Los Angeles Comic Con was in full swing during the first weekend of December. Among the special guests signing autographs and interacting with fans was English dub voice actor and director Kyle Phillips. Kyle Phillips talked about his experiences with not only voice acting, but also what it is like directing the English dub of different anime.
Interview with Kyle Phillips
Kyle Phillips is known for being the English dub voice a number of anime characters. Those characters include Denki Kaminari from My Hero Academia, Kineshi Hairo from The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.,Tooru Kishiri from Fire Force, and much more. Kyle has also directed English dub anime, such as One Piece and Sk8 the Infinity.
Kyle talked about how he started directing:
“It wasn’t something I wanted to do until I saw it. So, I started, actually as an audio engineer in 2008. Recorded shows like xxxHolic, One Piece…But then when I saw a director and an actor engaging in this creative process, I was like…all of a sudden, these memories came back! And I was like ‘I think I wan to get into that!’ And just kind of slowly, over time, I worked with Tyler Walker who directed almost all of Fairy Tail. And, basically…I’d be like ‘Hey, like, you trust your lead actors.’ It’s, you don’t want to say it out loud, but it’s almost auto-pilot, once you’re like in the hundreds of episodes. They kinda get it. So I was like, ‘Hey, can I start directing some of these?’ And he was, ‘Yeah, sure!’ So…with him being my mentor, just kind of directed stuff here and there, just kinda got into it.”
Also, Kyle talked about the difference between directing something with source material, such as One Piece and Fairy Tail, versus an open-ended anime like Sk8 the Infinity:
“You’re flying by the seat of your pants. The Japanese licensers don’t like to give us anything ahead of time. So like with Sk8, I was like, ‘Hey, like, what’s going to happen with these characters? Like, I need to know…’ And they were like, ‘Nah.’ And they just don’t do it. One Piece, you have the manga. You know? Fairy Tail, the manga. Like, Ace Attorney, I directed the Ace Attorney anime, I had the games. You know? So, having source material is nice. Because we don’t get anything ahead of time, that’s what we can do to research.”
You can follow Kyle on Twitter, TikTok, and tune into his Twitch streams.
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