Posted in: Anime, Crunchyroll, TV | Tagged: anime, Crunchyroll, Kaiju No. 8, manga

Kaiju No. 8 English Voice Cast Discuss Voicing Archetypal Characters

Kaiju No. 8 English dub actors Nazeeh Tarsha, Adam McArthur & Abigail Blythe discuss their roles as archetypal adult characters in the anime.

Kaiju No. 8 is one of the major anime series of this season. The high concept is a hero who fights invading kaiju (Japanese for 'monsters') with a team of elite fighters. The big difference in the Shonen series is that the characters are adults, not high schoolers, for a change. We interviewed Nazeeh Tarsha, Adam McArthur, and Abigail Blythe about their roles as Kafka Hibino, Reno Ichikawa, and Kikoru Shinomiya, the three main characters in the series.

All three actors are not strangers to anime, having played other characters on the Crunchyroll roster with an impressive range. The difference is in Kaiju No. 8, their characters are adults instead of kids who sometimes have funny, squeaky voices. The characters all grew up with trauma, loss, and grief while at the same time, it's a breezy action series about punching monsters and saving the world through the power of friendship, as all the Shonen series do.

Nazeeh Tarsha on Playing the Hero in Kaiju No. 8

Kafka, the hero of the series, is a man in his thirties who desperately wants to do something with his life and leave his mark. Then he gets fused with a kaiju and becomes a half-human half-kaiju hybrid that can punch giant kaiju to death, as one does. He becomes so powerful that he becomes designated "kaiju No. 8" on the list of most powerful kaiju and is seen as a potential threat. He has to convince the team that he's one of the good guys.

"Kafka, because he is in his 30s, he's experienced a bit of life," Tarsha said. "He knows what rejection feels like. He knows what complacency feels like. He knows what it is to have aspirations and give up on them and attempt to find inner peace. It sort of reflects my own life in those moments of solitude. For instance, we have a few moments, especially in the first episode, where Kafka is alone in his apartment, and he has his pillow at night, and he's just banging his head into it, wondering what he's doing with himself. As an actor, just trying to break this field, I have those exact same moments so being able to draw on my own experiences. it became sort of a mirror than trying to dig deep and figure out how do I get this emotion? 'Cos it was is already readily available."

Adam McArthur on Playing the Hero's Best Friend

Ichikawa is Kafka's best friend at the training academy, younger than Kafka and more easygoing but still a bit awkward about fitting in. He's a "best friend" archetype in manga and anime, someone who strives to keep up with the hero and be his equal, even after Kafka becomes "Kaiju No. 8".

"I think Ichikawa is actually really comfortable being alone," said McArthur. "He comes across as somebody who maybe hasn't had a lot of friends or a lot of people around him. I think when he's going through training at the Academy, being around a lot of people is new to him. Maybe that's also what has drawn him to Kafka. Kafka's someone who's a little bit older who hasn't achieved the dream that they want, so maybe Ichikawa sees a little bit of himself in Kafka right away."

Abigail Blythe on Playing the Loner Heroine

Kikoru Shinomiya carries the most baggage of all the characters in Kaiju No. 8. Daughter of the leader of the kaiju fighting force, she lives in the shadow of her father as she strives to be the greatest slayer of kaijus in the world. She is the most emotionally guarded character in the story, and the series sees her slowly opening up when she finally makes friends with her teammates.

"I was excited for it because I think it's really interesting playing a character as complex as Kikoru," said Blythe. "She's not necessarily comfortable being alone, but she's used to being alone. Like myself, she is a hyper-independent character. She lost her mother at a very young age, and her father was emotionally absent her entire life, so not only at home but also at school, she is leagues above her classmates, a childhood prodigy. She's not used to having other people she can lean on. She's used to being the best, and when you're all the way up at the top, it's very lonely, and so I think in those moments, like in episode four when she's facing off against Kaiju No. 9, she is alone. When she does inevitably lose both parents, it's a kind of that feeling of "wow, now I am completely and utterly alone." But the great thing about this series is that by meeting Kafka and Renault and all of her team, she's finally finding people she can rely on. It's that found family aspect that is so important and essential to this series and so important to Kikoru because she was never able to really rely on her friends or her family after her mother passed. So she's finally able to do that with her newfound friends, and I love that for her."

Kaiju No. 8 is streaming on Crunchyroll.

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