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Tuesday morning, August 17, 2004, I set out for the airport to catch my flight to Fort Worth, Texas, the home of anime production company FUNimation. In spite of an 8 a.m. flight, a bag search (the butter knife they thought I had hidden in my duffel bag turned out to be a tripod) and an airplane woefully not designed for someone of my size, I arrived in Fort Worth at 9:45 a.m., a whole ten minutes ahead of schedule. Former Adult Swim message board moderator Chris Johnston (SwimMod_CJ) was good enough to give me a lift to FUNimation's headquarters. He is now Senior Editor at Newtype USA, a wonderful anime magazine, and was there to do his own story on the Fullmetal Alchemist dub, which will appear in their November issue.
Once at the building which houses FUNimation Productions, a fairly non-descript bank, we met Jeff Dronen, their Public Relations Consultant. He gave us a tour of their facility, from the sales department to the recording studios. Their web team complimented AdultSwim.com on our InuYasha: Demon Tournament game, which is cool. We spent half an hour watching the first dubbed episode of Fullmetal Alchemist, a final version different from the one shown at Otakon no one outside of FUNimation had yet seen. It was very jarring for me; I'm addicted to the Japanese version of Fullmetal Alchemist and it took me a minute to wrench my mind into accepting this new dub. But by the time the episode ended I had become used to the voices and in some cases had begun to prefer the American ones. I was able to breathe a sigh of relief that my favorite anime was in good hands.
From there we went to lunch. We ate at a Japanese restaurant, the kind where the chef cooks right at your table and puts on a show. Believe it or not, I'd never been to a restaurant like that before and it was a blast. Everyone I'd be interviewing later was there, plus a few others. The most surreal thing about the lunch was that Alison Retzloff, the voice of Conan Edogawa from Case Closed, was sitting at the other end of the table. Her normal speaking voice is very close to what she does for Conan, so every time I'd catch a word she said I was convinced that someone at the table was going to die. I ate my food a bit more carefully, fearing poison, but thankfully nothing happened.
After we got back to FUNimation, we started filming. First we watched as the staff of Fullmetal Alchemist dubbed two scenes with Vic Mignogna, the voice of Edward. Afterwards I sat down with co-director Colleen Clinkenbeard and asked her about the nuts and bolts behind Fullmetal Alchemist. Colleen got her first major voice acting role as Eclair in Kiddy Grade and currently plays Rachel in Case Closed, as well as Rose and Hawkeye in Fullmetal Alchemist.
Afterwards I interviewed Vic Mignogna, who in addition to voicing Edward has lent his talents to many other anime roles in the past. It was at this time that it started getting hot in the recording studio; we had been forced to turn the fan off to minimize the ambient noise. And as a result, the interviews started getting shorter as CJ and I started to narrow down what we wanted to ask about. The fan came back on in the next interview, which was a Q&A with the other co-director for Fullmetal Alchemist, Mike McFarland, but it did little to eliminate the Texas heat. Afterwards I got a second interview with Mike McFarland, talking about his directing work on Case Closed. Mike McFarland is also the voice of Master Roshi from Dragonball Z, which was a little strange as he slipped into a similar voice once or twice.
Finally I interviewed Alison Retzloff, the voice of Conan Edogawa. She burned through my questions quickly, which left me scrambling for follow-ups, but she was a great interview, very energetic and upbeat. Then we taped some footage of them dubbing a scene from Case Closed and actually got to get the camera in the booth with Alison as she recorded.
By that time it was very hot and I was exhausted, but I still had one more feature I needed to get. I taped a voice-over from ADR Manager Justin Cook (also the voice of Yusuke Urameshi from YuYu Hakusho), in which he took us through the dubbing process step by step. After that we recorded some shots to put under his voice-over from the editing room, the post-production sound room and the paint guys. The painting process was particularly fascinating to me. Every time there's blood removed or kanji changed to English they have to go in and re-paint every single frame. Some scenes take up to a week to finish.
There. I was finally done. Chris drove me back to the airport and I boarded a new plane, but not before being stopped yet again by security. I mean, what's so suspicious about a 6'6" guy alone in the airport with a duffel bag? This plane was much smaller, which worried me at first (I actually had to walk out onto the runway to climb in, which was a first for me), but inside the seats were much nicer and much more spacious, which allowed me to watch some of the free DVDs the people at FUNimation loaded me up with as I was leaving. Until the battery on my laptop died, that is. But altogether a much nicer flight than the first one.
The trip was great and the people at FUNimation were nothing but fantastic. I came home with a huge amount of footage and a lot more knowledge about how English dubs are made. I really appreciated their allowing me to disrupt their day and bombard them with questions.
Check out the clips from my visit--I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed going to get them! Look for Fullmetal Alchemist to air November 6 on Adult Swim and catch reruns of Case Closed weekday nights. For more information on Fullmetal Alchemist go to our Fullmetal Alchemist show guide or to see the trailer at FUNimation's official site.
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