Ehe a new post for my voice acting tag~ Another short Genshin Impact fandub—this time as a collab with Kuroノ who is one of my friends that I hang out with irl!
Twitter embed is very fickle—if it's broken, here's the direct link to the tweet and backup on YouTube!
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Kurono posted a fantastic fandub of Kazuha back in July of last year (he did the entire thing and it's both timbre and acting perfection 👌👌), so we thought it'd be fun to collaborate on a fandub of something together—and so when Ayaka's trailer came out a week later featuring Thoma......!!
First of all, our friends and I all thought Kuro would already be a natural effortlessly good fit for Thoma and we were so right LOL. Good neighborly puppy boy energy!! But also slightly sassy yet dependable!! Kuro was able to record that lightning fast yet sounded "as flawless as ever;" I was so impressed ahaha. What a pro. So yes... he recorded that in July... on the same day the trailer came out.......
Cut to: me struggling to reach the Ayaka voice that I wanted to go for, trying it over many days through into August as a lower priority venture under my other projects, my voice wearing out quickly during the recording sessions both due to the whispery timbre (my ENT told me whispering is super harsh on your throat...) and unfortunate external reasons.
This was happening around the time I started realizing something was wrong with my throat... ;;;; I felt so bad for Kuro because something that was supposed to be quick and spontaneous got dragged out for so long—I told him and myself that I'd pick up trying to record better takes for this again once my throat felt better. In the meantime I finished up all the lines I owed and went on a recording hiatus... It fluctuated for a bit and then I watched my throat get even worse and worse.............
Now in February, I'm still waiting for it to get better. :/
(My reflux and allergy medications might not be effective enough for me, sigh, fingers crossed my ENT appointment next week will create some progress.)
So yeah, I went back to all of the B-tier takes that I saved but wasn't entirely happy with and performed extremely detailed surgery to stitch some syllables together and make something post-able at last! Also nixed two lines that I had no good takes for. I do feel that I didn't reach my vision for Ayaka's voice and my pronunciation bothers me, so I consider this an "incomplete version."
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Again I find it really interesting how the official voice actors for the various languages in Genshin take pretty different directions in characterization. Despite them being quite different, I genuinely really really really like both Hayami Saori and Erica Mendez as variations of Ayaka—they both did such an amazing job and sound very pretty. 😭
Hayamin of course has the perfect princess voice that's simultaneously "out-of-your-league" and "little sister" and she carries such a soft warmth and effortless whispery tone (LITERALLY, PHYSICALLY HOW??). I enjoy how her characterization includes some playfulness—the way she often sounds like she's slightly laughing feels so friendly, open, and affectionate. She's precious but also strong and reliable when need be. I could listen to her voice all day long.
Erica's version of Ayaka also has a really pleasant, airy, soft timbre that I was happy that they pulled off because I rarely hear such a tone in English dubbing. Her voice acting conveys so much all at the same time: Ayaka's seriousness as an important member of society and sword master (the English characterization seems to lean into this aspect the most?), formality, tradition, tranquility, yet still with a hint of the childlike purity that Ayaka has. It's so good. Compared to the Japanese version, the English Ayaka seems much more confident and strikes me as more of an observer than an experiencer.
(Btw I was especially impressed upon realizing she's also the English VA of Nico from Love Live, that insane range...!! Another side note, I love Christian Banas' Thoma as well—he does such nuanced performances and makes him so wholesome and energetic. 🥺)
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For my rendition of Ayaka, I tried out several approaches—it started out comparatively closer to Erica's version and I did kind of a throat'y voice—but I ended up wanting to challenge myself to inch a bit closer to Hayamin's portrayal that was whispery, higher medium tone, slower, less confident, a "cool" timbre that has a grainy texture to it but warmer and slightly rounded delivery, a delicate balance of inserting some fullness into the voice while also remaining light. In the second half I wanted to slip in some of that openness and subtle playfulness into it. Also I didn't want it to feel like the exact same direction I did for Ganyu (though there's a lot of overlap)—I wanted my Ayaka to comparatively be a bit more grounded and full, yet more inflated with air, decisive, and less sweet. YES I THOUGHT ABOUT THIS A LOT LOL. AND NO THE EXECUTION WASN'T SATISFACTORY.
Aside from the pronunciation, one of my regrets is that I couldn't get "Spar with me some more" to hit that ideal balance of playful and assertive. And also unfortunately I'm not Hayamin herself 😔 Oh whales, I'm ultimately still fairly happy with what I achieved and am fond of this collab with Kuro. ^^
This was the toughest thing I've ever tried to voice act!!! And I will probably never attempt such a whispery voice again in my entire life because boy, it do not cooperate with me throat!! Please enjoy as it will never happen again!!!
