Our friend Derek Padula of Dao of DragonBall has recently conducted an interview with FUNimation’s very own Kyle Hebert (voice actor for Adult Gohan from DragonBall Z). It is a very interesting read that goes into dubbing DragonBall Z for FUNimation. He explains his experiences at FUNimation and his very own thoughts on the series as a whole. Check out a portion of the interview here and read the rest at Derek’s blog.
Derek: In the early 2000’s when FUNimation was first dubbing Dragon Ball Z they were a much smaller company than they are now. There were fewer people wearing more hats and doing everything by themselves, and Dragon Ball was the flagship title. What was it like to be there at the time?
Kyle: I felt eternally blessed to be a part of something that was a pop culture sensation, with the boom in anime and anime getting mainstream exposure on Cartoon Network. It was just fantastic. It launched a chance for me to travel the country and in some cases the world, to go to conventions and see fans face to face, do things I could never have envisioned.
Working in radio I kind of just did my job. I had a lot of fun working in radio, but it started to get a little bit stale. The enjoyment of stepping into the booth for a different reason kind of reignited it. It was like, “Okay, this is where my passion really is.”
I wanted to do radio and animation voice work. Once I had a taste of that with Dragon Ball Z… fortunately I had gotten more work on some other shows like Blue Gender and Yu Yu Hakusho, it was like, “Aww yeah, this is amazing. I want to keep this momentum going.” It’s so much fun.
Derek: I am also an aspiring voice actor and I know a lot of the people who are Dragon Ball fans, or just anime in general, they hear the characters, the story, they want to be that. I think a lot of people are envious of the voice actors that make it work, they make it happen, they do that in their lives. That’s great.
Kyle: Yeah, something like anime, it’s a technical skill to be able to do the lip sync, act, and a characters voice. It’s like you’re juggling all these things at once.
