Voice Recording

It was a fine day in mid-May, the first day of voice recording for the anime version of All About My Little Sister.

They were using the same Tokyo studio as the one Itsuki visited for the drama CD session last November. This being the first session, Itsuki, director Tarui, audio director Takuro Norikura, and producer Oshima all lined up in front of the voice cast to give their greetings, a formality essentially identical to what they did at the drama CD recording.

“All right, let’s test out the cold open and Part A to start.”

After they were done, Norikura gave the signal from the control room, and video began to play on the monitors.

In voice-recording sessions, producers usually carried out audio tests before recording. They’d go through a scene, gauging how each cast member acted, and check to see if they were following the characters’ emotions and directions. After some feedback, they’d then record the actual audio used in the anime.

The script they were using for this session, apart from things like typo fixes, wasn’t terribly different from the screenplay originally submitted; it looked good to Itsuki. That may seem like a given, but it really wasn’t.

In anime, screenplays are used to create storyboards, and storyboards are used to create scripts for voice talent. However, storyboards can and often do change things from the screenplay, usually without the screenwriter’s permission. Sometimes, these alterations were to the point that you almost wondered why professional screenwriters, directors, and series creators spent countless meetings constructing a “final draft” of a show at all. What’s more, even if a storyboard faithfully follows the screenplay, it’s common for it to run too short when cut into episode-sized chunks or for an entire scene to require editing out for time (again, without the screenwriter’s permission).

For All About, Hirugano served both as the main story editor and screenwriter for all the episodes. He was on hand today as well, but for a screenwriter who contributed only a few episodes to an anime show, it’s not uncommon to flip on the TV and exclaim “Why is this completely different from the script I submitted?!”

This script, meanwhile, was top class. And although some of the cast needed a little prompting to get up to speed on their characters—it was half a year since they last played them, after all—they were all real talents, and they could no doubt adapt fast.

“…Too bad we only have animatics to record this with…”

Itsuki couldn’t help but sigh about it after the test was completed and the audio director headed into the booth.

During a recording session, you generally weren’t saying your lines alongside a perfectly animated, full-color video sequence. Instead you had “animatics,” basically animated storyboards. This was black-and-white art, sometimes so sketchy that you needed written names to figure out who the characters were supposed to be, and they’d just be flipping from scene to scene without animating. These scenes were recorded from the storyboards themselves, edited to simulate an episode.

Itsuki recalled that the recordings for Chevalier of the Absolute World relied on animatics from episode one forward as well. It only made him feel gloomier.

“It’s not rare at all to go with animatics from the first session,” Tarui said, laughing as he picked up on Itsuki’s muttered comment. “In fact, it’s rarer to have color animation in time for the recordings.”

“Really?” he replied, honest with his anxiety. “Because it strikes me as something you do when the schedule’s in really bad shape…”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t,” the ever-aloof Tarui stated. “But recording off animatics isn’t a bad omen in and of itself, no. It lets us create art based off the acting afterward, and if there’s a piece of dialogue that won’t fit due to something we overlooked, we can adjust the visuals to match the line, rather than vice versa. Once the animation’s complete, it’s hard to make adjustments after that.”

“Ohhh, right…” Hearing the advantages of this approach calmed Itsuki a little. “And I guess for the voice talent, working with animatics instead of 100 percent complete animation can be easier, huh? Like, they can bring their own interpretation to the acting that way.”

“Yeah, that depends on the individual actor. I mean, schedule or not, though, it’s better to have color art to work with than sketches where you can’t tell who people are, I think. Mentally speaking, I think we all would’ve been far more relieved if we at least had art for the first three episodes done before recording.”

“…So this isn’t a good sign?” Itsuki winced a little. But regardless, recording continued—voices for Part A, testing for Part B, voices for Part B, the “next episode” blurb, and narration for the TV spots. It all went off without a hitch.

Despite Itsuki’s anxieties, he had practically nothing to do in here. He’d just have to count on the hard work of Tarui and the rest of the staff. He said a little prayer for them as he left the studio.