Animate Times has spoken to her multiple times, but to commemorate the release of the final episode, we once again interviewed Kana Hanazawa, who played Baby Shark for all 60 episodes. In this first part, he talked about his impressions after recording the final episode and the behind-the-scenes stories from the recording.
–First of all, please tell us your impressions after recording the final episode.
Kana Hanazawa (hereinafter referred to as “Hanazawa”) who plays the role of baby shark: After the dubbing was over, everyone was so disappointed that they didn’t go home at all, saying to each other, “It was a great work.” We recorded 10 episodes in one dubbing session, so we must have only done 6 dubbing sessions, but the entire cast was looking forward to each episode being streamed on YouTube.
Also, I’m sure those of you who are watching have noticed, but apart from Tomatsu (Haruka) who came as a guest, there are only four regular cast members. That’s why the four of us played various roles, and there were times when I also played a different role, but I felt like the four of us were able to accomplish everything, so I’m sad to see it end.
–Each episode is about 2 minutes long, so even if you record all 10 episodes at once, the dubbing will be over in no time.
Hanazawa: That’s right. In one recording, we record five episodes each, and for a typical 30-minute anime, we would rehearse, then record the first 15 minutes, take a break, and then do the second half. In the case of “”, we rehearsed five episodes at once, did the actual performance, checked the changes, etc., and if it was OK, we took a break and then did the same thing from episode 6… That’s why the recording time was shorter than a normal 30-minute animation…but the checking took a lot of time (lol), so it was a scene that required a lot of concentration.
――From the first episode to the final episode, have you noticed anything, changed your acting style, or faced any challenges while acting?
Hanazawa: As I mentioned before, we recorded the ending theme “Yorimichi” before dubbing, but we decided to adjust things like the baby shark’s speaking style during episodes 1 to 10, which we recorded first. I wonder if I was doing it while thinking about it. Thanks to that, after the next episode, episode 11, Baby Shark’s tone and emotional ups and downs became more stable, and it became easier to decide how to do it. I feel like expanding the range of expressions of emotion, anger, sadness, and happiness makes it more vivid, and I feel like I’ve become able to play around with things like creating my own goofy points and toning them down.
–You mentioned that you were creating a baby shark vocabulary list for recording, but how many words did you have in total?
Hanazawa: I think it was about 70 words.
–I looked at it, and it was written all over the page next to the front of the incense board in the script.
Hanazawa: First of all, I wrote a lot on the script for the first episode up to episode 10, which is the first to be recorded, and then when I receive the script, I look at the script for the first episode and add on to it. I’m glad it fit on one page. I can’t handle it any more (lol).
Every time we record, new words and new foods come up, so we start by thinking, “What should we do with this?” First, I check the script, and if I think, “I can’t cover this part with the words I’ve used up until now,” I write it in the script and think about the parts that weren’t filled in. It felt like I was solving a problem (laughs). So I remember the words once they appear. In the beginning, I was checking things while I was doing it, but by the 50th episode, I think I had gotten to the point where I could respond immediately even if I was asked to improvise on the spot.
–At the end of Episode 28’s “Fun Puppet Show,” the lines that Baby Shark said to the shark and dolphin puppets, “Shark, Il, Tomoachi,” were easy to understand and very heartwarming.
花澤：ありがとうございます。台本には「感動」と書かれていましたが、それをそのまま言葉にするのではなくて、もうちょっと子ザメちゃんっぽい感覚でセリフにできたらいいなと思って、「友達だよ」みたいな意味に変換しました。ちなみに「トモアチ」というセリフは何度か登場しています。
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