‘The Boy and the Heron’: How GKIDS Pulled Off One of the Most Important Dubs in Anime History
We're taking you inside the story of how an American animation company laid it all on the line to make the English-language version of Hayao Miyazaki's "last" film a devastatingly beautiful must-see event: https://t.co/xZFh5KNDFh pic.twitter.com/7EhsNBGHRa
- IndieWire (@IndieWire) December 8, 2023
• The English language version came together rather quickly. It was cast and recorded in Sept. and Oct. 2023.
• “They told us that casting was a really important aspect in regards to how they conceive this movie as being a love letter to the studio,” Jesteadt said, “and as perhaps the final Miyazaki film that there would effectively be cameos from people that audiences might recognize as voice actors from previous films. It was a big deal for them that the actor who played Howl in ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’ returned as Mahito’s father, and they told us it would be great if we were able to do a similar stunt. So we tried to do that as much as possible with people who had appeared in previous dubs.” So Christian Bale, Willem Dafoe, and Mark Hamill came back for roles.
[Spoiler (click to open)]• The Japanese actor for the Heron is played by a young, 30-year-old hot singer-actor guy named Masaki Suda, and they wanted the English-dub actor to reflect that, so they cast Robert Pattinson. He was "very, very excited about being presented with a role as complicated and nuanced as this one."
[Spoiler (click to open)]• Dan Stevens is such a devoted Ghibli fan that he agreed to come back and deliver a few lines as one of the many different henchbirds for the Parakeet King just so he can see the film in advance.
[Spoiler (click to open)]• Karen Fukuhara previously worked with Sinterniklaas, voice director, on Star Wars Visions so she was recommended for a role. She is the only Japanese-speaker in the English cast and was able to emulate the Japanese actor too well, that it clashed with the other voices. She was encouraged to make it American and was able to bring a more emotional/vulnerable twist to the recording.
[Spoiler (click to open)]• The original title for the film is How Do You Live? But Toshio Suzuki, producer, asked for a title change. There was a desire to move away from the name of the book, as people were constantly mistaking the movie for an adaptation.
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Have you seen the sub or dub?