David Matranga Interview at Anime Riverside 2023

The second Anime Riverside was in full swing over the weekend of May 27th and 28th. Special guest voice actors were in attendance for fans to meet and receive autographs. Among those talented guests was David Matranga. We spoke with him about his voice acting career.

David Matranga Interview

David Matranga is known for being the English voice actor for numerous anime characters, including Shoto Todoroki (My Hero Academia), Nicholas Wolfwood (Trigun Stampede), Rei Suwa (Buddy Daddies), and Bertholdt Hoover (Attack on Titan).

Trigun Stampede is not a shot for shot remake of the 1998 Trigun. We asked David Matranga is he was familiar with the original before recording for Wolfwood. He said:

“So I was familiar with it. I had seen some of the manga. I had seen clips and things of the original, classic anime. And I knew what it was…what it meant to anime and, you know, the following that it had. But I had not…I hadn’t read the manga. I hadn’t watched all of the anime. And I’m kind of glad now about that. […] I knew they were different, you know, retellings, and I didn’t want — I wanted to make sure it was an original take.”

Buddy Daddies is an original anime, which means there is no source material such as a manga. We asked David what it was like recording for the role of Rei versus other characters who have a manga to reference. He said:

“With this, you know, Shawn Gann who is the director of Buddy Daddies, he did an amazing job. We had such a great time working off of each other, and we both have similar backgrounds. And we played with the comedic timing…we take a lot from the Japanese voice actors, too, based on [the] characters. Any time I’m recording a scene from anime, we always watch or preview the scene in Japanese. So I get an idea of what the Japanese voice actor did.”

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