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Gerald’s out sick, so courtesy of the Florida Anime Experience (May 24-26 in Orlando, FL) here’s an interview conducted with two of their guests, the dangerous acting duo of Michael McConnohie and Melodee M. Spevack. Rest assured: you’ve heard their work, so click that download link up above and BECOME A PART OF US.
- If we wanted to take the easy way out, we would have just looked at the IMDB pages for Michael and Melodee and asked questions based on that.
- Instead, we relied on our own memories as well as a copy of Adventures in Voice Acting, which both Michael and Melodee make brief appearances in.
- The new issue of Otaku USA magazine is out. As supplemental pieces to his print articles, Daryl has web articles on Getter Robo: Armageddon and New Getter Robo. Relevance to this episode, you wonder? Michael McConnohie was the voice of Benkei in New Getter Robo! BOOM
- Michael’s advice on becoming a voice actor. We didn’t bother asking about this stuff since EVERYBODY asks people that, and honestly we want to know about the other stuff anyway!
- A behind the scenes look at the Conan stage show. Youtube actually has a full video of the stage show in two parts, but it’s from 1990 and WE NEED THE 1983-1984 VERSION.
- We couldn’t remember, but the Japanese voice of Debonair in Season 2 of Magic Knight Rayearth (still no remastered set for Season 2, just Season 1) is a lady named Atsuko Takahata. She mostly works in live-action.
- You know what else we can’t remember? What the eff went down in Isaac Asimov’s books. Foundation something, Norby something. All that we can remember are the Laws of Robotics and The Last Question. (PS: go read that if you never did)
- Oh man, we didn’t even have TIME to get into their sci-fi fan films. They’ve also done Star Trek fan films. (And YOU thought that was just a Vic Mignogna thing!) Those intrigued may watch Melodee wreak havoc here and see Michael decked out as a space alien here.
- The majority of sentences spoken by Daryl in this episode were indeed some variation of Shin’s lines of dialogue in the Streamline dub of Fist of the North Star. Try as he may, he could not work in the accidental poem “Hello Ken / How nice to see you again / How have you been?” or end a sentence with the phrase “…but I never finished the book.”
- Those tags exist for a reason, but for ease of access here are our old interviews with Richard Epcar and Steve Blum, both of whom were mentioned this episode.
- And yes, we did forget to talk more about Carl Macek. Fortunately, we did do the In Memory of Carl Macek panel with Tony Oliver at Anime Festival Orlando (and then with Richard Epcar at…was it Otakon?), and somebody has that recorded to video. Wonder if Harmony Gold ever finished that tribute video they were putting together…
Wicked interview! Thanks a lot for making this happen. 🙂
Those two voice actors are so amazing. Them speaking to each other is entertaining enough for me to listen to.
Fascinating and intelligent interview! Fun and entertaining even for those that don’t have an in depth familiarity with anime. Loved it.
Great interview! Although….I forgot that Clarissa was a part of it, until about 8 minutes before it was over…anyway, great show as always!
As the only person whose favorite part of the show was Southern Cross, it was amazing to hear the voice of the Colin Powell of Robotech. It occurred to me that many U.S. voice actors don’t have that presence just in their ordinary conversational voices the way Michael does, but that’s true of many live-action actors as well.
I thought Melodee’s advice that if you want to be a voice actor, you should get involved in acting, period, was excellent, and it’s also practical advice for students, since most schools and colleges have drama clubs and it’s something they can do now, instead of only dreaming about it. Clarissa, I think, pays some attention to stage adaptations of manga in Japan, and I wonder if she’s aware of any such fan stage groups in America. That would be an interesting con event, to put on a stage adaptation (even if only one act) of an anime or manga–I don’t mean as a skit in a masquerade, but as a dedicated event. Maybe someone’s already doing it. Melodee explaining the benefits of physical training in voice acting (for example, to express convincingly a reaction to getting hit) was also intriguing.
It was interesting to hear Melodee’s praise of the seiyuu for Lady Debonair, and her regret that there don’t seem to be as many dramatic villainness roles these days. Maybe moe has reduced those roles somewhat, but I’m certain such characters are still around. I’m not sure I agree entirely with Michael’s view of there being a limited number of types of character voices in anime; on one hand, the language barrier might work against noticing the subtleties in variation–but on the other hand, Michael, as a professional actor, may notice commonalities in the performances that even seiyuu fans don’t.
They sound really fun, that was just nice to listen to y’know?
It truly is a small world. When I visited Universal Studios in 1986 I SAW that Conan Show in 1986 and never forgot it. I’m assuming the cast regularly rotated given that there were umpteen performances a day, but still one heck of a coincidence. And yes, I do have pictures.
Hello AWO, I’m from Brazil and I’ve been catching up with your episodes since I’ve discovered the podcast a year ago. It’s pretty much one of the best podcasts I’ve ever listened to, be it anime or non-anime related.
But this episode in special has to be one of the best pieces of audio I’ve ever heard. Michael’s and Melodee’s work is also very familiar to me, because here in Brazil, on early VHS days, the rental stores here used to receive a lot of foreign material. I was a child then, so I watched a lot of cartoons and even some anime which featured their voices.
Thank you very much for this episode. I’m a musician by trade, so I will listen to it some dozen times more, since there is much to be learned from these mega artists.
Keep up the good work as always!
I couldn’t help it, Melodee – I’ve only heard you from Cowboy Bebop recently, so all I could see was http://cowboybebop.wikia.com/wiki/Victoria_Terpsichore
[I almost deleted this for spam since if you give fake emails your comment goes to moderation. We’ve been getting hundreds of spam posts lately so I am kind of glazing over and automatically deleting most things in the “hold for review” pile at this point, especially when the name is “anon” or “anonymous” or whatever. Also: “recently”? Cowboy Bebop is from like, 15 years ago now! –Daryl]
Just wanted to say as a random first time listener this was a great podcast with some awesome guests. I will definitely be checking out more episodes.