Anime Cast Comment Translations

The official site for the upcoming anime features comments from the voice artists for Saitama, Genos, Sonic, and Tornado, so I figured that I’d translate them.  Someone out there might have translated them already (I didn’t really check), but I wanted to translate them myself, for practice if nothing else.  Practice for what?  The heck if I know.

I’ll do the ones from One and Murata later (now those ones I’m almost positive have already been translated).  Anyway:

Makoto Furukawa, voice of Saitama

A friend of mine read the original manga before I did, so it had caught my eye for a while.  When I finally sat down and read it, I thought the series was an incredible breath of fresh air.  It’s got an episodic story made up of short chapters, and at the end Saitama always beats the enemy in one punch, but despite being so simplistic it’s also loads of fun.

My first impression of Saitama was “he’s infinitely strong!”  No matter his opponent, he always takes them down with a single blow, so I’m a bit nervous about whether I can actually handle the role.  There’s such a whacking great gulf between his daily life and when he fights that you wonder whether or not he really is this all-powerful hero.

At first Genos seemed like this cool, rival-type character, but he turned out to be very earnest, and treated Saitama as his master, while doing everything he could to become stronger in his own straightforward way.  Ishikawa is earnest and straightforward like that too, so he’s perfect for Genos.  Although unlike Genos, Ishikawa actually has a sense of humor.

I’ll do my best to respect the gulf between Saitama’s one-punch victories and his boneheaded-ness in everyday life, so be sure to check it out!

Kaito Ishikawa, voice of Genos

Since the protagonist of One-Punch Man is the mightiest hero, someone who always wins with a single blow, you’d think that someone that powerful must also have an outstanding sense of justice.  So it’s incredibly surreal when he says that he just does it all for fun, which is what makes him seem like a new, unprecedented sort of hero.

When I first saw Saitama, I thought his face just looked like a rough doodle (laughs).  But then I got a shock when I saw the cover for the first graphic novel volume: he looked completely bad-ass.  Murata always throws in really intricate details, so even though he looks so cool on the cover, ordinarily Saitama looks very simple.  Murata has said that Saitama is the hardest to draw; since he has so few distinguishing features, it makes arranging them in a balanced way difficult.  Now that I know that, my impression of Saitama has changed somewhat.  Furukawa himself is a very serious person, always mindful of his surroundings.  Since Genos calls Saitama his master, I guess I’d better learn a lot from Furukawa.

At first glance Genos seems like a bad guy, and I thought maybe he’d be Saitama’s rival, but as I read on I found out he was actually a decent, earnest person.  I think he’s the kind of character where even though occasionally he’ll blurt out a harsh comment, for some reason you never hold it against him.  I’ll do my best to try and convey that with my performance.

Since us two leads are both young, character-wise I want to make this a series where we all join hands.  I hope we can create a good atmosphere with the rest of the cast, and have that come across in the show itself.  Look forward to it!

Yuki Kaji, voice of Sonic

Congratulations on One-Punch Man getting turned into a TV anime!  When I read the original, the story unfolded with such an individualistic flare that I couldn’t stop turning the pages.  Even though Sonic’s supposed to be handsome, there’s also something a bit unfortunate about him…so now that I’m playing him, I’m definitely looking forward to the recording sessions!  I want to have fun playing the part, to help portray the character even more charmingly.  Look forward to the day when Sonic and all the other characters move and speak!

Aoi Yuki, voice of Tornado 

I’m totally thrilled!  I was glad when I saw the news that they were making it into an anime, but I never thought I’d be involved myself!  I’ll give it everything I’ve got in order to not ruin Tornado’s utterly cool image as being small yet all-powerful, and to make her come alive even more!