Anime Trending had the opportunity to interview Kyle McCarley, a guest of honor at FanimeCon 2023. McCarley hosted a Q&A panel which discussed his recent roles in reprising 9S in the anime version of NieR: Automata Ver1.1a. His recent video game roles are Alm from Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, the fan favorite Gatekeeper from Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Fire Emblem: Heroes, and Ei Sekigahara from 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim.
In addition to talking about NieR: Automata Ver1.1a, McCarley touched on the recent challenges in the dubbing industry, such as transparency in voice acting, and how the Writers Guild of America strike has impacted the industry as a whole.
You can find the full recording of this interview on the Anime Trending Podcast. (Interview begins @ 24:35)
Reprising 9S and the Challenges of Dubbing in Anime vs. Video Games
McCarley plays the android 9S in NieR: Automata, which was originally a video game released in 2017 and has now received an anime adaptation NieR Automata Ver1.1a. Between these two adaptations, McCarley reveals valuable insight about how different it is to record for both anime dubs and for video game localization.
According to McCarley, one of the main differences is that anime dubbing still uses the “three beep method,” where the script and the completed Japanese version is shown to the actors. The line is previewed before, then muted, and the dubbing begins.
McCarley: “You’re looking at the script on one screen and you’re looking at the picture on another screen and kind of learning to do a little bit of ‘patting the head and rubbing the stomach at the same time’ because you’re trying to act while also making sure that everything fits in the timing and everything. A lot of times there’s a lot of finagling that has to happen, so it’s a very technical art form.”
While this method works for anime dubs, video game localizations require a completely different process, despite seeming like similar projects at first glance.
“Video game localization is a completely different beast [from dubbing] because we’re never looking at anything that’s even close to finished.
We’re looking at a script and that’s about it, and we’re being given context from a director who is being given context from somebody on the client side who has seen some stuff that’s already been done, but they’re localizing things themselves. Like, they are taking the original Japanese and then translating it, and then trying to make it sound natural in English.
From a performance standpoint, you have a lot more freedom because your timing constraints are like, ‘We need to be within half a second on length of the Japanese’ or something along those lines. You’re not worried about what it’s going to look like because you don’t know what it’s going to look like, they’ll figure that out later.”
When reprising 9S in NieR Automata Ver1.1a, McCarley had a much different experience. He brings with him knowledge of the series that has grown since Nier: Automata’s release in 2017.
“The whole recording process has been very interesting for me because now I’m the expert in the room on this material. The first time around, Wendee Lee, who is still our director across the board, didn’t play the game. Wendee was getting her cues from the client that was the expert in the room, guiding us through the whole story and everything and making sure we were staying true to Yoko Taro’s vision and adapting things into English and everything.
There’s a lot of information as the actor you’re discovering things as you need to. Like, they are explaining things as is necessary because if they try to give you the summary of the entire story at the start of the session, you tune out, you lose it, so they reveal things as you go through.”
The NieR franchise, along with many of Yoko Taro’s works, is known for its rich, complicated story that rewards players who take their time exploring the game. Having both recorded for the original game and played through it, McCarley explains how the tidbits of lore has assisted him in recording for NieR Automata Ver1.1a’s dub.
“In addition to all those little technical differences between adapting a video game and then adapting finished animation, there’s an artistic difference because now I’m intimately familiar with the story because in addition to having recorded it all at once, I played through the whole game, including Drakengard 3.
There have been several times throughout recording this anime because they’re peppering in little things that weren’t in the game, and several times where I go, ‘Oooooh, that’s cool because of this, this, that, and the other thing!’ and Wendee’s like, ‘Thank you for that because I would have no idea!'” (laughs)
One aspect of the anime adaptation that really cements this idea is the creative decision to foreshadow more aspects of 9S’s character much earlier in the plot. To many, 9S comes off as aloof, cheerful, and joking in the face of constant warfare. However, for those intimately familiar with the plot, there are many signs that 9S harbors much darker and more violent thoughts behind his mask. McCarley notes that the anime seems to be meant for people who already know the story, and that many hints and foreshadowing in NieR Automata: Ver1.1a’s script are meant to expose the video game audience to new material and experiences.
“You pepper in those little things to try and help give them a little bit of that like, “Oooooh I know what’s coming!” because I feel like it’s a different experience this time around, and I think it’s really interesting the way that the anime creators are steering, retelling, a story that people already know, and adding in some foreshadowing that wasn’t there the first time around.”
In addition to the differences between anime dubbing and video game localization, McCarley also expands on the concept of remote dubbing, which came about as a necessity of the COVID-19 pandemic, and dubbing production changed dramatically as a result.
According to McCarley, voiceover work transitioned entirely into home studios for two years, and for many actors, the challenge was finding proper technology to both record and send quality audio to the production staff. Many challenges came up and complicated the process of audio engineering because of the audio and visual desync when recording. He describes creating a guessing game of trying to figure out where the actor should start and end, as well as correcting any complicated lines on the fly. All of this adds complexity to the overall process.
“I feel like remote dubbing takes at least twice as long as recording in a studio. That’s just a fact of the way that things work, because when you’re recording stuff on your end, looking at the video, and it all looks more or less the same that it would in studio when you’re recording it, but on the other side of things where the engineer is laying it down alongside the actual finished picture, they’re hearing it one to two to three, to maybe sometimes five seconds late because of the limitations of the way technology works.”
Currently in 2023, more studios are requiring in-person recording sessions again. However, while dubbing does best in-person, not all voicework in other industries require in-person recording.
“For other types of voiceover, it still delays things a little bit, but not nearly as much. And that’s why some stuff is still doing remote work that wouldn’t have been pre-pandemic. Yeah, it’s just a different landscape than it was four years ago.”
Voicing Ei Sekigahara in 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim & Other Characters during COVID-19
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is a unique sci-fi adventure game that features 13 playable protagonists and allows the player to experience events completely out of order, and it is up to the player to piece together the entire story from these 13 perspectives. This story jumps between the past, present, and future across numerous plot twists that have the player re-examining their previous paradigms throughout this experience.
Due to the sheer size and complexity of the story, having a voice actor know all the aspects is logistically impossible for a video game localization. McCarley explains the obstacles of recording for his character, Ei Sekigahara, while examining the overarching script and his character’s quirks.
“We started with Ei’s story, like the parts of the games where you play as Ei, that’s what we recorded first. And most of that, at least the first half of that, he has amnesia. He doesn’t know what in the world’s going on!”
Throughout the recording sessions, the staff began questioning their understanding of the script and slowly shared their revelations about the story, almost exactly how future players would come to tackle the game’s mysteries.
“Once we finished all of the stuff where you play as Ei, then we went back and started peppering in all of the scenes that come up in other characters’ stories. So it was a lot of stuff that was like, ‘Wait, when does this happen compared to what we did here?’ And like, ‘How much does he know now compared to what he knew at the end of this section?’
There’s a whole lot of like, ‘How much do I know here, and how much do I need to know to give you the performance that conveys that I know what I’m talking about even though I don’t have any idea what I’m talking about.’ (laughs)
I’m sure there were moments throughout the recording process where we made a discovery and we had to go back to re-record.”
Although 13: Sentinels was released in the West during the pandemic, all voiceover recording for the localization had been completed in 2019. As a result, McCarley began recording pickups during the pandemic, which were smaller sessions that followed up larger projects and could be recorded in both professional and home studios without much difficulty. As the workflow became more streamlined, larger and larger projects were recorded entirely in home studios. McCarley recounts a particular instance of recording in his home studio for Cells At Work: Code Black!
“The entirety of Cells At Work: Code Black! — which was a Netflix series in which I voiced the protagonist Red Blood Cell — was all done in my home studio. In fact, I had two different sessions. We adopted a pandemic puppy in January of 2021, and I had two sessions on Cells at Work! that I had to cancel in the middle of the session because that dog got into something he shouldn’t have and I had to rush them to the vet. Two different sessions, same project!”
McCarley also talks about the ongoing labor and production issues in the dubbing industry, which is featured in part 2 of this interview and on the Anime Trending Podcast.
