Featured image courtesy of Crunchyroll.

Virtual Crunchyroll Expo draws near and organizers gave us a special opportunity to interview some of their special guests. Patrick Seitz is one known to many fans in both the anime and video game industries for his powerful and sometimes menacing voice. He performs as the English versions of “My Hero Academy” Endeavor, “One Piece” Franky, and Raul Creed from “Ergo Proxy”. Seitz also adapts Japanese scripts for English dubs including the recent Netflix series “Aggretsuko” and he directed and wrote the dub script for “Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day”.

Is there a secret to Dio’s voice? Did your theater experience help with your performance?
Patrick Seitz: “My theater experience definitely helps in portraying Dio. In a sense, I feel like Dio is on stage at all times.  There’s a certain theatricality and fulsomeness that he affects in everything he does.  A villain has to be pretty bad to earn that level of grandeur, and I’m thankful that Dio is tall enough to ride that ride.”

Are there any differences between directing for a video game than for an anime series?
Seitz: “Game directing moves at a much faster pace (except for the cutscenes, which you basically treat like anime directing, in terms of the pacing and attention to detail/lip-flap).  A lot of times in-game directing, you get two or three takes of a cue back-to-back, pick your favorite, and move right along.  Especially with open-world games, a lot of the dialogue can’t be too bespoke, because you’re not having set-piece conversations so much as you’re laying down dialogue that could occur in any number of scenarios.  Also, just owing to the amount of material, a lot of time it’s not feasible to play an actor in off of the other character’s dialogue the way you would with anime (if the other person has already recorded).  With video game recording, actors generally have to rely on the director to keep them honest to a greater degree, since they’re spending less time with their character and have less innate context for what’s going on.”

Was there a character you voiced that resonated with you?
Seitz: “Almost all of them, to a greater or lesser degree!  You have to find something relatable or laudable or otherwise familiar in any character you voice, or else it’s going to sound like you’re keeping them at arm’s length—and that’s the kiss of death, performance-wise.”

We thank both Patrick Seitz and V-CRX for taking the time to coordinate and talk with us online.

Seitz’s panel “A Conversation with Patrick Seitz” will be on V-CRX Day One, Sept. 4th from 12:30-1:15PM PST on the Hime Stage according to the event’s page. He will further discuss his over two decades of experience in the industry with host Mario Bueno. To learn more including where to register for V-CRX for free, head over to V-CRX’s website.