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From the original anime of youthful summer of boys and girls themed on words and music titled “Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop” (“Saikoto” for short), the director Ishiguro Kyouhei released his thought on casting stories of Kamiya Hiroshi, Sakamoto Maaya, etc.

This is the original animation of one youthful summer of boys and girls with keywords of words and music by director Ishiguro Kyouhei, who is well-known for directing “April is Your Lie” and “Children of the Whales” with delicate and emotional expressions.
A haiku boy Cherry, who is not good at communicating with others, and a mask girl Smile, who hides her complex on her appearance, meet at the ordinary shopping mall in the rural area and begin to get closer through words and music.

Director Ishiguro started and have been running the official YouTube channel “Saikoto Channel” for promotion for entire 9 months, and neatly revealed background stories of the movie. A total of 29 episodes are currently available.
This time, the special talk show event of the director Ishiguro Kyouhei was held on August 3 at Shinjuku Piccadilly. Unrevealed episodes and the reason for the casting of Kamiya Hiroshi, Sakamoto Maaya, Umehara Yuuichirou and Han Megumi have been revealed in the event.

■Kamiya Hiroshi
Did you realize that Kamiya-san played the father in the movie? It fits so nicely that you won’t realize without being told.
I first worked with Kamiya-san in “Children of Whales” and he played the character called Shuan. What was impressive about him was he asked so many deep, detailed questions on the first day of the recording. Not many people do that. I was surprised at even the experienced voice actor like him tries to understand the character through such questions.

Shuan is a character with easy-going but little dark character, and his tested patterns are not on the show because they were too realistic. However, Kamiya-san was completely different from him I usually see. I was shocked to see the acting that made me think that the character popped out to the real world. With that experience, I imagined that he might want to play the character with stableness. With all the reasons that I just explained, I offered him to play Cherry’s father.

I was in the direction booth during the recording of “Saikoto”, but I hurt my throat for talking too much. I remember well when Kamiya-san gave me a jelly for throat, which is famous among the voice actors, without hesitation.

■Sakamoto Maaya
I first planned to invite Sakamoto Maaya-san as the script staff, not as an actor. I also planned to offer her to sing “YAMAZAKURA” by Oonuki Taeko, which will be performed at the last of the movie.
I never expected Oonuki Taeko-san to accept the offer for music composure and did not expect that Oonuki-san would even sing the song. My goal was Oonuki-san’s composed music, and it became real, but I was ready to send offer to Sakamoto Maaya-san to sing the song if Oonuki-san rejected my request to sing it as well. Oonuki-san has an experience of providing music to Maaya-san and she is both wonderful musician and singer.

Current state is the best of what I expected, but I also want to hear Maaya-san’s version, so I wonder when she would sing it (laughter). I have nothing to say about acting, it was perfect!

■Umehara Yuuichirou
Umehara Yuuichirou-kun played a character called Tough Boy. I also worked with him for the first time in “Children of the Whales”, and he got the role of Ouni from the audtion. Have you ever seen his appearance? He is surprisingly handsome. He is handsome in voice too. But the impression of him is friendly man as he doesn’t have a cool-guy like big attitude. In a different direction from Kamiya-san, he plays many handsome characters due to his appearance and voice. As I was seeing him being friendly at any time, I thought that it would be wonderful if I offered Ume-chan to play a hilarious character that has nothing to do with his appearance. But at the same time, I wanted to make Tough Boy cool. Tough Boy looks a bad boy more or less as well, so I wanted to make him a character that is loved by everyone. So, I finalized my thought to sent Ume-chan the offer as he has a cool voice and he would be able to make the character look more amicable since he rarely plays such a comical, outrageous, and bossy character.

In the end, there is a line, “which one?” with smile, and I directed that with care. I showed with my own example and he kept following me, although I asked him to redo for 3 or 4 times. (laughter)

■Han Megumi
This was the first time working with Han Megumi-san, but I saw her at other auditions a few times. I was watching Chap of “Snack World” on TV, not knowing that she was the performer, and I thought that her acting contains friendliness and loveliness in boy-like voice.

She plays the sex actor in “In This Corner of the World” and the cute heroine and a chameleon in “My Love Story”. I listened to her male-like voice with her background, so I wanted to offer her to play the juvenile with loveliness in my movie, and she played Beaver in this movie.

It was fantastic. Her acting was filled with energy and loveliness, and I was glad to see it. I almost burst out into laughter, when she shout out the line in the busy scene, “Moto Puri!?”. I loved that and she almost had to retake the scene because my voice was about to be recorded. I really love that scene.

© CiderKotoba © 2020 Flying Dog/ “Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop” Production Committee