Do what feels right for the character and adjust to do what feels right for the people in charge. The writing, visuals, and direction dictated the performance. It’s simply my voice, with a much cooler attitude and giving 60% less F’s . Were there any specific character choices or nuances that you made when you approached voicing Spike? How do those compare to your approach for other characters you’ve done like TOM on Toonami, or Shishio on Rurouni Kenshin, or Wolverine in X-Men? Had no idea the love connection would happen, but so glad it did, and yeah, Bebop is definitely the show that keeps on giving. And my earlier comment had nothing to do with that! She’s one of the most respected directors in the industry. Mary Elizabeth (voice director and voice of Julia) became my fiancée last year. We see each other at cons once in a while, rarely get to work together, but I’d take a bullet for any one of them. Raj Ramayya - singer and writer of “Ask DNA” and many other Bebop songs has become a dear friend.ĭid you build relationships with your fellow voice actors on the show? Do you keep in touch? One of my bucket list items is to someday meet Yoko Kanno. I did meet the amazing character designer Toshihiro Kawamoto. I was supposed to meet him for lunch once, but work wouldn’t allow me to get there in time. In the process of dubbing it for a Western audience, did you meet or interact at all with Shinichirō Watanabe or anyone else who made the show in Japan? If you liked this story, sign up for our newsletter. Except that occasionally we ’d get to hear the music and we had more time than on most shows to do multiple takes until we were all happy. She’d guide me through the (almost always isolated, out of context) scenes and course correct as needed. I’d hear three beeps and start reading the dialogue. I walked into the studio, Mary would give me a synopsis of the episode’s story arc. What was the process of recording the English dub from beginning to end? It’s a true testament to great casting when a cast that never worked together in the same room became friends for life. He trusted us with these roles and we didn’t want to let him down. I believe it was Kevin Seymour who cast us based on our past work with him. The visuals, storytelling, music…every element made it the perfect crossover/gateway show to entice an English-speaking audience to give anime a try. The show itself was a beautifully orchestrated (literally and figuratively) piece of art that was a love letter to everything cool in American and sci-fi culture. Her passion for the project, expert direction, and dense nerd knowledge gave us context and inspired us to do the best we could. He ’s cool, elusive, insanely badass, and cares deeply about his crew whether he’ll admit it or not.Ī lot of people praise the English dub as a particularly well-done English language adaptation of an anime screenplay. How often do people ask you about Spike? What was so special about the character?Īt least once a week on a regular basis, a couple hundred times during each convention weekend. “Each one was its own magical thing.” Here’s what he remembers of working on the show, in his own words. “Every episode resonated differently,” Blum says. He worked alongside his future fiancée on the show, contributed to an artistic effort that’s been called a gateway drug to the rest of anime, and, of course, voiced a character that affected the fans in personal and surprising ways. And even though he’s had a long career-complete with a Guinness World Record for having more video game voice acting gigs than anyone else-his role on Bebop in particular was a special one, as he discusses in a new interview with The Dot and Line. He also voiced Spike Spiegel when Cowboy Bebop was adapted for English-language audiences to air on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. You probably recognize him as Wolverine on Wolverine and the X-Men, the samurai Mugen on Samurai Champloo, and as TOM, the legendary host of Toonami. Steve Blum is renowned in animation circles for his deep, iconic purr of a voice as well as his prolific output as an actor. For one month, The Dot and Line is publishing essays, interviews, and discussions about each episode of Cowboy Bebop, which turns 20 this April.
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