Masako Nozawa’s feet have been getting further apart for forty years. When she started voicing Goku, she says, her stance for the “haaa” at the end of a Kamehameha was maybe half a step wide. As Goku got stronger, the stance got wider, and she never decided to do it. It just happened.
That’s from the official interview Toei released Sunday for the premiere of Dragon Ball Super: Beerus, the enhanced edition that had its world premiere screening at New York Comic Con on Thursday. Nozawa sat down with Koichi Yamadera, who has voiced the God of Destruction Beerus since Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods,, and the two of them spend half of it ribbing each other.
Always at full power
Yamadera asked her the question anybody who’s watched Dragon Ball for a while has wondered. Goku keeps getting stronger. Super Saiyan, then 2, then 3, then a god. Does she hold anything back, knowing the next level is coming?
“Yes, I do. Always at full power,” she said, meaning every time is the strongest he’ll ever be. And when the next level shows up a few years later, her reaction is, “Oh, is that so.” Yamadera pushed. Doesn’t she ever think enough is enough? “No, I never think that.” The staff ask it of her practically every time, she said. “To the people making the request there may well have been a limit, but for me there isn’t one.”
That’s when Yamadera said the line 33 USA put in the subject of the press email. “In all of human history, Masako Nozawa is the only person who could do this.”
And she doesn’t prepare the way you’d expect, either. “I don’t think about how to play him at all,” she said. She looks at the picture, and by then she’s already Goku, or Gohan, or Goten.
The god who’s also a cat
Yamadera’s job was the opposite problem. The director wanted Beerus to be strong and frightening as a God of Destruction, and also charming and playful, and he had to make both of those one coherent person rather than two moods. He said it was quite difficult at first, and that he ended up doing what Nozawa does: trusting the script. “We don’t want to ruin a character we’ve been given by getting the voice wrong.”
He also confirmed something worth knowing about how this new edition was made. They didn’t record new dialogue. The redrawn cuts are built around the performances they gave back then, and Yamadera called that a stroke of luck.
How to fire a stronger Kamehameha
Nozawa has an answer, and it’s a good acting note. It depends what you’re firing at. Into thin air, a soft little “Kamehameha” will do. But if you’re aiming at that wall over there, it has to reach it. “Make the target, the thing you’re aiming at, clear in your mind,” she said. The more concretely you picture what you’re hitting, the more force goes behind it. If you’ve ever had a director tell you to play to someone instead of to the room, that’s the same note.
Dragon Ball is forever
They closed on what the show means to them. Yamadera wants to create Beerus fans all over the world, and he’s asking anyone outside Japan who spots him while he’s traveling to call out “Beerus!” Nozawa kept it shorter. “For me Dragon Ball is simply the best, and every character in it is lovable. However villainous they are, there’s always something about them you can’t quite hate.”
Then she said it twice, in case anybody missed it. “Dragon Ball is forever.”
The creditless opening is at the top of this page. Here’s the ending and the Super Surge trailer. North American streaming hasn’t been announced yet.
Images courtesy of 33 USA. ©BIRD STUDIO/SHUEISHA, TOEI ANIMATION.
Who’s your Goku: Masako Nozawa or Sean Schemmel? Tell me in the comments on the channel.
