ANIME Impulse (March 2020)
Interview Archive
An interview with Ray Chase conducted by ANIME Impulse discussing his various voice roles, including his role as Bruno Bucciarati. It was posted on their YouTube channel on March 28, 2020.
Interview
Hey, guys. I'm Ray Chase, and I'm the voice of JoJo—er, Bruno Bucciarati in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. I'm also voicing Noctis in "Noctis's Bizarre Adventure." Thank you for coming to my interview. Let's go ask some questions.
You're Karamatsu! Which brother are you more like in real life?
I voiced Karamatsu in Osamatsu-san, which I don't think anybody's heard yet. But trust me, it's a great voice and a great performance. I loved this show before I auditioned. I watched all 52 of those very, very silly episodes, and Karamatsu was absolutely my boy. So when the time came to audition, I did, like, three takes for Karamatsu, and negative five for all the other ones because I didn't like them so much. I think he's also the most like me, because he's the coolest brother and I'm the coolest brother.
How did it feel to get the role of Bruno Bucciarati?
"What a surprise... The distinct tang of a liar!"I prepared for the role of licking Giorno Giovanna's face for many years, even before I knew what an anime was. I went around licking mafia guys' faces, and you know when they're lying, which is pretty much all the time. You lick their face, and they say, "Hey! Don't lick my face!" and you say, "You're lying. You want me to lick your face! I'm training for an anime part!" and they say, "I'm calling the cops!" And then the cops came and arrested me, but that's how I made sure to do the best performance I could as Bruno Bucciarati.
Let's talk about Stand names for a second. It's the elephant in the room. It's the big old elephant. There it is, there's an elephant on this table (gesturing). Guys, Stand names... We have to change the names, because the names of the bands we can't use. But let's talk about Sticky Fingers for a second. I don't know if that's the best Stand name for a guy who has zippers. I think Zipper Man's a pretty good Stand name! Zipper Man!
Here's a thought about Giorno's hair: I think it looks really delicious. It looks like a fluffy pastry you can just bite into, and some black raspberry jam comes out the other side. I just want to eat his hair. You didn't ask this question, but I'm gonna answer it anyway: Who in Part 5 has the most delicious hair? Abbacchio. I think it'll taste like beautiful silken pasta when you eat it up with that purple sauce, but it really tastes like clams. I'd be all over that. Oh no. Now I'm just entering into the BruAbba[a] fandom, huh? Oh well!
How is it like, growing up and being a fan, to working on these projects?
One of the craziest things about being a voice actor at this time is starting to see a lot of people who grew up with video games now getting to voice in video games. I'm no exception—I loved Smash Bros. Melee when I was a kid. Roy and Dr. Mario were my two mains. I like the heavier hitters, but not too crazy like Ganondorf. When I got the chance to voice Roy in Fire Emblem Heroes, which was a total surprise that they threw at me at the end of my session for Alphonse, I was like, "Oh my gosh! I've got to come up with the voice... I don't think they're gonna use this, I don't know..." I was really scared, and I only had five minutes... And I did my voice, and then they used it for the game. And then when it came time to do Smash Bros., I had to keep that secret for a very, very long time. That was just a crazy, crazy dream come true. It's very rare in this industry that you get to voice people that you literally grew up with who didn't have a voice, and I am just the luckiest guy in the world.
I'd watched all episodes of JoJo for a while. When I was in it, I was... Let's recap. I'm Loggins, baby! Donovan! And I was Rubber Soul, Yellow Temperance, in Stardust Crusaders. When I voiced all of those roles, I had seen zero JoJo. And then I was like, "You know what? A lot of people are recommending this. Let me pick it up." I picked it up and I ran with it. I watched it all the way through Part 4, and I was very, very excited. I knew the dub was coming out for Part 5, and I auditioned for all the characters. I did the same thing for Bruno that I did for Karamatsu, now that I think about it. I auditioned for him three times, and then everybody else once or zero or negative five times. I'm really, really happy that I got to be my best boy.
How do you prepare for characters' screams?
As far as the preparation that goes into a lot of the voice roles that we do, we usually have zero prep work. When I was going in to voice Roy in Smash, I didn't know I was working on Smash Bros. that day. They just said, "Hey, Nintendo wants you. We don't know what it is. We're not allowed to tell you." And so, I found out while I was there that I was voicing Roy. They had all of the clips, and they went down every single one. We did two takes, and I just tried to match the Japanese voice actor as much as possible, Jun Fukuyama. I got to that death scream, and he did a big old death scream, and so I did a very big death scream. I'm really glad that they went with the very, very painful-sounding one.
How did you create the voice of Eve in NieR:Automata?
I played Eve in NieR:Automata, or "onomata," or "Buccellati," however you pronounce it. That was one of the most difficult sessions that I ever did. We kind of figured the role out as we went along, because we didn't know a whole lot about him from the start. So we went through all the cinematics, voiced it... And then we realized, "Ah, this voice that we have doesn't really work for him. Maybe we need to do another voice." We went back and we redid everything with another voice. So what was happening to me in the booth... Because Eve screams a lot and transforms into a crazy, scary monster thing, I was in a lot of physical pain. So I used the physical pain to channel Eve's extreme furiousness at 2B and 9S for killing his brother (spoilers!). It really hurt a lot, and I hope that came through in the performance.
Favorite type of music?
Guys, you're asking me about music? I'm weird with music. I'm actually really, really into music history. It's one of my biggest "nerd-ing" things in the world, but I don't listen to cool stuff. I listen to the late Romantic composers, like Tchaikovsky and Rorschach, guys like that. I don't talk about them a lot because people don't like them, and there's no memes of Shostakovich out there. What I am listening to right now that is kind of cool is chiptune. I'm really into chiptune music. I've loved Disasterpeace for a long time. YMCK is another one that I really like. And there's this one, and it sucks because he stopped making music, but I can't stop listening to it: Fearofdark. His album Motorway is freaking phenomenal. I listen to it every single day. I listened to it on the way here. It's amazing. You guys have gotta check it out and try to convince him to keep making music.
If you could choose the ending song of JoJo Part 5, what would it be?
You guys are asking me, "What would I change if I don't want Freek'n You, 'every time I close my eyes, waking up feeling so horny,' as the ending song to Part 5?" What would I choose? I would make that the OP, and then the ending would be Roundabout by Yes, because it's iconic and great. It's just so great, ending on that "To Be Continued" with Roundabout playing. Bring back Roundabout. #BringBackRoundabout.
You voice Noctis in FFXV! How did that come about?
I'm from New Jersey, and I moved over to Las Vegas when I was about five years old. My slight accent got me the part of Noctis, because the head writer for Final Fantasy XV, Dan Inoue, was from New York, and he was looking for a little extra something to set Noctis apart from the other protagonists' voices that were already in the series. They asked for mid-Atlantic, which usually means "not-American kind of accent." He enjoyed that I had a slight way that I used my "Rs," and it set me apart. We didn't end up totally using that accent for the game, but it definitely made the audition sound like somebody interesting and new. You can hear my accent in such words like "character" and "target." It's very, very subtle, but it's there.
It's been 3 years since FFXV. How did that game impact your career/life?
You're telling me it's been three years since Final Fantasy XV came out? That's not true. Nope. It just came out. I'm not that old. It's fine. No, it's not—it's fine. Then that means I was cast two years before that, so it's been a part of my life for five years. Wow. That role absolutely changed my life, and I have so many people to be grateful for for that, most notably Keythe Farley, who went to bat for me when they were changing the voice around after Episode Duscae (an early demo). They said, "Get a new actor," and Keythe said, "No, let's let Ray re-audition for the part," That was a good month of unbelievable stress, but I got the role. I was able to be a part of, I think, one of the most emotional video games ever released. I absolutely love hearing what the fans have to say about that game, speaking to them on a personal level, about them finding friends... I love it having real-world effects on people's lives. It really makes me happy to be a part of something that touched people in that way. I've never had a role like that before. Those kinds of roles are very few and far between, and I'm very, very grateful to be a part of the Final Fantasy universe. I will always be your Noctis.
Favorite video games?
I play a ton of video games, way too much. I like playing crazy indie games, I love playing JRPGs. But the one I'm playing right now, which is really, really bad for me because I'm at, like, 200 hours, is Slay the Spire. It is a rogue-like deck-building game, and my God, there's a lot of replay value. And every single time you sit down, it's going to take 90 minutes, and the time just flies by. It's bad for me. There's 20 difficulties to it, and you're just working your way through the 20 difficulties. I'm gonna be playing this game for at least the next five years. Don't play this game. Buy it, support the devs, don't play it. Don't be like me.
Do you play games... online? Maybe... stream somewhere?
I stream! Hey, thanks for the opportunity to plug the fact that I stream twice a week with LoudAnnoying (twitch.tv/loudannoying). I play Final Fantasy XIV as "Noxas-Iuxu Skyrim" every Monday at 7 PM, Pacific Standard Time. And then on Wednesdays, me, Robbie, and Max play random stuff. So, our troupe name is called "Loud, Annoying, Very Annoying," which is shortened to "LAVA." It consists of me, Robbie Daymond, and Max Mittelman. The question that is asked a lot is, "Which one is Loud? Which one's Annoying? Which one's Very Annoying?" The answer is: all three of us, at the same time, are all three of those. But not me.
How do you create voices for new characters?
When I was a kid, I was on the forensics team, high school forensics, which is, like, speech and debate. And we did a lot of dramatic interpretation, humorous interpretation. These were events where you played an entire play or a movie or something by yourself, and you switched between the different characters, and I did a lot of that. Playing a play where you are every part means that you have to come up with a lot of different voices, and I feel like doing that in high school really helped broaden my range as a voice actor. A lot of the time, when I'm faced with a role that I don't know anything about, there's no artwork, and I have to come up with a voice, I go back to high school and come up with one of those crazy voices. It's really fun to get to use a voice that you haven't used before, that you've always wanted to.
You were in Persona 5?! Wait... WHAT?
Guys, let's talk about the other elephant in the room, my most amazing role. I see a lot of figures of him on your wall. It's the subway announcer from Persona 5. This was a role that changed my life. This was, I would say, five to six minutes of work, but it's led to hundreds and hundreds of hours of just sitting in a chair, being happy. When I'm at home, I just sit in a chair and think about Subway Announcer and say, "Aoyama-itchōme. Next stop: Aoyama-itchōme" (laughs).
Funniest voice direction?
There's a voice director out there that I worked with on the Fallout series who directs in Smurfs? He'll say, "Uh, just half a Smurf more," "I really need you to remove a Smurf from that." And it really works as direction, because, in his words, "Every time you tell an actor to Smurf it up or Smurf it down, it just means whatever it means in the actor's head." It's very versatile, and it gets the actor to do something else. I love Smurfing it up.
I feel like Matt (Matthew Mercer) and I sound the same in a lot of things, and I feel like it's because we both did this voice when we were younger (low voice), and we found out that this is a really versatile voice to use in stuff. And we must have watched the same cartoon that had the guy doing that voice, and we both committed to it. That's why I sound like Matt Mercer sometimes. I think we're both channeling the same voice actor from 1991. I don't know who it is.
Favorite memes?
Favorite memes? Classic favorite meme is the "are you a wizard" guy face, because it's so funny. The best meme of the year is "me and the boys." It is my favorite meme. The memes that are just funny when you look at it are the best kinds of memes. They're the best.
What does voice acting mean to you?
Voice acting means a great deal to me. It gives me an opportunity to be on ANIME Impulse, which, who could ask for anything more? I love being able to play a whole bunch of different characters. Every single day, you're going in, playing somebody new, being surprised... It's really, really fun. I love that we're in an age where we can interact with the fans on social media or at conventions, and it can be this thing that isn't swept under the rug, but that has its own little spotlight. I really, really appreciate that. Voice acting is a dream job, and if you want it, you're gonna have to take it out of my cold, dead hands. Do I end too many of my questions really serious? Can you edit it out?
Video
Notes
- ↑ "BruAbba" is a portmanteau of "Bruno" and "Abbacchio," commonly used in fan circles to refer to the act of "shipping" the two characters as romantic partners, as well as any resulting fan material.
