Kikuchi, Kase & Kuriyama fly the unfriendly skies in “Sky Crawlers”
Posted on Wednesday, 16 April 2008 at 11:31 am
Variety Japan have the scoop on the voice cast for Oshii Mamoru’s “Sky Crawlers” animated feature, and it’s an uncharacteristically star-heavy one. Kikuchi Rinko voices commander and former ace pilot Kusanagi while Kase Ryo plays her top gun Kannami, and his wingmen Mitsuya Midori and Tokino Naofumi will be portrayed respectively by Kuriyama Chiaki and Tanihara Shosuke. This will be Kase’s first voice acting job and Kikuchi’s second after “Genius Party”.
While these are all solid pros who should bring more than just name recognition to the table, this just goes to show that even a filmmaker as idiosyncratic as Oshii isn’t immune to the current trend in feature animation of favoring prominent live-action thesps over experienced voice actors, as mentioned in my coverage of The Simpsons Movie dubbing debacle. It remains to be seen whether this piece of casting will stir up the same amount of controversy among fans.
comment by don
posted on Wednesday, April 16 2008 at 11:31 am
No kidding? Perhaps someone from Warner will tap me on the shoulder as happened with the Kurosawa article. I haven’t seen the news in Japanese anywhere else online yet either.
comment by jasong
posted on Wednesday, April 16 2008 at 11:31 am
Nah, they probably just got an exclusive. Or maybe the trailer is hitting select screens early.
comment by don
posted on Wednesday, April 16 2008 at 11:31 am
It does look as if the cat’s out of the bag now - Tokyograph just wrote it up based on a Sponichi article.
comment by jasong
posted on Wednesday, April 16 2008 at 11:31 am
You’re right. Judging by the still and articles I guess they decided to hold a kisha club session before the trailer hits screens.
Before HD promos were available on the net, you’d get people in the US paying for tickets just to see the latest Star Wars trailer etc. Don’t know if that ever really caught on here.
Won’t be any internet trailers for Ponyo, though. Have to leg it to cinemas (also this weekend) if you want to see that.
comment by Aceface
posted on Wednesday, April 16 2008 at 11:31 am
Saw this in the morning news,(TBS?)
comment by don
posted on Wednesday, April 16 2008 at 11:31 am
Jason, your trailer comment reminded me of the recent discussion at meta.neojaponisme about the dearth of good user-generated online content here. If there’s a local equivalent to AICN/Twitch et al, I’ve yet to stumble across it. I guess people congregate in the movie sections of major sites like Yahoo and hold discussions on 2ch/Mixi instead.
I always pictured you as more of a Fuji TV guy Ace ;)
comment by Aceface
posted on Wednesday, April 16 2008 at 11:31 am
More of a Sankei guy,you mean.
comment by jasong
posted on Wednesday, April 16 2008 at 11:31 am
I’m surprised VJ published this today. At the 20m screening at WB they were insistent on the media not revealing the voice talent until April 19, when the trailer comes out. They made us promise 4 times and handed out a notice saying as much.
The actors sounded good to me, though it didn’t include Kuriyama’s char, I believe.
Oshii is going for bigger box office and more int’l (commercial) appeal. I think the film has a good chance to achieve it.