 Welcome back everyone. Today we have a very special interview. Today I am talking to Kira Buckland. Kira is the voice actress behind 2B and Near Automata. She's also voiced characters in many different video games and anime series. She was even in the anime film A Silent Voice. So Kira I'd like to thank you for taking the time to talk today. Yes thank you for having me. Alright so today we are, I was thinking we could talk mostly about your role in Near Automata as 2B. So I was wondering how did you get the role? Like did you audition for it or how did this happen? Yes so I've worked with the specific recording studio that worked on the game for a number of years before that. I'd done other projects there with them like Fire Emblem Heroes, Ace Attorney, Dead or Live, all that kind of stuff. So when auditions for a new project come about you know a lot of times as actors when we do an audition we might not know too much about like what exactly we're auditioning for because obviously everything is still extremely confidential when it's kind of in development maybe like news about it hasn't been announced yet. So a lot of the times we're just kind of maybe we're seeing like a little character description and kind of okay just you know do your best to kind of do the audition for what you think this character would sound like. So this was actually an in-person audition because this was obviously years before the coronavirus pandemic happened and a lot of studios now just do remote auditions from home anyway even before this but for these particular auditions and some others with this studio we actually did go in and audition which was really nice because then I could get like a little feedback in real time and stuff like that. So yeah I just read for a couple characters and I obviously didn't really know much about what I was auditioning for at the time and I remember when I auditioned for 2b I was thinking like oh this character seems like a really cool like strong female warrior type like I never book these kinds of roles you know because normally I played like either cute characters bratty characters young energetic like that that kind of stuff you know so a character like this it was obviously something that I always wanted to play but I just thought like I'm never gonna book this like they're gonna give this to someone who always books these types of roles and can do it really well. So I auditioned I mean I still just tried to do my best and because sometimes like you auditioned for a project and even if you don't get the role you auditioned for they might have like smaller parts later that they bring you in for and stuff so you know I was just hoping that I'd get to be in the game somewhere and then when I had my first session scheduled I remember they're like okay you got the role of 2b and I was like oh is that a big part you know because obviously there was not really much known about the game at the time and then I see like you know the opening intro where the everything that lives is designed to end speech and I was like wait so she like opens the game oh wow she's the main character okay so you know like it was obviously a lot of pressure because I wanted to do a good job but at the same time I didn't know when I was recording that this game was gonna blow up and be super big because so many times we just we record for a bunch of games a bunch of shows whatever and it's kind of out of our hands how it's received or how popular it gets so it was a nice surprise I see so they gave you kind of like a description of the character you're gonna play and like they showed you the picture of her anything or what was it like yeah yeah when we did the actual recording session we had some people from the localization team there so they were obviously they were able to give a lot of context and kind of explain like here's the world here's the characters here's what's going on and actually something that we did that I find really helpful that we do in a lot of these projects is we got to hear the Japanese line before each line that I recorded and most of the time you know it's not like we have to be 100% exact to the intonation but hearing her performance was really helpful because you know obviously we don't always know what things are gonna look like in the game except when we're dubbing the cut scenes so it just kind of helps to make sure that I'm on the right track by hearing and kind of emulating the Japanese performance that's good so when did you find out that you got the role I don't remember exactly because a lot of things that actors do and that I also advise actors to do especially early on in their careers is you just got to audition and forget so a lot of times you might be auditioning for different projects with different studios and you just do your best with the audition and then you just try to forget about it move on to the next thing and that way if you get that booking it's a really nice surprise because so many times we audition for stuff that we just never hear back on because we don't book I see and so when you got the role what were the recording sessions like do you remember that at all or yeah I remember I still had a day job at the time so it was a lot of just like kind of recording when I didn't have to work at my day job it's it's really funny because I think a lot of people don't always realize that just because you get a big role doesn't mean that you're going to suddenly be financially stable or being able to voice act full time because any kind of freelance job it's more about the consistency of the work and not so much like did you get this big job or did you play a lead or whatever because it's kind of like well after we're done recording for that projects we still have to you know have other stuff lined up so I think we usually recorded between like two and four hours at a time obviously for like the leads like to be nine s a two we are probably doing more four hour sessions from what I remember just because it's like we have a lot of dialogue to get through and I don't know I'm sure a lot of people know this but just for anyone listening who doesn't the other thing that people don't always realize is that actors don't normally record together for video games so like all my interactions with Kyle who played nine s I'm not hearing what he did you know it's like we're not hearing each other until the game is out and we played it ourselves I see yeah that's what I've heard from a few other people I've talked to you that it's mostly just you're kind of alone doing your lines that's kind of accurate right that's that's interesting so how have your how's your interactions with your fans being since you were in the game very very cool for the most part you know you're always going to have some trolls and haters no matter what you do and there's just like nothing you can really do about that so someone's like oh the English dub sucks I'm just going to play in Japanese I'm just like okay cool like the Japanese voices are great too I hope you enjoy the game you know yeah what are you going to do right but I mean overall it's like I think one thing that really stood out to me about just like your fans in general is I had never received that type of love for any project that I'd ever done because I was actually working a lot before near like I was doing a lot of anime a lot of jrpgs that kind of stuff but people didn't really know who I was so I didn't get a lot of like fan mail fan interactions anything like that it was kind of you know it's kind of like depressing at first because even though it's not why we do it it's kind of like I would see all my friends getting like fan mail and stuff and I was like oh man I hope that one day like people like my work too and then it's like it literally takes just like that one big role and then people are like oh you've also been in other stuff that I've liked so it was like really totally different to go from like a virtual nobody in the industry despite having worked to like like I guess another option that I will explain it with is that when I did like a couple convention signings and stuff before near-automatic came out I I would have like nobody in my line like I would just be sitting there and playing on my DS or like catching Pokemon because it was like nobody knew who I was so they wouldn't come up to get a signature and then after near came out it was like lines and it's it was just so like you know kind of your imposter syndrome kicks in like wait what why are they doing this for me but it's been really cool like especially the amount of love that people have shown me and Kyle and you know especially because we like to interact with the fan base where we can I can imagine that is pretty cool so you'd say that it probably changed your career this one role right yeah absolutely that's great so um so you also reprised the role for Soul Calibur 6 because they brought the 2B into Soul Calibur as well what was that like that was really exciting and a super nice surprise because before it was revealed that 2B would be a guest character I had already recorded the role of Talim now I only play Talim in 6 because her original voice actress wasn't available to come back for whatever reason so they were auditioning voice matches and I played a lot of Soul Calibur it was one of my first fighting games or actually no it was my it was my very first fighting game so I was pretty familiar with the game and the characters and I think it helped me with my voice match audition just to like do a better job and so I had already recorded for the role of Talim and then later when it's like oh you've got another character coming back I was I was like really excited because I feel like had we known that 2B was gonna be the guest character from the beginning I probably wouldn't have gotten to read for anybody else so it was like kind of just this cool coincidence that I ended up getting to play two characters I see this that does sound pretty cool so yeah so you already you were see start off as a fan of Soul Calibur and then you got a role in the game that's not that you're really cool as well yeah yeah so are there any other games you like like you said that you're you like games and anime or which media are your favorite have to ask fighting games for sure so that was another thing that was really cool getting to be in like five fighting games now so I was in Dead or Alive that was the very first fighting game that I was in as Honoka and then I also did Street Fighter as Falk and Soul Calibur as Talim and 2B obviously and then I was in Blaze Blue Cross Tag Battle as Hart I know from Arcana Hearts and just recently the games not out yet but they announced the cast for it I'm in Phantom Breaker Omnia as May and I'm really excited because she's a pink-haired idol and I love playing pink-haired characters yeah there's a lot of pink-haired characters so which of these characters do you think is your favorite besides 2B because I'm pretty sure that's your favorite character right a fighting games or any character just any character actually yeah another character that's very special to me is Rami Sugimoto from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Diamond is Unbreakable because JoJo's is my favorite show my favorite media of all time it sounds dramatic but JoJo's changed my life and it's just something that it's like I don't even know how to describe how much JoJo's had influenced me from everything to like my fashion my music taste my cosplay like you name it so just being a part of the JoJo dub like the JoJo universe in some way that made my life oh wow so you start off as a fan of JoJo and then you got a role in the actual dub that's how happened I was actually already a voice actress by the time that I started getting into watching JoJo but there was no English versions like this was before they even dubbed part one or anything the time that I got into it so people didn't know like oh are they even ever gonna dub JoJo or whatever because the it took so long for the anime to come out compared to the manga which has been going since 1987 and they've been doing a really good job catching up with everything because now it's like part five is already finished and the manga is up to part eight so it's still like a lot farther ahead but you know it's like at the time that I got into JoJo I was like oh man I'd love to be in JoJo if they ever do an English version but you just don't know yeah so um what have you been up to recently like what kind of roles and things have you been doing in the past year um so one of the projects that I was really excited about that came out not terribly long ago was called 13 Sentinels and I played a character named Ryoko who's kind of like a mostly soft-spoken kind of character and you know there's some story and plot reasons why she is that way obviously but I just think it's a really cool game it's got like mechs and kaiju and another reason that that game is kind of special to me is because it was one of the very first big projects that I recorded from home once the pandemic started and you know I'd recorded like indie games and stuff from home before for many years but when it came to actual big releases that are normally always done in studio it was you know a lot of pressure to record it from home because we all didn't have a choice you know normally we'd be going in but when the pandemic hit it was kind of like okay we have to figure out a way to do our jobs from home. I see so how does voicing a character from home differ from going to a studio like what's the difference? Well I think the biggest thing is that we kind of have to I don't want to say be our own audio engineers because we still do have an audio engineer on the line who's you know doing a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to that kind of stuff but just in terms of things that you don't really have to think about when you're in studio like you have to kind of monitor your gain like your levels so if you're doing like a whispering line and then you're doing a shouting line and then you're going back to conversational you have to make sure to kind of change those levels on your end because the audio feed is only as good as what you're sending them you know and there's also just more technical stuff to deal with for video games it's not as bad but for dubbing it's really challenging because everything involves matching picture exactly so with kind of lag and latency and things like that it can sometimes be a little challenging because you know we're working with different programs the best we can we use something called Source Connect a lot of the times for the audio so that they can get my audio feed directly and you know mess around with it in Pro Tools which is like the program they use in studios to kind of record and edit the audio and we're using something like Skype or Zoom for the video and it's like it works pretty well all things considered but you know sometimes it's like the connection isn't good or you know just like there's too many people using those services that day and things get choppy and you know and I think the other thing too that I know a lot of other actors are struggling with as well is that we can't really control the outside noise that happens for home recording so if your neighbor decides to mow the lawn or like your upstairs neighbor is hammering which literally happened to me we had upstairs neighbors like hammering and drilling and stuff and you know leaf blowers outside weather there's so much stuff that like you know even if you have a good booth in your home as I do it's not going to be as soundproof as in the studio yeah I can definitely relate to that it's uh it's a struggle you know this random background noise coming in and everything um so yeah so last so the only role you've done during the pandemic has been 13th I know I played it by the way uh I do recognize the character that you played as well um oh no I've actually I've been working from home since March basically so I've done a ton of stuff from home um if I'm Setsuna on Yasha Hime one of Sashomaru's twin daughters and that we've been recording entirely from home as well I did May from Phantom Breaker which I mentioned earlier um I did like the Re Zero OVAs um a lot of my next life as a villainess um I did my Pokemon Journeys episode from home there's so much yeah so yeah there's there's been so since then yeah there's been going back to the uh the studios they haven't opened them up again yet or very rarely um there'll be certain projects where they really need to record in studio for one reason or another but I have um like in the past year since well since March when all this started I've only gone to a studio three times total and it was all you know just projects where we're like we really need to do this one in person but most of the time unless either the production super needs it for some reason or the actor requests it because they have no way to record from home at the moment they've been trying to keep everybody home because Southern California COVID cases are real bad here right now unfortunately yeah so um that's interesting so about your career you start off doing smaller flash projects like um like flash games and animations and then you gradually worked on to doing bigger productions how has that changed over the years from the beginning to where you are now um I mean I think there are a couple things for me that were really important one of them being um getting acting training because you know just doing hobby stuff online you're kind of playing around you're doing stuff for fun you're just kind of like a lot of that was self-taught and just learning from practice which is still very valid but I think it's also important if you have the resources to be able to take acting classes any kind of voice coaching you know just learning how to be an actor is the most important part of voice acting hands down and pretty much anyone will tell you that so um just just like slowly getting acting training was really helpful um obviously you have to have good demo materials like you have to get a demo professionally recorded um moving to LA was the biggest thing for me because you know now things with the pandemic and home recording there's like a little studios are a little more open to kind of recording people remotely if they have a good home studio like you'll see some crossovers between LA and Dallas but you know it's like especially back when I moved to LA which was in late 2011 it's like you had to be here you would not even be considered for an audition and it still is that way with a lot of studios so I think it's um you know that was the biggest thing was moving to where the work is but I also stress to people that you should be ready before you do that like you should have money saved up you should have already had some kind of credits even if it is just things like indie games um you know just so you have some work experience you should have your marketing materials all that kind of stuff all right I see so would you say that it's like easier to get um voice jobs these days since you don't have to drive all the way to some studio that's over in a different state or a different city or something like that um I mean it's in some ways location barriers have been breaking down like you are seeing a little more crossover between the LA and Dallas markets which are the two I would say the two main markets for voice work in the US um but you know I think in terms of getting jobs in general it's just like the industry is so competitive and it's so saturated that I feel like it gets kind of well it's kind of a toss-up because yeah there's a lot more jobs that are available online and things like that these days there's a lot of opportunities for indie work you know just all sorts of things but at the same time there's thousands and thousands of people who are doing voiceover and they're you know even stuff that would set you apart before like hey I have a broadcast quality home studio well now everybody has to have one because of the pandemic so you're competing against so so many people for those roles that are available okay so it hasn't changed that much but it's it's changed a little bit is what you're saying or okay I see so um you've also voiced characters in some animated films such as a silent voice which uh I had some people in my my server watch uh the other day just to kind of hear your um role and they didn't yeah they didn't they didn't know why we were watching it though because I usually keep uh all my interviews a little bit secret until they come out so uh yeah you played like the mean girl in that uh movie what was that movie like uh how was the recording in that that different yeah so I play a lot of mean girls and normally I'm just like yes I love like any chance to play a mean girl but I think because of the subject matter of the film it was like it was a little bit hard for me in ways to play Naoka because you know like bullying a deaf girl that's that's like horrid you know um I was obviously bullied a lot growing up for various reasons so you know normally it's kind of like therapeutic to play the bully but in this case it's like I just felt so bad for Shoko I'm just like she doesn't deserve this like sometimes it's almost even though you of course you know that you're acting and you're playing a role it can be hard to like play a role that is just cruel like that yeah I can imagine so so was it hard playing that role or did you like um I mean yes and no because you know again I really feel like I excel at that kind of archetype like the mean girls and the bullies but you know at the same time emotionally I'm just like oh my gosh you know because it is like you know meant to make you emotional and meant to make you really think about stuff yeah that's what that's what kind of what I understand too um so has there been any other any other anime films you've done besides that one or yeah um I've done you know just a lot of bit parts and stuff like that here and there I remember I was in one called in this corner of the world um I was a fairly big role in I want to eat your pancreas which again sounds like a strange title I know but it's actually another movie that will probably make you cry um just like certain anime movies that were based on like a series I did like one of the Hunter Hunter movies um a fake grand order movie um yeah like one of the sad things is that they don't really do theatrical show I mean especially not now but even before that they didn't really do much in the way of theatrical showings unless it was something really really big like a DBZ movie so I don't know still I'm like I want to be in something that gets a theatrical release uh didn't a silent voice get a theatrical release or am I mistaken very very limited from what I understand like just certain um you know small venues showed it right like the blue exorcist movie it was kind of similar with that because I remember I went to go see the blue exorcist movie but it wasn't in like a traditional theater it was like a art house kind of thing which was kind of cool an art house so it's like like a smaller theater or yeah sort of it's just like a more independent kind of venue that's cool I wish they would uh air more of these movies in in theaters these days there's a small theater by me that does all the Ghibli movies every month they'd be like once a month do you have something like that or nearby you or um you know sometimes certain theaters will do special events but again now with the pandemic and stuff it's just not a thing anymore because they're all closed yeah they're all it's been a while so yeah um are there any other like favorite roles you have besides the ones we've talked about yeah like I really enjoy every time I get to come back for an erica skin on fire emblem heroes um I just like so many I really liked playing Mary and kakegurui um of course I'm having a lot of fun with satsuna on yasha he may she's a challenging role just because it's such a different archetype than what I normally play so I you know I hope I'm doing a good job yeah um how like it's it's hard to think of um the janganronpa characters were really fun um of course I was excited to be an ace attorney because I played that game a lot you played trucee an ace attorney what was that like um how did that happen um just same thing where I auditioned for it and you know of course like I knew what it was when I auditioned for it because I've I had played and beaten all the ace attorney games so I was just like oh gosh you know like trying really hard to um to catch you do a good job but to not get so not to get too obsessed with like oh man I really want this role because again like you can't get too attached because what if you don't book it so um you know just trying to do the best I could and then I was so excited when I found out that I was cast um but you know that was very short because there was so like there's a ton of text dialogue in the game so she's very prevalent in the text dialogue but there's very little voice dialogue so it was just like a few I feel like the session was probably 30 minutes or something you know right so this was um the the 3ds ace attorney that you played her in um yeah and it was just like little little voice clips here and there it wasn't a lot of uh long dialogue or anything like that yeah it was just the cutscenes basically okay yeah that's that's still a great great role though yeah we're all big fans of the ace attorney um my friends are also really big fans of Danganronpa and um you voiced two characters in that you voiced uh Hiyoko Sayonji and Karumi Tojo uh is there anything interesting about that those roles and voicing those characters that you'd like to talk about or yeah um I was also familiar with the Danganronpa franchise too when I or actually no I didn't even have to audition for Hiyoko I remember I just got an email one day because it's it's kind of like most of the time we have to audition but sometimes if it's like a studio or a casting director you've worked with a lot they'll say like hey we want to offer you this role based on you know your previous work with us your previous samples auditions whatever so that was really really cool and that's such a nice surprise because it's just like wait it's like a present I I'm being offered a part in this cool thing so you know that was really exciting again I feel like the kind of bratty characters is something that's really in my my wheelhouse so she was a lot of fun and then the cool thing with Kirumi Tojo is that she was just completely different um because you know I know that whenever the same voice actor plays multiple characters in the same franchise even like different games or installments in it people are always going to compare and be like oh do they sound different enough um but I feel like those are pretty different yeah I know that you did both of them I thought it was just Hiyoko at first but then I found out that you did Kirumi also and uh yeah they're very different uh Kirumi's kind of like she's a little bit like 2b like her like her style and her voice a little bit that have you noticed that a little bit yeah yeah um I've actually seen crossover art that people made and um it's like ha same English voice actress yeah it's funny all right so um so you said that your favorite video games and so did you tell me what your favorite video game was because you said that you like fighting games uh which one was it again yeah I mean I like fighting games of course I like um the Guilty Gear series I like a lot of 2D fighters in general I don't have as much time to play fighting games as I used to but um you know whenever I do get the chance to play them I enjoy it um I also just play Pokemon Go non-stop I am currently level 41 on my way to level 42 and I am a little obsessed like I've been playing since 2016 I see so you that's like your favorite game right now or um I mean it's hard to like say favorite anything but it's it's something that I really enjoy I can I see I see and your favorite anime is Jojo's Bizarre Adventure yeah okay uh what are your favorite movies do you like movies at all or um I don't really get a chance to see movies very often unfortunately I would say my favorite movie of all time is Labyrinth but I'm biased because I am obsessed with David Bowie oh you like David Bowie a lot how was he influenced you oh wow um how hasn't he influenced me he's just like he was amazing um I love his music I love his style I love how he was just so unique and trend setting and did whatever he wanted and didn't care what other people thought and he wasn't afraid to be like a little weird or eccentric um you know on a superficial level he's ridiculously attractive I'm not going to lie there um and he just kept reinventing himself as a creative and I think that was so cool and in addition to that like he wasn't just a rock star or a great musician he was an artist he loved to read he was incredibly smart he even invented his own ISP at one point called Bowie net um he was just like he did everything and he wanted to learn about everything and it was so cool that's great so so he's like one of your biggest influences in your life you would say or yes absolutely interesting so is there anybody else you would say that uh influenced you a lot yeah um lots of them obviously um Gwen Stefani, Billy Joe Armstrong um basically like a lot of musicians yeah interesting so uh a lot of so music is very important to you you would say yeah I used to want to be a rock singer before I kind of discovered voice acting and I wasn't very good at it so obviously that didn't go anywhere but you know really so were you looking at any bands or anything or no I wanted to be I mean I was a teenager so it was kind of like I want to be in a band with somebody and you know it's everybody has vocalists already if you're a drummer then you can find plenty of bands to be a part of oh really because uh there's like a shortage of drummers or something like that or yeah I felt like that because you know it's it's easier to get something like a guitar and you know kind of practice that but getting a drum set it's like it's going to be loud if you practice it it takes up a lot of space it's expensive um I don't know so I feel like that was always the hardest member of any band to find yeah I can imagine I play the drums actually a little bit here and there but it's uh just a whole thing that I do um yeah yeah I had this teacher that I used to go to and uh I kind of stopped since uh you know this whole thing started and everything but uh hopefully I can we're to resume it soon um so let's see do you usually play the video games that you voice in like is that like a thing you typically do it depends um if the game itself is something that's really interesting to me or obviously like I've played the fighting games that I'm in of course I played near because that's just you know that's a whole experience how can you not play that um I played like a lot of the 3ds games that I was in like ace attorney detective Pikachu that kind of stuff um you know obviously I I haven't been able to play everything because the biggest thing is just like most people don't have the time to do all that um games are also very expensive most of the time voice actors don't get a free copy of the games that they were in so we have to kind of buy or pre-order those ourselves and it just like it really adds up um and you know sometimes if it's a game that I don't think I'd be very good at then kind of like what games you're not good at would you say um I just don't feel like I'm good at like a lot of rpgs and stuff and I do so many j rpgs but I'm like I feel like I wouldn't know what I'm doing oh really so you're not a big rpg fan um I wouldn't say it's I'm not a fan it's just that I never really I guess like sat down and tried to learn the mechanics to where I wouldn't die constantly yeah they take a lot of getting used to these kind of games so I think also it's just like daunting to put so many hours into a game sometimes like you know if it's a game I'm super invested in like um I really enjoyed like the Legend of Zelda games for example so I will put a bunch of hours into those but yeah so what Zelda game is your favorite Ocarina of Time I know that's a really generic answer but there's a reason that it's so many people's favorite I see so uh so wait Ocarina of Time is there any are there any other like games like non-fighting games that you're a big fan of besides I want um I've played all the Pokemon games I really enjoy like you know the main mainline Pokemon games as well that's cool I I was playing Animal Crossing for quite a while when the newest one came out but I kind of fell off the wagon for that because everyone I know stopped playing it um but I did put like a ton of hours into that when I played it I see so how many how many hours were just said you do like have a good estimate or oh I don't even remember yeah a lot of people I know were really obsessed with that one that came out also yeah kind of came out at the perfect time you know yeah right when the pandemic started and then this comes out and then everyone's all into that so um are there any future roles that you can talk about that fans should keep an eye out for trying to think if there's anything recent that's been announced I feel like um I mean obviously new episodes of the yashihime dub are being released pretty much every week you can watch it on crunchy roll um I think it's available in a couple other sites as well like maybe hulu um phantom breaker should be coming out pretty soon that's another fighting game I mentioned that I'm pretty excited about and I don't think if there's anything like super recent that I can talk about aside from those yeah um a new cat arena skin just came out in fire emblem heroes so that was exciting because it was the first time she got like another skin besides her base one so do you do you do like new voice lines for those characters when they get a new skin or what happens yeah okay interesting so uh you've voiced characters of fire emblem heroes did you do any other fire emblem games or just heroes no just heroes I'd love to be in a base like a main series fire emblem game someday but that would be cool yeah so um all right well I think that uh this wraps up the interview so far we talked a lot about your career and your roles and I really appreciate you taking the time to speak to me today yeah thank you so much for having me on your show yeah so um everyone make sure you check out Kira's social medias I linked them down below in the description you can check her out on twitter her official website and her store envy page so uh be sure to support her thank you so much yep so uh thanks for watching everybody we hope you enjoyed this interview and I'll see you all next time bye