Reddit AMA Recap: Kira Buckland talks Voice Acting!

 

Recently, Kira Buckland did an AMA on Reddit to discuss her relatively brief time as a professional voice actor. Buckland started her career as far back as 2004, voicing for various radio dramas and flash animations, but was a consistently strong fan of anime prior to dubbing for it starting in the late 2000’s and going to voice Izumo Kamiki in “Blue Exorcist”, 2B in “NieR: Automata”, and Reimi in “Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure”. Most recently, she played Kyoko in “River City Girls”.

On having a preference between anime dub acting and video game voice acting:
I love doing both, but I’m really partial to video games. There are a couple reasons for this. One is that with video games, we tend to have less timing restrictions compared to anime where we have to match picture exactly. Another reason is that video games are an interactive experience, so I feel like people tend to get more “involved” in the story.

On goals she hopes to accomplish as a voice actor:
I am already fortunate enough to have accomplished my #1 goal which was to be a playable character in a fighting game, so I guess I will choose the more ‘boring’ answers and just say that I hope to continue to have sustainable work well into the future, and that I can work on more media that will have a lasting impact. I’d also like to voice act for toys and arcade games.

On challenges of being both a cosplayer and a voice actor:
I think a big challenge for me when cosplaying is the body shaming I get for not being conventionally thin and attractive. There’s definitely more appreciation for different body types in cosplay these days, but I know I’ve gotten my fair share of nasty comments saying “well I thought her character was hot until I saw what she looked like…” That type of thing isn’t ever okay for people to say to a woman, or to anyone in general for that matter.
But to keep this on a positive note, my favorite part about cosplay is doing makeup. I am passionate about makeup and always learning!

On her favorite character to voice:
It’s hard to choose just one of course – there are different characters I loved playing for different reasons. 2B is obviously a very special character to me, but so are Reimi and Talim and Trucy in different ways. And then there are characters I just had a blast with like Mary Saotome.

On how she gets into character:
Since the grand majority of projects I work on are localized media, many times we get to hear the voice in the original language (usually Japanese). I generally try to stay true to the voice and portrayal from the original language as much as possible unless directed otherwise. Aside from that, the director and/or clients usually give us some context about the character and the universe of the project that I can use to inform my choices. Most voice acting is “cold reading” so I don’t get to study scripts in advance or anything like that; we just have to rely on our acting instincts a lot in the booth and the directors are also there to help with that. It’s a big part of why having acting training is really important, but you learn a lot on the job as well.

River City Girls is now available on Steam.