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Ascendance of a Bookworm (LN) - Volume 4.02 - Chapter 8




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Drama CD Post-Recording Report

by Miya Kazuki

Our story begins at 10 a.m. on an unspecified day in May 2017.

My husband had agreed to take me to the train station where I was due to meet up with the others, but the journey there was quite an ordeal. Our destination was far away, the trains were completely packed with people, and the train network we had to navigate was a bona fide maze. I didn’t recognize the names of most of the train lines we had to pass through. There were also a ton of confusing exits, and so many billboards that we couldn’t even spot our destination. The way there was so complicated that, had I gone alone, this story would have been called, “The Grand Adventure of the Author Who Just Wanted to Go to the Recording Session,” wherein a humble author finds herself completely lost like some helpless child.

Regardless, after arriving and meeting up with both my editor (the one in charge of Bookworm) and Suzuka-san, we began walking to the studio. It wasn’t long before Suzuka-san shot me a look while holding her stomach.

“I’ve been so nervous since yesterday that I didn’t know what to do with myself, but seeing how composed you are has somehow calmed me down, Kazuki-san.”

“That’s nice.”

“Are you nervous too?”

“Not really.”

“Whaaat?! How can you not be nervous?!”

“Right?” my husband said, nodding in agreement. “She’s the author, but she’s not nervous at all! Even my heart’s beating like crazy. This is the first recording session!”

It seemed that Suzuka-san and my husband were on the same wavelength there, since they both loved voice actors, anime, games, and the like.

“I mean, I don’t normally watch TV, so I don’t have any real attachment to voice actors like you two do,” I explained.

To be clear, I was very interested in what professional voice acting was like, and I was certainly looking forward to this recording session, but my heart wasn’t pounding with the kind of nervous excitement one feels when meeting their idols. What I felt was more akin to the small pangs of anxiety one gets before their first time meeting someone they’re going to be working with.

In short, I wasn’t completely calm, but drama CDs are born from voice and sound, not written text. This was work firmly separate from my own. I had been a lot more nervous meeting my editor for the first time than I was meeting voice actors.

Suzuka-san and I soon arrived at the studio with the director’s guidance. He showed us the bathrooms, the recording booth, and the control room.

The recording booth was where the voice actors were going to be. There were four microphones positioned in front of a wall, and opposite them was a single camera so that the control room could see what was going on. There was also a small desk by the microphones that had snacks and such. The other three walls were crowded with chairs, enough to seat eighteen people in total. I had a feeling it would end up getting a bit cramped once all the voice actors were there, but since this was my first time seeing the inside of a studio, I had no real frame of reference.

The machine-filled control room was for the sound director and other staff members to use. There was a large monitor inside which showed what was happening in the booth, but the camera was focused on the middle two microphones, so the ones on the sides ended up somewhat blurry.

Also in the control room was a sofa big enough to seat three people, and a round table with four chairs surrounding it. Much like the one in the recording booth, this table also had snacks and drinks on it. We were going to be watching from there.

We first greeted the producer, the sound director, and the rest of the staff. As it turned out, the producer had been a fan of Bookworm since the very first volume! Thanks to the hard work of the hired sound director, they had assembled an excellent cast that perfectly suited the image of each character. My gratitude for that is beyond words.

We then exchanged business cards, as is traditional for adults... which led to disaster!

You see, I didn’t have any business cards on me—by which I mean, I’d never had any made in the first place. This was the third time in my life that I’d thought, “Hm... I should probably make business cards in preparation for next time...” I know that I really should get some made, but since I spend all day writing indoors, I just don’t feel the need. At the moment of my writing this, I still haven’t ordered any—a decision that I’ll surely come to regret again soon.

“My apologies,” I said. “I don’t have any business cards.”

“Sorry. I’m all out at the moment,” Suzuka-san apologized. She was my business card-less ally.

“Whew... I’m glad I’m not the only one without any.”

“That’s not something to be pleased about!”

“Oh, but I do have one of Suzuka-san’s business cards from before. Here, look.”

“Kazuki-san, wait a second. That’s something I gave you to keep, not to give to others.”

“Oh, I know. I just wanted to brag about having one of your business cards.”

The producer blinked as he heard our exchange. “Kazuki-sensei sure is a lot like Myne, isn’t she? Like, her aura, the way she talks...” he said, sounding rather impressed. But my editor shook his head and replied:

“No, she’s actually a lot more like Ferdinand.”

Suzuka-san nodded in agreement as she listened to them, but I had no idea what they were on about. It was around then that the scriptwriter, Kunisawa-san, arrived.

“Wooow! There’s Myne! You must be Kazuki-sensei. I recognized you straight away!”

Truly, I had no idea what she was on about. Nobody had ever said, “Wow, there’s Myne,” to me before, especially not when they were just meeting me for the first time.

As the recording session approached, the voice actors steadily filtered in. They dropped by the control room and introduced themselves, but I didn’t know who was going to voice whom.

“That was Takeuchi. He voices Benno, right? And Asano-san voices Angelica?”

“That’s right.”

Suzuka-san was very familiar with voice actors. I had done my best to learn who they all were in advance, but I just couldn’t match their names to their faces. Each time someone introduced themselves, I would glance at my notes to see who they were voicing... but with so many new faces streaming in, there wasn’t much time for that. In the end, there were several people I simply didn’t recognize. I really should have looked up their faces instead of just their names, but hindsight is twenty-twenty.

Once everyone was gathered, we moved to the recording booth where Suzuka-san and I were introduced as the mangaka and the author, respectively.

“To be honest, this is my first time working on a drama CD, so I’ll be leaving everything to the pros. I’m sure you’re all going to knock it out of the park.”

Once my brief greeting was done, we came together for a meeting. I answered some questions that the voice actors had for me, such as “What emotional state is the character in during this line?” and such, while the producer and my editor handed out clear files about Bookworm. Those who didn’t know which character was theirs were given explanations. All in all, things went over pretty well. I was also surprised to see that they had prepared twenty clear files’ worth of papers for this. (Hahaha.)

Miyuki Sawashiro-san asked about Rozemyne’s mental state and personality, and let me tell you, she was like Myne to a T. Her passion and enthusiasm for voice acting reminded me of Myne’s devotion to making books, and I must admit, her eyes were so strong and pretty that they left a lasting impression on me.

During my explanation, she was given a clear file with the cover art for Volume 1 on it. She looked at Myne’s illustration and murmured, “Mm. I’m pretty cute, aren’t I?” It was at that moment that I knew everything was going to be just fine.

When I had been deciding on the voice actor for Rozemyne, I thought about who would be good at both narration and monologue—whose voice could suit not just Rozemyne, the archduke’s adopted daughter, but also Myne the commoner and Urano. It’s an unusually multifaceted role, and if we were given the opportunity to make more drama CDs focused on Rozemyne as she continues to grow up, I wanted our voice actor to be able to handle everything that would entail. And of course, the only person I could imagine in that role was Sawashiro-san. I’m truly glad that my request was fulfilled. Praise be to the gods!

Due to time constraints, our meeting was cut short after a bit of explaining and we returned to the control room. Suzuka-san, Kunisawa-san, and I sat on the sofa in that order, while the producer, my editor, and my husband sat at the table.

“For anime and drama CDs that have already had several recording sessions, we often have to split up the recording days based on the voice actors’ schedules. But since this is the first recording session for Bookworm, we gathered all the voice actors—even those who appear right at the end of the recording—so that they could get to know their characters together and create the proper atmosphere for the work. We’ll need to get the recording done before our time is up.”

That was the explanation I was given.

There were two audio staff sitting in front of the equipment. One was the sound director, who gave directions to the voice actors while thinking about the recording process and speaking order; the other was the mixer, who stared at his screen while adjusting recording labels, checking the lines and noise, and so on.

“We’ll start with a test reading of the script, with everyone working on creating their character voices.”

If we had any requests for a particular voice, we could ask the voice actors to adjust their performance—after all, the voices that were decided on here would end up being the ones used going forward. The test began with me still not really understanding what it meant to “create a character voice.”

Tadanori Date-san (Fran), Miyuki Sawashiro-san (Rozemyne), Shunsuke Takeuchi-san (Benno), and Shun Horie (Lutz) were the first ones to stand in front of the microphones. All I could see on the screen was their backs, and since the lens was focused on the middle two voice actors, the two on the outside ended up blurry. I could recognize Sawashiro-san, since her microphone was closest, but the others I couldn’t make out at all. Oh well. I could tell them apart from their voices, at least.

I had already expected Sawashiro-san and Horie-san to use voices that perfectly suited their characters, but I hadn’t recognized any of Date-san’s previous works during my preliminary research, so I didn’t know what to expect from him.

“Wow... His Fran is just like Fran. Incredible.”

His voice fit my mental image so well that I spoke without even thinking. I just had no complaints whatsoever. There wasn’t even a bit of dissonance in my mind.

Editor: “Benno certainly is cool, isn’t he?”

Suzuka-san: “Ooh. I want Benno to yell at me.”

Suzuka-san, who was sitting with me, has always been a member of the fan community that wants Benno to scold them, and so she was practically trembling with excitement as she listened with a hand over her mouth. I could understand why, since Takeuchi-san’s Benno was truly impressive. At that moment, I knew for sure that Suzuka would have a surge of comrades when the drama CD released. Still, at that point, anyone who wanted to get yelled at by Benno could just replay portions of the CD over and over again. He’d shout “You idiot!” as many times as they wanted. (Hahaha.)

Benno’s voice was also just as I had expected. It wasn’t too low and it perfectly matched my own interpretation, so I had no corrections whatsoever.

Editor: “That’s Sawashiro-san for you. It’s like she’s literally Myne.”

Me: “She definitely has the voice of a protagonist. Her conversation with Benno is so nice.”

I was beyond satisfied with Sawashiro-san’s voice; it was cute, and it suited Rozemyne just as well as I had hoped.

Suzuka-san: “This Lutz is good. He sounds so cool.”

Me: “Right? He sounds just as I imagined.”

Horie-san’s Lutz was perfect as well, meaning all four of our voice actors were good to go.

We then moved on to our next voice actors. Takahiro Sakurai-san’s Ferdinand was spot-on, and Kousuke Toriumi-san’s Sylvester sounded so much like Sylvester that I actually couldn’t believe it. Neither voice needed any fixes; the voice actors had surpassed what I had expected from my research, and I was surprised to see just how well they had formed their voices around the characters. They were incredible.

The test continued up until the sound director interjected, and from there, we in the control room started discussing their performances. We discussed what had caught our attention and confirmed whether there were any changes to be made.

Editor: “Kazuki-san, how were the character voices?”

Me: “Absolutely perfect. Voice actors sure are incredible, aren’t they? You can just keep going.”

Editor: “Getting the character voice correct at the start is the hardest part. If this goes smoothly, then the voice actors will get more used to their characters as recording proceeds, which means they’ll be even better by the end.”

My editor had been there for the recording of Orphen’s drama CD, so he happily told me that this was shaping up to be a good one.

Kunisawa-san: “Kazuki-sensei, is Fran’s last line okay the way it is? You always pay a lot of attention to how Fran acts when he’s angry, right?”

Me: “It did concern me a bit. Fran doesn’t shout like that; he just puts on the pressure. If possible, I’d like for the exclamation mark to be cut. He needs to act as chilly Fran.”

In the rough draft of the recording script, Fran had almost exploded with anger during his last few lines. I requested that Kunisawa-san edit them so that he would act chilly instead, and the sound director conveyed my request to Date-san in the booth. He only conveyed the first part of my request, which probably meant that “chilly Fran” was too hard to understand. (Hahaha.)

Either way, Date-san pulled off a brilliant high-pressure Fran. Voice actors are incredible!

Once all of the voice actors had a grasp on their characters and we had conveyed our fixes, it was time for the real-deal recording to begin. Incidentally, outside of casually running through a few pages at the start to make their character voices, there was no practice; the voice actors just worked their way through the pages one by one and recorded it all.

Once the recording was done, we had another discussion during which we went over any little problems that we wanted to fix, while the mixer checked for any noise and told the sound director what parts needed to be rerecorded. The mixer we had was something else, by the way—my untrained ear never would have noticed the background noise or the super minor slipups in the dialogue that he picked up on.

Ultimately, the sound director would organize all of the corrections and scenes that needed to be rerecorded. He would then give out instructions to the voice actors one after another, like:

“Please repeat Rozemyne’s second line on Page X. There was background noise.”

“There was a slight slipup in the middle of Benno’s line on Page Y. These lines also seemed to overlap, so could I ask for them to be read separately?”

“We have a correction for Ferdinand’s line on Page Z.”

The voice actors would repeat those isolated sections with just as much energy as they had during their group reading. They snapped into character out of nowhere—they could sob and shout on command, matching the emotion and the tone perfectly despite the previous line not having been reread.

Me: “Voice actors really are amazing.”

Suzuka-san: “Kazuki-san, you keep saying ‘amazing’ over and over.”

Me: “Well, I mean, they are amazing!”

They were professional voice actors precisely because they had practiced and developed those skills, but still—I couldn’t help but sigh in amazement at the sheer power of skilled workers. I also really loved how Sakurai-san said, “Good grief...” I don’t want to say that I should have forced an “Excellent” into the Part 3 finale specifically to hear it read aloud, but I must admit, there were times when I was starting to wish that I had. There just hadn’t been a place for it. Ngh...


Once all of the relevant sections had been rerecorded, we moved on to the next scene. Each scene in Bookworm tends to have very different characters, so we needed to check the new character voices. Next up were Natsumi Fujiwara-san’s Wilfried and Mai Nakahara-san’s Georgine.

I’d expected that Fujiwara-san would make a fine Wilfried after researching her, and fine she was. The innocent yet stupid quality to her voice as she spoke to Georgine was very on-brand for her character.

For me, the most surprising pick of all the cast was easily Nakahara-san as Georgine. Everyone in the control room was waiting with bated breath, eager to see what she would come up with. And when she spoke, in all seriousness, I couldn’t help but clap.

Suzuka-san: “Ooh, that was so good. She sounds so villainous.”

Me: “I love that refined nastiness behind the kindness in her voice.”

Kunisawa-san: “Her tone is perfect, but doesn’t she sound a little too young?”

We organized our thoughts, and the sound director asked Nakahara-san to try making the character sound older. It was then that I was truly introduced to the idea of character voices taking shape through gradual instruction, and it was crazy. To think one could make such a vague request and actually get results! It was like my eyes had been opened to a whole new world. That was all we ended up needing to make her Georgine voice perfect.

In short, Nakahara-san’s performance was phenomenal. Please look forward to it.

The next voices were Tadanori Date-san as Bezewanst, Daichi Hayashi-san as Bindewald, and Kenji Hamada-san as Karstedt. That’s right—Date-san was voicing both Fran and Bezewanst! Surely I’m not the only one who had to do a double-take when I found out.

When Date-san began speaking to Hayashi-san as Bezewanst, he sounded too young for someone the former High Bishop’s age. We all agreed, and so he was asked to sound older.

“Ooh! There we go! Now he’s Bezewanst!”

In an instant, Fran had transformed into Bezewanst. Incredible, right? I don’t know how many times I’ve said this, but voice actors are amazing.

Hayashi-san’s Bindewald very much had the tone of a cruel noble, which was perfect. His voice acting suited Shiina-sama’s illustration flawlessly.

Suzuka-san: “Karstedt is such a hunk!”

Suzuka-san’s excitement was justified—Hamada-san’s Karstedt was so cool that I wanted to clench my fists and cheer, “You rock, Father!” It was the perfect voice for a knight commander used to leading his men. Hamada’s voice alone made Karstedt thirty percent more manly. This is a fact.

After that, we had Nodoka Hasegawa-san as Florencia and Masumi Asano-san as Angelica. Truth be told, Asano-san was publicized as playing Angelica, but she’s also playing Elvira. I was surprised, since there’s such a large age gap between those two characters.

Our test revealed that Hasegawa-san’s voice just didn’t suit Florencia—she sounded more like a kind mother overflowing with compassion than an archduke’s first wife. In fact, she was pretty much Effa.

Asano-san’s Elvira spoke a bit faster and had the energy of a lively, proactive mother, but that made her feel less like a noble wife and more like a craftswoman. She was playing a “competent woman” as instructed, but she wasn’t speaking as I would expect Elvira to speak. When paired with Hasegawa-san’s initial Florencia, it was like listening to a discussion between two lower-city moms rather than two noble mothers.

Me: “I think Florencia’s voice should be a step younger, and have more—how can I put this?—noble grace.”

Kunisawa-san: “I agree. I think her voice should be soft and calm.”

Me: “Elvira’s voice is right age-wise, but she’s talking slightly too fast.”

Kunisawa-san: “I feel you. She should focus on speaking more gently and with a noble sort of mindset.”

We organized our thoughts, the sound director conveyed them, and then boom—we had Florencia and Elvira, just as I had imagined them. I once again ended up clapping at the incredible skill of pro voice actors. It was truly amazing.

Once their voices had been decided on, it was once again time for the real deal. The sound director marked a place in the script and everything was recorded in one go, at which point we started talking the scenes over.

Kunisawa-san: “I think Veronica should show a bit more restraint, since nobles need to control their emotions.”

Me: “Mm... I don’t think so. She thought hope had finally come, only for her dreams to be dashed right before her eyes. Veronica had never even considered that her own children would ignore her like that, so this voice is perfect for her.”

Kumiko Nakane-san was our voice actor for not just Veronica, but also Rihyarda. There’s no denying that she has a real talent for voicing older women.

We issued our minor corrections, and next came a scene with yet more new noble characters. There was Konomi Kohara-san as Charlotte, Kumiko Nakane-san as Rihyarda, Atsushi Tamaru-san as Damuel, Masumi Asano-san as Angelica, and Kazuki Narumi-san as Lamprecht.

The testing showed that Kohara-san had really encapsulated the cuteness that one would expect from Charlotte, but when she was speaking to Rozemyne, she sounded as though she were the older sibling. The control room instructed her to sound a step younger, at which point Kohara-san was like, “What? Even younger than this?” She then hesitantly repeated her line in a younger voice, and oof—it was too young this time.

Kunisawa-san: “The tone is fine, but the way she says things is a little...”

Me: “Right, right. If she can stop doing the lisp, it’ll sound perfect.”

The director gave those instructions, and the very instant Kohara-san repeated her line, both Suzuka-san and I immediately conveyed our approval: “Charlotte! So cute!”

Nakane-san’s Rihyarda was a perfect old woman—no changes needed. She sounded exactly as I’d imagined. Between you and me, I was struck with regret that I hadn’t forced the line, “Come now, Ferdinand, my boy!” into the script. It was incredible how distinct she was able to make Veronica and Rihyarda sound, in my opinion.

Asano-san’s Angelica sounded STRONG, so it was perfect to me. I could hear the steel in her voice when she was holding down the struggling Wilfried, and the first thought that ran through my mind was, “Keep on holding him down. Just like that.” (Hahaha.)

Suzuka-san: “Wow... Tamaru-san is literally Damuel.”

Me: “Uh huh. This is exactly what I was hoping for.”

This drama CD contains quite a few fight scenes with Damuel, so he had a lot of awesome-sounding lines. As I was listening to Tamaru-san doing the voice, I couldn’t help but think, “Hold on, when did Damuel get so cool?!” At the time, I really wanted to hear him say some totally lame lines to balance things out.

Narumi-san’s Lamprecht was also exactly what I had imagined. There was no dissonance at all—Lamprecht’s voice flowed into my ears, and I could immediately picture him as some sort of jock or hunk, which was perfect.

Lines for Rozemyne’s lower city family and the “mob” characters like the school friends, noblemen, and noblewomen were all done by the voice actors we had there, with some doubling or even tripling up. I had been too busy to look at the monitor while this was going on, so I hadn’t seen who was playing whom, but I was definitely surprised when I later checked the cast list. Voice actors really can change their voices dramatically based on the role.

One school friend was played by Natsu Yorita-san, the same person who voiced Cornelius. I won’t write the character’s name here, since they weren’t named by that point in Part 3, but some readers might already know who I’m referring to. He had the voice of a cute little boy, and in all honesty, I think he might have had more lines than Cornelius.

Noblewoman A was voiced by Natsumi Fujiwara-san. I was like, “She’s going to be played by Wilfried?!” It’s crazy how voice actors can change their voices at the drop of a hat.

Tadanori Date-san played Nobleman A. Considering that he also voiced Fran and Bezewanst, this was his third role! The characters are all different ages, but he deftly changed his voice to suit each one. Now that was real talent.

Noblewoman B was voiced by... Natsu Yorita-san! That’s her third role alongside Cornelius and the school friend! Is it common knowledge that voice actors can do things like this? It really boggles the mind just how much skill they’re expected to have.

Nobleman B was played by Atsushi Tamaru-san, the same person who voiced Damuel. I listened as closely as I could, but it was hard to believe he was being played by the same person! I thought he was much older.

Kunisawa-san had requested that the nobles sound more palpably antagonistic during their conversation scene, since this is a drama CD and our first-time listeners won’t necessarily know that they’re being villainous. I could understand why—since the conversation between them didn’t have any descriptive text, it was harder to pinpoint the nobles’ emotional states as they spoke.

After the session, we tweaked the script a little. There were some parts that only became apparently flawed once they were read aloud, some lines that needed to be cut, and so on.

The next scene had Takahiro Sakurai-san playing Stenluke, and Unsho Ishizuka-san playing Bonifatius.

Sakurai-san: “What kind of voice does Stenluke have?”

Sound Director: “Exactly the same voice as Ferdinand. Keep the tone and everything the same.”

Sakurai-san: “Uh... What exactly is Stenluke?”

Sound Director: “A magic sword. It’s Angelica’s weapon, and it speaks in Ferdinand’s voice.”

For some reason, everyone in the booth immediately burst into laughter.

“A talking sword?!”

“A magic sword?! Bwahaha!”

It wasn’t long before Asano, Angelica’s voice actor, proudly declared: “Oh, it’s my sword! I own the sword!” That made everyone laugh even harder.

When Ishizuka-san spoke, everyone in the control room instantly shouted “Bonifatius!” and started laughing. Everyone agreed at once: he was so perfectly Bonifatius that we couldn’t help but clap and shout, “Good job, Grandfather!” Really, nobody else could have played him after that. I laughed so hard when he came to save Rozemyne.

Both Ishizuka-san and the sound director struggled to pronounce Bonifatius’s name, so Ishizuka-san was eventually like, “Boni... You can just call me Mr. Bones. Let’s go with Mr. Bones!” He gave a big thumbs-up and everything! He sure was quick to jump to nicknames, and the name “Mr. Bones” ended up making our already cute grandfather even cuter!

I tried telling him that the readers just call him “Grandfather” or “Grandpa Bo” in the comments section, but he couldn’t hear me from the control room. Too bad.

Daichi Hayashi-san played a mob noble from the Veronica faction, meaning he played two villains here. Both sounded villainous, but they were completely unique. The mob noble sounded nasty but didn’t have the distinct toady voice of Count Bindewald.

The black-clad noble was played by Kenji Hamada-san. That character name alone might make one assume he’s a mob, but he’s actually more of a mid-boss who keeps showing up. I won’t name him here, but he’s the one who attacked Rozemyne.

I thought the initial voice for the black-clad noble sounded way too cool. I wanted something appropriate for a mid-boss, but he sounded more like a hero. I admittedly thought it was a little unreasonable of me to ask him to speak with a cloth over his mouth for the sake of realism, especially considering that he needed to speak his lines smoothly and clearly at the same time, but he nodded and did it without issue. So amazing.

Last was Miyuki Sawashiro-san creating Urano’s voice. Urano only had a single line in a flashback, but she was way older than Myne or Rozemyne, and since she had a completely different body before she was reincarnated, it was important to get it right.

Sawashiro-san: “How old is she?”

Sound Director: “Twenty-two. She’s a college student.”

From that alone, Sawashiro-san snapped right into the proper voice. Don’t you think that’s incredible? Urano’s voice is entirely different from Rozemyne’s childish one, and yet you can tell that they both speak in the same way. I was surprised every single time I heard her speak.

The lower city family kept surprising me too. Again, I was too busy during the recording stage to look at the monitor, so it wasn’t until afterward when I checked who had voiced whom that I realized Tadanori Date-san was playing Gunther. I couldn’t believe how many roles he played. Like, whaaat?

Gunther’s voice was low, and I remembered asking the sound director if we could make him sound a little bit younger, but I hadn’t realized it was actually Date-san... I really mean it when I say I was surprised. Sheesh... Date-san really carried the world on his shoulders that day.

Natsu Yorita-san did the voice for Effa, but she played a lot of other roles too. She kinda just popped up anywhere and everywhere, but her voices were always distinct and totally unique. I couldn’t work out if she has a special talent for this, or if all voice actors are skilled in that way. It was impossible to tell—the voice actors were just too good.

A mother overflowing with warm love and compassion... and yet, she’s also the voice of Cornelius. Wow. Incredible.

Tuuli was played by Mai Nakahara-san, which means Georgine and Tuuli shared a voice actor! Two characters who are pretty much complete opposites! Still, given the roles that Nakahara-san usually plays, it’s easier to envision her playing Tuuli in the first place. The voice she does is so cute that you wouldn’t believe she’s also voicing Georgine. Please look forward to her truly angelic Tuuli.

During the recording process, I had to focus on the script while listening to the voices, so I didn’t really look at the monitor much. As a result, I missed most of what the voice actors were doing on-screen. I realized midway through that this was going to be a problem when I got around to writing this very report and started trying to look up more, but my eyes were always drawn back to the script.

I didn’t spend much time looking at the monitor, but I’ll tell you what I did learn:

Sawashiro-san swings her hands and moves her body a lot, playing her role physically rather than just vocally. Most others had their legs about shoulder-width apart as they spoke. The microphones were locked into place, so the taller actors had to bend down a little.

I could only see her back, but one thing I remember thinking was how much boyish heroism Fujiwara-san was exuding as she voiced Wilfried.

It seemed pretty rough when a bunch of different characters had to speak in a single scene; there was a ton of moving around as the voice actors dipped in and out as required. Takeuchi-san ended up stuck in this awkward position where he was pretty much stuck rushing to and from the mics. It was so cute!

I don’t know how the voice actors in the booth spent their time while we were discussing corrections in the control room, but maybe they read their lines together and discussed who would be using what mic at what point.

That reminds me—Toriumi-san acted so much like Sylvester that I had to wonder if some voice actors are cast based on them already resembling their character. I didn’t know whether that was his “true self” or whether he was just roleplaying for the CD, but during breaks he was always like, “Woohoo!” He would wave at the camera even when we weren’t asking questions, and he’d casually help out some of the newbies when they were concerned about whether they needed to change their slippers before going to the bathroom. He was basically Sylvester personified, so I really wanted to hear him say, “Gah! Praise be to the gods!” (Haha.)

Sawashiro-san was quite the jokester, and she was similar to Myne in many ways. When the sound director announced that their break time was over, she’d look at the camera and make these “OK” signs with this super cute, super smug expression. There was one occasion when someone actually had to say, “Hold on, I need a second!” afterward, at which point she frantically started shaking her hands like, “Wait, wait! I take it back!” She even made a big “X” with her arms, exactly like Myne does with the guildmaster in the manga version! It really made me laugh.

Another thing that stuck with me was how serious Sakurai-san was. I feel as though I only ever saw him silently reading the script. Oh, but I think he was laughing along with everyone else when talking about Stenluke’s voice, so maybe he was quite energetic when I wasn’t looking at the monitor. Hm... Maybe he was just trying to get into character as Ferdinand...?

Many of the voice actors were at some point or another agonizing over the names of characters and gods being super long and written all in katakana, which made them hard to pronounce in Japanese. That was probably the thing I regretted most during the whole recording session. “Florencia” and “Schutzaria” were hard, and then “Geduldh”? Hah! Geduldh was immediately written out. Basically, everyone struggled a lot during the recording.

“I’m really sorry! When I decided on the names, the book adaptation hadn’t even started yet, and I never thought for a second that there’d be drama CD versions!”

I apologized with all my heart from the control room and thereby resolved to make the names easier to pronounce should I ever start on a new series. Thank you all again for working to say them properly!

Also, I have to say—while the sound director’s casting sense was definitely good, I ended up questioning how much the casting really mattered when voice actors can change their voices so freely. The most important part seemed to be remembering everyone’s faces, since this was a job that involved working with others in person.

I saw the voice actors off, and while I wanted to compliment them all on their individual performances, there were so many names and faces that I still hadn’t managed to memorize. To make up for that, I’ve ended up unleashing all of my thoughts in this report.

To summarize, I now strongly understand the importance of remembering voice actors’ faces, making it crystal clear what kinds of voices I’ve envisioned, and organizing everything in a way that people can easily digest. Many voice actors are too busy to actually read the works they’re doing voices for, and on top of Ascendance of a Bookworm being a super long series, this recording session was for parts that hadn’t even been published yet. Rather than researching the voice actors, I should have summarized Part 1, detailed the personality of each character, and put together some study guides of sorts. That would have helped the production of the drama CD a lot more than anything else.

If we’re lucky enough for there to be another recording session, I’d like to use what I’ve learned to hopefully make it better. Thank you very much for the valuable experience.

I wish to express my gratitude to the staff, the producer, the sound director, and everyone else in the drama CD production staff. I also want to thank Mariko Kunisawa-sama for writing the script, TO Books and my editor, and Suzuka-sama for drawing the recording report manga despite her busy schedule.



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