Masaya Fukinishi on being the voice of older anime fans\u2019 hero as Hibino Kafka: Kaiju No. 8 Production I.G, CrunchyrollKaiju No. 8 is one of the hottest anime series of the season, but it\u2019s got one pretty big difference from other major shows popping off this summer \u2014 the age of its main protagonist, Hibino Kafka. Kafka is an unassuming guy in his early thirties, something that\u2019s a far cry from most Shounen anime protags, who are usually in high school or, at the very most, just starting university. We got the chance to speak with Kafka\u2019s voice actor, Masaya Fukinishi, about what it\u2019s like voicing an older character in such a breakout Shounen anime like Kaiju No. 8 compared to his younger roles and the coming-of-age fare currently dominating the market. Despite Kafka being older than most shounen protags in popular anime, Fukinishi believes that the character\u2019s \u201cold-school\u201d spirit actually makes him more relatable to certain audiences. \u201cA lot of manga focuses on the younger high school kid who has a bright future,\u201d he told us in an exclusive interview at Anime Expo. \u201cIt feels exciting, and it\u2019s full of possibilities. So it\u2019s rare to see a protagonist who has more years under their belt. It almost feels like there\u2019s a sense of counting down to some kind of time limit or deadline.\u201d \u201cI think there\u2019s a certain fear or anxiousness or anxiety that is depicted in Kafka\u2019s character, which I find very interesting. But in spite of all that, I think Kafka\u2019s almost humanness, so to speak, is very old-school in how he approaches. And that brightness, I think, translates to a really, really relatable hero.\u201d When it comes to curating a voice for Kafka, Fukinishi goes all-in \u2014 much like Kafka himself, a character with whom he instantly felt a kinship in the booth due to his colorful expressions and strong visual cues. \u201cThis is gonna sound like a really smart answer, but there\u2019s a certain feeling I get as I fall into character more. When I perform a character, I begin to realize, \u2018Oh, I\u2019m becoming that age. I\u2019m starting to transform.\u2019 So when I play an older character, I naturally feel myself aging. Or when I play a younger character, I feel myself becoming younger,\u201d he explained. \u201cBut in the case of Kaiju No. 8, when I read the original manga all the way back from chapter one, I could already tell, \u2018Wow, this is a character that I would be really good at.\u2019 Because I think Kafka as a character has a lot of color in terms of his range of expression in the anime adaptation.\u201d \u201cWhenever he\u2019s running, I can really see, \u2018Wow. He kind of looks pathetic in a way.\u2019 So when I get that visual cue, I do that and I feel myself aging in a way.\u201d In fact, Fukinishi says he shares a few traits with Kafka, one of them being that the character is \u201cvery expressive.\u201d \u201cOn a more serious note, I think that when we approach our work, I always try to exert whatever my maximum is at any given moment in time and search for where that limit is,\u201d he told us. \u201cI think Kafka kind of does the same in his own right. And one more \u2014 he has a nice smile.\u201d During our conversation, Fukinishi proved that he\u2019s just as animated as the character he plays in Kaiju No. 8, constantly wearing a big smile and speaking with his hands as he excitedly gave us his answers. It\u2019s clear that he\u2019s a big fan of the show, and he even shared a moment that left both himself and the entire cast in stitches in the recording booth. \u201cThis is for myself and the entire cast who we were recording with that day: There\u2019s a scene where Hoshina Soshiro, the second in command, laughs kind of maniacally. And everyone just burst out laughing in the studio.\u201d Kaiju No. 8 has just wrapped up its first season, and it\u2019s already accrued a massive fanbase as viewers can\u2019t wait to see what\u2019s next for Kafka in his journey as a half-human, half-Kaiju member of the Anti-Kaiju Defense Force.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Masaya Fukinishi on being the voice of older anime fans\u2019 hero as Hibino Kafka: Kaiju No. 8 Production I.G, CrunchyrollKaiju No. 8 is one of the hottest anime series of the season, but it\u2019s got one pretty big difference from other major shows popping off this summer \u2014 the age of its main protagonist, Hibino […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12543\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}