… and countless other voices the man has done. Johnny Yong Bosch, one of those voices you hear in almost everything attended Otakon this year, and I was able to attend his Q&A panel.
The line for the panel was pretty amazing. People had started lining up as early as 10:00am, almost two hours before the panel was scheduled to start. They started letting people in on time, but by the time everyone was in already almost 20 minutes had passed by.
While people were filing in through the doors, Johnny introduces himself by listing all the roles he’s been in, to the applause of many in the crowd after each role. He also jokingly mentions about some of the roles which kind of sounds like him, but it isn’t really him. He also talked about his band, Eyeshine, which he is the guitarist and vocalist for, and jokes that since most of us have heard of his band, and only some of us went to their show and are going to their show, half of us must hate it.
Because people were still filling the room, he decided to tell us a story. It was about homeless people. One day while coming home from work dubbing in Burbank, CA, he exited off the 119 and there’s usually homeless man there asking for money, and he would just try to ignore them. One day while waiting at the stop light, a big monster truck rolled up behind him and was waiting for the light behind him while he was eating a bunch of carrots in a ziploc bag. This time there was a homeless woman instead and he felt really bad for her, so he decided he’d give her some quarters that he had. He put about 2 lbs of quarters in the ziploc bag and opens his window to give it to her. The light turns green and everyone starts moving, so he decides to start moving since he the guy behind him in the truck seemed very intimidating. However, while his hand was still outside the window, he realized as he was going 20-30 mph, that he had no idea how he was gonna give the woman the quarters. He couldn’t stop, but he didn’t want her to grab his hand and either he would get hurt or she would get hurt. He decided that since he’s a martial artist, he could just time it with a flick of the wrist and give it to her. So he flicks it up to her at 30 mph, and he watches as the 2 lb bag of quarters just flies in the air and smacks her in the face. He never saw her again. He felt like the biggest douche bag in the world, and it’s the reason why he has a hard time giving money to homeless people.
After the story, the Q&A starts and people start asking Johnny some questions. I’ve listed some of the questions and answers here below for you guys.
Q. Johnny gets asked if it was difficult to transition the first time from live acting to voice acting?
A. He mentions about dubbing in Power Rangers while they had their helmets on, but it wasn’t really in depth, mostly just fighting noises. Trigun was his first anime, and it was very different for him, like recording your voice mail message and hearing your own voice wondering if you really sound like that, and you try to change your voice, etc. but he had a good director and the story was good so it was fun.
Q. He gets asked if he was stuck on a deserted island for an unknown period of time with the bare necessities and a television that only played one series that he’s voice acted in as one of the main roles and it would replay over and over again til he got rescued, what series would it be?
A. He wants a very long running series so that he doesn’t get tired of it, but he really likes Code Geass and Wolf’s Rain, but he chooses Bleach.
Q. What’s an interesting or funny moment that happened to you while in the booth?
A. He tells a story about one day he was very hungry because he was running late and he wanted to show up early for Wolf’s Rain dubbing. His stomach was growling but he was drinking water to keep it quite. One moment though, his stomach growled but it was high pitched and it sounded like he squeezed a fart out, but it was his stomach.
Q. What’s the weirdest line you’ve done?
A. He chooses a line from Power Rangers, where guested on Power Rangers Overdrive for the 15th anniversary. He got the script in New Zealand, and they asked him to say Morphenomenal. He recommends that we should start using Morphenomenal daily.
Q. What was your most difficult role and why?
A. He says it’s tough to choose just one. He mentions Code Geass was tough at the beginning because his character was like the protagonist and antagonist at the same time, and it was weird being the bad guy. Because he had to be very bold and melodramatic as a bad guy, it was a little strange for him.
Q. Where in the world would you like to go?
A. He says New Zealand and Japan were very fun, and he’d like to go to Japan again with his band as well. He also says he’d like to go to Outer Space.
Q. What was your favorite moment during the first season of Power Rangers you were on?
A. His dream was to be an action star, and he lived in Texas, but his friends didn’t support him because they were worried about him. He was in Texas and it’d be really hard. So the best moment for him was when he was there filming and he was standing there, the sun was coming up, there was dew on the grass, and he felt that he had made it.
Because he wanted to sing a song for us, but there was no time and he still wanted to get through the questions, he took out his acoustic guitar and started singing his answers. He even sang Happy Birthday to someone in the audience.
Q. Is it a total strain on your vocal chords to do Ichigo from Bleach?
A. When he does the voice of Ichigo, he has to scream all the time, and it is hard on his voice.
Q. Do you prefer to do roles like Lelouch [from Code Geass] or Ichigo [from Bleach] with more Screaming, or the more subdued roles like Kiba [from Wolf's Rain] or Mike [from Onegai Twins]?
A. He likes playing characters with a lot of emotion, it’s so much better when you can do something more than scream.
He concluded the panel by talking about the rest of his schedules for the con and finished off with some popular phrases from the roles he’s done.
All in all, his panel was very fun and it was really cool to hear him sing answers for the audience. As always, it was also awesome to see the voice actors say some popular things from roles they’ve done. If you get the chance to see Johnny Yong Bosch at a con or with his band, and if you have time or are even a little interested, I totally recommend going and you’ll have a good time.
