I also got to hear what the Japanese voice actress did for each one so I could get an idea of the timing and intensity, and that was really helpful. KB: Since I play fighting games myself, I was already really familiar with what those kinds of attack and damage sounds are like. GC: How do you get into the mindset whenever you have to yell and grunt for a fighting game like Dead or Alive 5? I was so excited to do it that I was kind of nervous, too, but of course it was a lot of fun. KB: This was incredibly exciting for me because my biggest voiceover dream has always been to be a playable character in a fighting game. GC: What was your experience like doing the voice of Honoka for Dead or Alive 5? Video games may also have different types of lines for different scenarios-in JRPGs, which I do a lot of, you tend to have cutscene lines (usually timed), general story lines (usually not timed), and in-battle callouts for things like attacking, helping a teammate, or using items. Video games sometimes have timing restrictions, but you generally have a lot more freedom since you’re not matching to picture. So you have the challenge of matching the timing and lip flaps while still trying to act the line and make it believable, and if it’s a long line you’re reading it off the page while watching the screen so it’s just a lot of multitasking. KB: Anime is tough because as we know, the lip flaps are already in place with the Japanese voices already recorded, so we have to match everything exactly to picture when doing it in English. GC: How different is it doing a voice for a video game compared to an anime or movie? Karen was a spunky young girl whereas Elicia was a more mature sounding boss character, so I feel like they were fundamentally different enough characters that I didn’t have to worry too much about it sounding like the same person. KB: Most of the time when we’re cast as multiple characters, they’ll give us ones that are pretty far apart from each other in vocal range and/or character type. GC: Did you find it to be difficult to make sure that the 2 characters didn’t sound too much like each other. But soon after I moved to California and did that audition, they mentioned they had a DS game they wanted to cast me for and I was really excited about it. I got an audition with them after winning AX Idol (they were the ones who sponsored the competition), but they couldn’t use me at the time because I lived in Alaska, which is where I grew up. KB: The very first company I ever worked with (and still work with fairly regularly to this day) is BangZoom Entertainment. GC: Your first video game voiceover work was for Luminous Arc 2 where you did the voice of both Karen and Elicia.
I’m fortunate enough to have worked a lot with Wendee as a director these days. KB: My early inspirations were a lot of the veterans like Kari Wahlgren, Wendee Lee, and Michelle Ruff.
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Eventually I got my foot in the door with an actual dubbing company after winning the “Voice Actor Idol” competition at Anime Expo 2007, but it wasn’t until I moved to California that I was able to start doing professional work. But then a friend told me about how she voice acted through online websites for things like flash animations, and I started getting involved with doing online voice acting especially through the Newgrounds community and the Voice Acting Club.
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I was starting to get into anime around this time and noticed that there were people who did the dubbed voices for that and for things like video games, but voice acting wasn’t as widely publicized at that time so I didn’t really know how to get into it or anything like that. KB: I first decided I wanted to be a voice actress when I was sixteen years old and in my junior year of high school. We recently got to sit down with Kira and discuss her voice acting career so far and what the fturure has in store for her career. Despite only getting into voice acting in 2008, she’s already made a name for herself in video games such as HuniePop, Dead or Alive 5, Castle Crashers, and Dust: An Elysian Tail just to name a few. Kira Buckland is one of the fastest growing voice actors in the world today.