A Conversation With Trina Nishimura

Interview with an Anime Voice Actor

Welcome to the first instalment in one of the new article series being introduced to The Otaku’s Study – “A Conversation With…”. In this series, I will be sharing the interviews I have with many of the interesting people in the industries this website focuses on – whether they be voice actor, developer or a stage performer. To kick things off I am not starting with a brand new interview, but rather one that I did more than a year ago, back when The Otaku’s Study really went into a hiatus period.

Instalment #1 covers an interview I did with North American anime voice actor Trina Nishimura, who has voiced a number of prominent roles in recent years including Makise Kurisu in Steins;Gate / Steins;Gate 0, Mikasa Ackerman in Attack on Titan, Sohara Mitsuki in Heaven’s Lost Property and Mari Illustrious Makinami in Evangelion 2.0/3.0 among other roles. This interview took place in June 2018, ahead of her appearance at Supanova: Pop Culture Expo in Sydney and Perth.

Just to confirm even though it might be obvious, my questions are in bold while Ms Nishimura’s responses are italicised.


Trina Nishimura - Steins;Gate
Steins;Gate
With Supanova only a couple of weeks away, are you looking forward to your time down under and is there anything you’re particularly looking forward to doing while you’re down here?

I am super excited to be at Supanova again. I have been fortunate enough to have attended other Supanova shows and Daniel and his team do such an amazing job. They’re just such kind people and I can not imagine the amount of work that goes into orchestrating these immense projects and shows. I’m very excited to be invited back and to be able to meet so many new people, new fans in Sydney and Perth and I think I’m looking forward to that the most certainly.

I’m also looking forward to the coffee. I love flat whites. I had my first one in Adelaide, I think four years ago. Every time I come to Australia I bring an extra bag and just stuff it full of coffee, which is weird to check at the end of the trip, but I bring an extra bag and I just fill it full of coffee beans. And I have all of my Christmas presents taken care of for the year.

You have provided your voice to so many iconic anime characters over the years. What’s compelled you to enter and subsequently remain in the voice acting industry all these years?

I’ve been an actor my whole life and I love it. It’s the thing that makes me the happiest. It’s the job that I have always dreamed of. It’s being able to take a character and some words on a page and make it into something that means so much to me and some roles are well received and I’m very fortunate for that. I’m very, very lucky.

To be able to take a piece of art and give it a voice and make it into something that people can relate to is really the honor of my lifetime and the happiest that I am ever. So if you find something that you jump out of bed in the morning for and that you can’t imagine not doing, it’d be crazy to stop. I’m fortunate that I keep auditioning and I keep getting cast and I’m just very, very lucky because at any time a director or a producer could be like, “Well I think we’re done.” I think that that would be fine, but there isn’t any universe that I can see myself in where I’m not performing or making art.

Trina Nishimura - Attack on Titan
Attack on Titan
You have voiced quite a diverse range of characters over the years. How do you go about adapting your voice to each role?

Whenever you are cast or whenever I have been cast in the past, I take that character into consideration, that character’s world and when you audition, you’re provided with a picture of the character and a brief synopsis of the universe that you are auditioning for or the world that that character lives in and character traits. Then you have a few lines and characters are going to sound terribly different depending upon the kind of world they’re in. For example, let’s just take Steins;Gate, right? In Steins;Gate it’s a reality that’s similar to ours now. There’s clean water, there’s electricity, there’re airplanes, they’re getting time travel, there’s Dr Pepper. Then you take a world like Attack on Titan where there is a clear socioeconomic divide. There is more than likely not the cleanest water. They’re gathering firewood so they don’t have electricity.

All of these things are taken into consideration. Then you imagine yourself as that character in that world. What you would sound like, right? So Makise Kurisu in Steins;Gate would sound very different because she’s had all the luxuries that we have been afforded and possibly more than Mikasa Ackerman who hasn’t ever had a cell phone or been to the mall or had a carbonated beverage. You take all of those things into consideration and then you apply it into that character’s traits.

So Makise Kurisu and Mikasa are both headstrong, are both strong, intelligent, empathetic and kind women that are both in their younger years and are late teens and trying to figure out where they fit in society and what their ultimate purpose is. While their character traits are the same and a lot of their basic basal motivations are the same, because of the world they are in, their voices are very different. You take that and then you go and audition with it and then the director either casts you or doesn’t. If they do, then you’re fortunate enough to be able to build on those building blocks and that loose foundation that you auditioned with and fully flesh out a person or a creature or a monster or whatever it is.

Trina Nishimura - Strike Witches
Strike Witches
Over the last few years we have seen a transition from fans needing to wait just several years to watch their favourite anime with the English dub to potentially just waiting weeks through symbol dubbing. In your experience, what has it been like as a voice actor doing simuldubs compared to ADR for a home video release?

It has been drastically different. It’s been gratifying and challenging in different ways. It’s been really nice to be able to know week to week what’s going to happen and not having to wait. For example, we’ll take Attack on Titan. Attack on Titan in season one we had, I think it was 24 episodes, so it was like the first six episodes. I would go in for a large block of time and work with Mike McFarland, the amazing director and be able to really work on Mikasa as a character and the nuances of her voice and who she is and what her motivations are and her drive and really fully flesh it out.

Then there would be a week or two weeks, or three weeks at times, and then we’d do episode seven through 12 and then we’d go back in. In simuldubs being able to go in every week and every week you come in fresh and the sessions are shorter, but you get to know immediately. Waiting during season one between the first week and then having to wait a week or two or three until the next chunk is like, I was just dying to know what’s going to happen to her. Because of the world, like Attack on Titan, I was like, “Is she going to live? Is she going to live?”

Trina Nishimura - El Cazador de la Bruja
El Cazador de la Bruja
As one of many storytelling mediums, is there anything special you think anime offers that other mediums may not?

Yeah. I think that anime as an art form is a very different sort of a venue than say, theatre or westernised cartoons or film, things like that. It’s different in that it’s, in my opinion, a lot more raw. For example if you’d seen the Kill Bill series, there is a very poignant and terrifying and sad depiction of one of the lead characters and what she went through as a child, involving paedophilia basically and the effects of that on a child, as well as the death of her parents. But that was animated in such a way that was more Japanese and leaning towards anime because that director obviously decided upon that.

I don’t know Quentin Tarantino but if I were to guess, it is an avenue that delivered a lot of honesty and terror and beauty in what that character went through in a very short amount of time that people immediately connected with in such a way that, say if it was a westernised animation, it wouldn’t happen the same and it wouldn’t have been as clear in my opinion. Similarly, while I love cartoons of all kinds, let’s just take Family Guy or American Dad or Bob’s Burgers, while they may touch on political, social, economic or environmental issues, if you take an anime series, there are complete and whole anime series that fully flesh out and delve into these really hard topics that people need to talk about, that people need to experience. That at the end of the day is what all art is, is making us as human beings look in the mirror and say, “Socioeconomic disparities between the haves and have nots has become a problem.”

Trina Nishimura - Heaven's Lost Property
Heaven’s Lost Property

The people… for example, in Attack on Titan the people in the outer walls, right, Protected by the outer walls, the have-nots are fodder for these giant naked genital-less creatures and the people in the inner circle, they’re healthy and they’re cleaner and they’re more well dressed and things like that and that’s just the socioeconomic level. Then you get into gender roles in Attack on Titan. The gender roles that are fully explored are very different than other cartoons. Other cartoons might poke fun at it or gender roles or make a comment about what a woman should be or what a man should be. But in Attack on Titan for example, Mikasa Ackerman is a woman and she is the most adept fighter and she’s strong unapologetically and she doesn’t have all the feels.

And Armin is a kid that is a boy and he’s small and he’s not a good fighter and he cries and that’s okay. There’s another character that is not assigned a gender at all. All of those things are explored and the lead male character is a guy that is just angry and he’s so, so angry and just maintaining that level of anger I think epitomises what a lot of people in the world are feeling now, which is this anger about where we are and how to make it better and figuring out as a team, as a community, as a world, as a society, as a country, as whomever, whatever group, how to make it a better world.

I think that anime does that over and over and over again and it’s unapologetic about it. Whereas in American Dad it might be like a quick jab about gender bias and then it’s over and you’re back to something … and don’t get me wrong, I love love Seth MacFarlane, but anime explores stuff in a way that is really interesting and people really connect to and I’m very fortunate again just to be able to be part of it.

Trina Nishimura - The Tower of Druaga
The Tower of Druaga
One more question, what advice do you have for those looking to enter the field of voice acting?

If you would like to be a voice actor, my number one tip is to be an actor. That’s a big part of it. A lot of people come up and they’re like, “Oh, I can do these voices.” And it’s like, that’s great, but unless you understand the fundamentals of acting, then it’s not the best that you can do with Woody Woodpecker. It’s not that anybody knows who that is anymore, but I do. My second tip would be to get comfortable with the word no because as an actor, you’re going to hear the word no over and over and over again. For every 99 nos, that one yes makes it worthwhile. If it truly is your dream and it truly is what you want and what you feel you were born to do, then you’ll do it and you won’t let anyone tell you no.


I know it is well overdue, but thank you very much again for your time Trina Nishimura, and everyone who made this interview possible.

While Supanova: Pop Culture Expo Sydney and Perth 2018 are now well and truly over by more than a year, there are still two more conventions coming up next month. Those in Adelaide will be able to attend their local event November 1st – 3rd at the Adelaide Showground, while the Brisbane event will be held the week after from November 8th to 10th at the Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre. Missed your chance in 2019? More events will be held across Australia in 2020.

Sam
Sam
Founder of The Otaku's Study. I have been exploring this labyrinth of fandom these last fifteen years, and still nowhere close to the exit yet. Probably searching for a long time to come.

See More...