Tag Archives: yurika kubo

One Sick Event: Anime Central 2023

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I’ve been to my fair share of US anime conventions—on the east coast and the west coast and even some international ones—but never in the Midwest. When I heard the news that Kubo Yurika (the voice of Hanayo in Love Live! ) would be attending Anime Central 2023, I decided I had to be there. Call it paranoia, but after one of my favorite character designers and animators, Kimura Takahiro, passed away this year, I’ve started feeling that I shouldn’t let opportunities pass me by.

What I did not expect was to have COVID-19 while at the event—a fact that I wouldn’t find out until later. While my throat was feeling uncomfortable, I had tested negative multiple times before flying out, so I figured it was just a mild cold or something similar that could be contained with good masking. Unfortunately, it turned out to be worse than I thought.

I mention all this for two reasons:

First, as far as I know, I did not spread COVID to anyone at the con—not even my convention roommate who had to hear me coughing and hacking into the night and had to fly next to me. This means that good respiratory masks (KN95, N95, KF94) really, truly work. You are doing yourself and everyone else a favor at conventions and other crowded places.

Second, because I wasn’t feeling great, my experience at Anime Central 2023 was not ideal. Nevertheless, I had a good time, and I think it has to do with the fact that Anime Central still maintains a pretty down-to-Earth feel for a convention.

Basics

Anime Central 2023 took place May 19–21  at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, Illinois, just a 35-minute car ride from Chicago O’Hare airport. With multiple hotels connected to the convention center through a system of enclosed overpasses, you can easily get to the convention center itself without stepping outside. Putting aside my own hopelessness when it comes to directions, plenty of signage makes it difficult to get lost in those above-ground tunnels.

The con had a certain feel I would describe as very 2006. That’s not an insult either, as I actually prefer my conventions to not be polished to the point of rubbing out any quirks. The way Anime Central manages to get big guests while still feeling very fan-run is reminiscent of my favorite anime cons.

The Kubo Yurika Experience

One of the big highlights of the con is the fact that I got to interview Kubo. That came with a caveat: Talking with her had to be under the pretense that we would be focusing on the game A Light in the Dark, for which she and Ichinose Kana (Suletta Mercury from Gundam: The Witch from Mercury) provided voices. The result still provided a good deal of insight into their careers and approaches to voice work.

I also attended her panel, and it was a joy to see her interacting with the audience as fans gushed over her. One person in particular mentioned that having an earbud accidentally get stuck in her ear while watching Love Live! inadvertently helped her doctor realize that she had a tumor—which means Love Live! saved her life. The biggest takeaway I had from all this is that it’s wonderful to see such a large gathering of Hanayo fans.

Kubo was also doing a couple signing sessions and meetings with fans, but my condition that weekend basically made it impossible for me to wait the hours needed to get something. While I have some regrets about that, the positives outweigh the negatives.

Interviews

You can find my Q&As with guests at Anime Central, including with Kubo and Ichinose, here: 

Kubo Yurika & Ichinose Kana

Tabata Hisayuki (includes extensive discussion about Kimura Takahiro)

Tanaka Rie

Panels

I didn’t get to attend as many panels as I would have liked, but the ones I saw were all good in their own ways. Tadokoro Azusa made for a lively guest eager to answer questions from the audience, and I was glad to hear people ask her about her time as Kiriya Aoi in Aikatsu! Helen McCarthy’s panels on the late Matsumoto Leiji and the history of cosplay both took deep dives into humble origins, and I recommend sitting in on any of her talks if you have the chance. And then there was “Kani-me 2: Crabs of Anime,” which struck a decent balance between crowd-pleasing antics and being informative. As someone who once co-ran a panel called “Such Dog, Much Anime, Wow,” I felt a connection.

Food Scarcity

Now here’s a downside: Compared to other cons I’ve been to, getting meals can be inconvenient. While there is an entertainment area nearby that has a number of restaurants, there aren’t a ton of options for quick eats or delivery. Normally, I wouldn’t mind traveling to Chicago proper to get my fill, but because I didn’t have the stamina, I had to make do with what was available. The food truck situation was pretty dire, in that there were literally only two, and they were run by the same people. The different hotels provide options at hotel prices, and the Convention Center “ramen” was more like a lo mein cosplaying its Japanese cousin. Supermarkets and grocery stores are also hard to come by without a car. In other words, it’s best to pack some snacks and more nutritious options in your luggage if you plan to go.

Final Thoughts

Attending Anime Central 2023 was an exception of sorts for me, and regardless of the quality of the event itself, I can’t say if I’ll be able to go back next year. However, it gave me plenty of reasons to consider the possibility, and hopefully I’m not suffering from a once-in-a-lifetime plague by then.

For those in and around the Chicago area, it might just become your go-to regional con, but I get the feeling that you already know that better than I do.

Anime Central 2023 Interview: Kubo Yurika and Ichinose Kana

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Kubo Yurika and Ichinose Kana were at Anime Central 2023 to promote the game A Light in the Dark. Kubo is best known for her role as Koizumi Hanayo in Love Live!, and Ichinose is currently voicing Suletta Mercury, the protagonist of Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury.

I also had the chance to ask Kubo a question specific to Love Live! during her fan panel, which I’ve included at the end of the main interview. 

You’re both here at ACen because of your role in the visual novel A Light in the Dark. What are your most memorable experiences being involved with this game?

Do you mean during the recording?

Yes.

Kubo: Personally, this was during a time when I had a lot to record, so my sessions went on for days. My character, Mysterious Girl, goes through a lot of difficulties, and I was going through a lot of difficulties in my real life as well. So that overlapped, and I really realized that my life can be so easily influenced during recording.

Ichinose: By the roles you play?

Kubo: Yes, yes! That’s it! There’s a part of me that can be hurt quite a bit.

Ichinose: Oh, wow.

Kubo: So my memorable experiences tend to be about the heaviness of the role I play.

Ichinose: For me, I like playing serious roles, and my role hit close to heart. My character starts off very reticent, but there was still a lot of emoting involved. I do like heavy roles—and it was still heavy—but I still enjoyed it.

-How have your experiences playing characters such as Hanayo from Love Live! and Ichigo from Darling in the Franxx influenced the way you play your characters in A Light in the Dark? 

Kubo: So for both of us, it probably wouldn’t just be the roles from the works you mentioned—they’re all opportunities for growth as actors.

Ichinose: These are genuine experiences that contributed to our breadth of expression.

How do you balance playing multiple characters at once and keeping track of them?

Kubo: As for keeping track of roles, I think all the characters we’ve played so far don’t necessarily influence who we play in the moment. We just get into the role and do it that way. 

Ichinose: And since all the roles are so heavy in A Light in the Dark, resetting the emotions and getting out of the characters tends to be a bit of a challenge. But at the same time, as we work professionally, we do get ingrained with an emotional switch, or an acting switch, where we switch between roles in a very natural way.

Kubo: Yes, you’re right!

How does recording for a visual novel compare with other types of voice work?

Ichinose: Compared to recording for other types of video games, in other games, it’s more typical to do small voices like “Yah!”

Kubo: And “Hah!”

Ichinose: Yeah, and “Hah!” But there is a much longer story in A Light in the Dark, and there is much more emotional continuity. Depending on the recording, we might be skipping chapters, so we have to keep track of the continuity of the story and also the emotions. 

Kubo: But there are also branching paths in the story where the user has to select which path to go, and we have to be aware of the pre-selection emotion as well as which path the user chose.

Ichinose: One dialogue path would end, and then we’d have to do a different dialogue path.

Kubo: The level of tension and excitement would have to change too. It’s one of the fun and interesting things about the project.

Ichinose: I would sometimes have to rewind the emotional state of the character and go back. 

Kubo: Right!

That general area is part of the difficulty.

What inspired you to become a voice actor, or get into the entertainment industry in general?

Kubo: I started as a model for teenage magazines, but even before then, I was always watching anime and reading manga. While modeling, I was starting to wonder if I was unfit for the job, whereas I could always enjoy anime and manga. So I always wanted to take on the challenge if I ever had the opportunity. I did tell my agency that’s what I wanted to do, but they told me off that it’s not such an easy thing. They didn’t outright oppose what I said, but they said it’s not easy. When I got the role for Love Live!, though, that was my foot in the door into a career as a voice actor.

Ichinose: When I was in grade school and kindergarten I always loved watching anime, and my life more or less involved watching anime. I did play with my friends, but if I were at home, I’d spend pretty much the whole day watching anime. As I watched anime and loved anime, my thoughts turned towards the casts in anime, towards the voice actors, and eventually I would think that I wanted to get involved in the world of these various animation stories. So when it came time to choose a future for myself, one day I went to an open campus at a voice acting school, where I got my determination to go into voice acting.

For my three years in high school, I worked part-time and saved so I would have the money to pay for my own tuition for voice acting school. I paid my way through, did my audition, and got a role. So I started from a love of anime, refined my voice, and tried it out. I have the person who encouraged me to go into voice acting back then, who told me I had a chance, to thank.

Is there anything about your performances as Mysterious Girl and Young Girl that you’re especially proud of? 

Ichinose: What do you mean by that?

In the sense of, did you think you felt you had performed well, and can look back and say “I did a really good job here?”

Kubo: For my role as Mysterious GIrl, there is a portion in the latter half of the game where she goes through an emotional explosion. I played that part thinking, “I could lose my voice tomorrow, but I’ll go through with it.” If you can experience that scene, I would be very happy.

Ichinose: My character gets a little bit closer to the main character in the middle of the story, and she begins to open up and start talking about her dreams and aspirations—like how she would like to eat sweets. Normally, that’s the kind of dream that’s easily realizable if you have the money for it, but the girls grew up in an environment where that’s not something they could afford.

How is it to play a character who didn’t have something that was so ordinary and common for normal people? That was my challenge. So this is a serious title, but there are these small slivers of hope that my character can aspire towards, and if that kind of nuance gets through to the player, I think my acting will be rewarded.

Thank you!

Bonus: Extra Question for Kubo Yurika from the Previous Day’s Fan Panel

I love the way that you portray Hanayo’s shyness and intensity. My question is: I noticed your performance of her evolved over time; what changes did you make to playing Hanayo over the years?

Kubo: It wasn’t like I really changed my approach to Hanayo—more like as the years went by, Hanayo saw more of her character, experienced more, as did I personally. I think that’s kind of what led to that natural evolution. I wasn’t very conscious of it at all.