MICHAEL BRADY
The Voice Of Crusher Joe

Michael is a voice actor with Coastal Studios that does dubbing for Animeigo, BanDei, and Media Blasters. He has played the lead role in CRUSHER JOE, and Takuma in ELF PRICESS RANE.

MICHAEL'S CREDITS

CRUSHER JOE, BLUE SUBMARINE NO. 6, MARRIAGE, ELF PRINCESS RANE

Interview taken over the internet. (Nov. 2000)

• HOW DID YOU FIRST GET INTO VOICE ACTING?
  I was commuting back and forth to Wilmington, NC for auditions and acting work, with the film and tv industry that was growing there. I learned that BUBBLEGUM CRISIS had been recorded therw, and was immediately excited. As an anime fan already, I really wanted to persue it. When I met the BGC girls in person, they told me a little about the process. There was little creativity, it was very restricting, the pay wasn't good...it overall wasn't worth it. I wanted to find out for myself, and began looking around. As it turned out, multiple studios had been dubbing anime with varying results. By the time I was inquring, the bulk of the work had been passed to Coastal Carolina Recording. I bugged them for when new projects would start and when auditions would be. It turned out to be CRUSHER JOE, and I ended up making it to callbacks (the second round of auditions) and eventually got cast as the lead in my very first try.
  
  
• WHAT WAS IT LIKE PLAYING AN ICON CHARACTER LIKE CRUSHER JOE?
  Well, I was pleased to find my experience in anime to be different then say, the BGC cast. I was allowed to be creative and try things, where they weren't. You can chalk that up to directors, really. I had a pretty great and trusting director. As far as the iconic status of the character, it was most definitely an attraction. The research I did after being cast gave me a wealth of information...that Crusher Joe was a character from science-fiction novels, not original anime. His connection to the DIRTY PAIR and his recognition in Japan excited me. One of my interests is the history of the hero in literature, and where the influences extended, so Crusher Joe's place in history was of particular focus for me. I wish there had been more animated, so that I could return to the character.
  
  
• WAS IT HARD TO HARD TO KEEP UP WITH MOST OF THE OUTLANDISH LINGO IN ELF PRINCESS RANE?
  Keep up? The truth is that there wasn't any. The seiyuu who originally performed the role just made stuff up as he went, so there's some Japanese, some English, and a lot of pure nonsense. Since none of this was scripted, I had to do the same-make up an entire language from scratch. But since the West is concerned with lip-sync and the East isn't, I had to be well rehersed to get my nonsense to match the moving mouth of the character, and still make it sound like a language. To make things easier on myself, I relied on a little idiosycracy of my voice work, which is to slip in little references to my other science-fiction interests in the dialogue in various places. Listen closely and you can pick some of it out.
  
  
• WHAT ROLES DID YOU HAVE IN BLUE SUBMARINE NO. 6?
  I'm a bunch of little stuff...anonymous crewmen early on, and beast men towards the end.
  
  
• HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT YOUR PERFORMANCE IN MARRIAGE?
  My performance is ok...nothing to be proud of. Recorded at a different studio, it gave me the chance to work with a different director, for perspective. It's not that great an anime, and I didn't get the input or feedback that I was used to where I normally record. I tend to pretend that this one doesn't exist.
  
  
• WHAT IS YOUR STAND ON THE WHOLE 'DUB VS. SUB.' DEBATE?
  'Know It All Fans' are a pain in the @$$. I know this, because I used to be one. It boils down to this: I don't care what you prefer, that's cool. Watch whatever you want in the form that you want it in. What I do have a problem with is the prejudice and racism that comes with anything done after the original Japanese version. And it's exactly that. You can't make mass generalizations about the quality of the dub industry anymore. It's not twenty years ago, and things have improved overall. All you have to do is listen to the Japanese industry professionals who admire and enjoy the American work (sometimes in preference over the original!)...I got into the industry to do work that the fan in me would have wanted to hear. And I'm doing that.
  
  
• HOW IS VOICE ACTING IN ANIME DIFFERENT COMPARED TO DOING IT IN RADIO?
  They are essentially the same, with the same focus and attention to detail, and the fact that they involve a kind of performance that everyone thinks is easy and wants to do (you don't know how many times I've heard at conventions that people want to 'get into' voice acting). But not all voice over work is voice acting. Voice over work is simply the lending of the voice on top of an image, or sometimes done in an audio only form, but doesn't necessarily involve protraying a character.
  
  
• ANY FUTURE ANIME PLANS?
  Just to do more of it, and hopefully get better and better at it as I go.

MICHAEL'S E-MAIL