJOraDIO vol.11!
This week’s guest is Koyasu Takehito, the voice of Dio Brando himself!
Ueda-san starts off with a listener’s message from a 30 year old male who became a JoJo fan back when Part 4 was still being published, and his wife got hooked by the new anime.
Then Ueda-san invites Koyasu-san (mentioning how he himself is nervous and excited). Koyasu-san says that many of his fans mentioned JOJOraDIO, how interesting it was and how they wanted him to be one of the guests. Then they have some laughs about how this radio always gets funny when you try to talk seriously. Koyasu-san says that he’s known JoJo for a long time, he started reading it even before becoming a seiyuu, but wasn’t much of a fan. He attended auditions for the new anime and he decided for himself that if he gets a role, it has to be Dio. He also mentions how as a child he thought that JoJo manga was more of a horror kind (the stone mask scared him quite a bit), but when he reread it as a grown-up he understood that it’s absolutely different. He also wondered what Araki-sensei (as an adult) thought while creating the manga and whether he wanted children to read it. Then Koyasu-san talks about reading works from the point of view of a character he’s going to voice (Dio in this case) and how it brings new colours to the setting. He says that for JoJo he only scims through the anime scripts without reading them thoroughly, because after reading the manga it’s enough for him. He just takes notes of short/long phrases, and then goes all out at the recording because the atmosphere in the studio demands just that – raw hotblooded action.
Koyasu-san says that working on JoJo anime was a pleasant and fun experience for him, mostly thanks to Okitsu Kazuyuki and his acting as the main protagonist. Initially Koyasu-san intended to give Dio the leading role but ended up having to keep up with Okitsu’s Jonathan, and it was really refreshing for him. He even thanked Okitsu-san for that after the recording.
Then Koyasu-san talks about the cast, how all the cast and staff members were “looking in the same direction” and aiming for the same goal (and this is what made working on JoJo anime different from his previous works where everyone seemed to work separately), and how tiring it was despite being interesting and pleasant. Then they discuss the recording process, differences in interpretation of character roles, Iwanami-san’s requests concerning certain lines and such. Koyasu-san also mentions how at first he thought that Dio was more cool and composed, but it turned out he was about as hotblooded as Jonathan (and even his inner monologues had to be loud and obnoxious).
Episode 3 gets brought up again (no surprise here, really), Koyasu-san says that it felt as if studio itself was on fire during the recording, he even had kind of a hallucination that they were really surrounded by flames, and felt like he himself was not Koyasu Takehito voicing Dio, but he WAS Dio and he WAS fighting there (a thing he’d never before experienced during 26 years of his career). Probably, the pacing and tempo of the anime itself helped build up the tension and gave them some kind of adrenalin rush, he says. It was also the most fun episode for him to work on, other ones didn’t bring that much joy and satisfaction, and Dio from episode 4 onwards was like a new and different character for him, one closer to Stardust Crusaders DIO (he even pronounced it as an acronym – dee-ai-oh).
Then they discuss Dio, how he doesn’t learn from his mistakes and remains too arrogant for his own good even through all of the Part 3, and how Jonathan always stands in Dio’s way and wastes his life interfering with his evil plans of world domination XD Also Koyasu-san said to Okitsu-san “You became so great all thanks to Dio. Be grateful to him! Be grateful that he made your life so fun and florid! And die feeling that gratitude!” (テラ子安www). Well, he does understand feelings of villains, after having voiced so many of them. “Do those heroes of justice have nothing else to do but mess with my villanous schemes? They really should get a life!”
Also, usually Ueda-san finishes the talk with “Next time <guest name> will speak about even deeper JoJo love”, but this time he changed it to “Dio love”. Nice touch.
Next week it’s still Koyasu Takehito.
Wow, this one turned out MUCH more detailed than usual O_o Can’t be helped, though, ‘cause I adore Koyasu and I absolutely loved him as Dio.
Quite a brick of text, isn’t it? Not that that’s a bad thing by any stretch. If you’ve been interested in JoJo raDIO but haven’t been able to pick it up, go give Drakonia Tumblr due attention for putting these out and give the synopses a read through.
