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Gaogaigar, Godannar, and Gundam X: Kakazu Yumi Otakon 2024 Interview

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Kakazu Yumi is a voice actor arguably best known for her role as Yuffie Kisaragi in the Final Fantasy franchise. I had the opportunity to interview her at Otakon 2024, where my questions focused primarily on her work in mecha anime. 

One actor you seem to work with pretty often is Hiyama Nobuyuki, such as in Gaogaigar, Godannar, and even Initial D. Do you have any fun memories of performing alongside him?

Thank you for coming to this interview. I’ve been a fan for many years, and I want to start off by asking about one role I know you for that others might not think about: Shizuru in Godannar. Do you recall what it was like working on that series, and how you approached the character?

Kakazu: Shizuru is a very grounded, very mature character, and she was also a commanding officer. It is a characteristic that’s unlike me, so I tried to perform that part when I was voice acting.

Another staff member who was on Godannar was Kimura Takahiro, who recently passed away. He also worked on another series that you were involved with: Gaogaigar FINAL. Did you ever get to know him, and do you have any memorable stories about him?

Kakazu: Actually, Kimura-san came to visit the studio when we were recording, and we also spoke together on stage. At the event, he tried to apply his own makeup, but he had never done it before, so he asked, “Kakazu-san, can you help me with this?” So behind the stage, I was doing it for him.

I never knew that he cosplayed! Do you remember who he cosplayed as?

Kakazu: I think he had a white wing…? Or maybe it was Shishioh Guy. I forget.

On the topic of Gaogaigar, you returned to the role of Renais a few years ago in Super Robot Wars 30. What was it like playing Renais back when you first worked on FINAL, and did anything change for you playing the role over the years in SRW?

Kakazu: Not a lot changed.

Related to that, I was actually at the Final Fantasy panel earlier, and you mentioned playing Yuffie since Ehrgeiz. So, similar question: Do you think your performance has changed, or has it been pretty solid throughout?

Kakazu: I said this on stage, but when I first started voicing Yuffie, she was one character in a fighting game. The only sounds she had were “Hahh! Hahh!” type noises.. But over time she’s gotten more chances to speak and more lines, and now she stands alongside the other characters, showing how mainstream she’s become. I’m grateful that I was able to meet Yuffie all the way back in the beginning, and also even more grateful to the people who have supported her up until now.

Another anime you worked on is a series called RahXephon, and your character, Hiroko, has a very powerful and tragic death. And do you have any advice for voice actors on how to approach such a challenging scene?

Kakazu: So I remember getting the script when I was recording, and I remember being very focused on reading and trying to understand it. Also, I remember the pain I felt when I was recording. When I’m acting out these tragic scenes, I try to recall my personal experience, and also use my imagination to expand the performance. So maybe this isn’t advice, but I realize that everything I’ve experienced in my life has become a resource that fuels my acting and performance. So maybe the advice I would give another voice actor is to find meaning in everyday life.

You seem to act alongside the actor Hiyama Nobuyuki pretty often. Do you have any fun memories of performing alongside him in any of the shows you worked on together?

Kakazu: I actually have a lot of fun memories with him. When Hiyama would say the line, “GAO! GAI! GAAAAR!,” he would shout the line in a great big voice, and it would reverberate through his entire body. I remember the first day of this recording, he did the line, and the mic actually broke!

Oh, I found the cosplay that Kimura-sensei did. [Shows a picture of Guy from Gaogaigar.]

Ah!

I interviewed the director of Gundam X, Takamatsu Shinji, at Otakon nine years ago. Do you remember what it was like working on that series and playing the character of Sala?

Kakazu: Sala was actually my debut role as a voice actor. She’s actually second-in-command and has an important role, but she’s only 17 years old. So there’s a difference between how she has to behave as second-in-command versus how old she actually is. So it was really difficult to figure out the balance between her age and her having this mature, heavy responsibility as second-in-command. I remember working very hard figuring that out, and this contributed to learning more about voice acting.

Thank you!

Otakon 2015 Interview: Takamatsu Shinji

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This is an interview with director Takamatsu Shinji from Otakon 2015. Takamatsu as worked on many anime including Gundam X, the Brave (Yuusha) series

First question. Most Gundam series had romance but didn’t have it as a strong focus. Gundam X is a series that put the romance at the very forefront, and it was in some ways the main focus. Why was this decision made for this series?

It’ll be a long story!

I wanted to make something that was Gundam but not Gundam. One rule of Gundam X was to get out of Gundam and to be meta about Gundam, to do things that were not like “Gundam.”

Before that, about a decade prior, you worked on Z Gundam and Gundam ZZ. What was your director Tomino Yoshiyuki, and how would compare his style to yours?

Well, I did grow up watching Gundam myself, and by the time I started to work at Sunrise Mr. Tomino was in the position of being a great director, so it was a scary prospect working with Tomino.

During Z Gundam I was production management, so I reported directly to him, and I was scolded by him every single day. There were days when I was scared about everything.

Romi Park is also at this event, and she gave a similar description of Tomino that is not inaccurate compared to yours.

However, Ms. Park worked with Mr. Tomino much later than I did, and if you look at Mr. Tomino at the time of Z Gundam, he really was off the wall.

You’re also very well known for your work on the Brave series, and you worked on many of them. What was the main reason you returned to the Brave series for so many years?

The first director of the Brave series, Yatabe [Katsuyoshi], brought me onto production for the show, and I worked on a little bit of Gundam in between. So, there was a hiatus for me, but otherwise I started from beginning to end for the entire series. And I got my debut as a director from the Brave series, so I am very much fond of the Brave series.

Might Gaine was my debut as a director, so I am particularly fond of it.

In that case, I have an interesting question to follow up with.

The Brave series is known for being very toy and merchandise-heavy but also having good storytelling, as well as in some cases the staff resisting the merchandising aspects of the Brave series. Two famous examples I know are a hidden cel in Goldran which sarcastically talks about it’s supposed to be a robot that’s easy to make into toys, and how Might Gaine’s ending is a criticism of the toy industry.

What were your and the staff’s feelings at the time, and how did the toy companies such as Takara react?

That’s a very deep and vexing question!

So when I was getting started with Might Gaine, I was told that there’s just supposed to be good and bad, and all I had to do was to have toys that featured good guys and bad guys who would just battle. The staff really felt we need to show some kind of resistance, and that that wouldn’t just be the end of the show. And by staff, I mean myself.

You did not work extensively on Gaogaigar, but I have to ask this question. Do you have any details you can share as to why Project Z never got off the ground?

That I don’t know about!

That’s okay! Moving on, another similar series you worked on was Chousoku Henkei Gyrozetter, which was based on an arcade game. How would you compare working on Gyrozetter vs. working on the Brave series?

Gyrozetter was based on a video game, so while the look and feel of the show may be similar to a giant robot show, production of the show was otherwise completely different.

Unlike previous shows, the robots came from video games, so it wasn’t really needed as a tangible object, and I thought we could have done more with that.

I did grow up watching toy merchandise-based shows and I did think about what if the robot were a toy, but that wasn’t reflected in the show. That would be my regret. I talked about the resistance to merchandising intent of the toy companies for your earlier question but I actually love toys.

Last question. In regards to Cute High Earth Defense Club Love!, people have talked a lot over the years about the idea of a magical boy series. Whenever anyone brings up magical girls, someone asks, what about magical girls? What was the motivation behind finally putting that into reality?

The producer pitched it to me, and I thought, wouldn’t it be fun to work on something no one’s ever done before? And it turned out to be fun. (laughs)

Thank you!

Thank you.

Tubedubber: Reliving High School By Sitting in Front of a Computer

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In high school I used to hang out in the computer lab after class, where my friends and fellow anime fans would use the school’s T1 connection to download videos of anime openings. After a while we started mixing and matching opening animations. with opening themes in a relatively crude fashion by having two video windows open and playing the video from one with the audio from the other. It was really fun and while I understand that the human mind will just associate any two things together like that, I still enjoy doing it.

For a while I was using Youtube Doubler to approximate the effect, but now I find out there’s something called “Tubedubber” which does exactly what I was hoping for, allowing you to stream the video from one Youtube clip with the sound from another, and it even has enough settings so that you can time it properly.

I particularly enjoyed combining Gundam X with Gaogaigar back in high school. The only flaw is that the audio ends before the video, so your only choice is to pause the video as the song ends. Currently, I’ve gone with something decidedly more patriotic.

Try it out! It’s also a fairly low-level way to make some super basic AMVs.