Interview: Bleach Voice Actor Reveals that Aizen is a Tsundere, Did Not Know About the Twist
Even the voice actor of Aizen had no idea that Aizen would turn out to be the traitor.
On November 8, 2024, Shou Hayami, who plays Sosuke Aizen, discusses his time as the character.
The biggest shock from this interview is that for Hayami, Aizen is actually a “tsundere”
It is shown through his two roles: the gentle Captain Aizen is a “tsun”, while the reactive, fierce Arrancar leader Aizen is a “dere”.
What makes him attractive is his aloofness away from people because he stands out of social place and the crowd, revealing what Hayami calls the beauty of “living without compromising his ideals”,.
As such, Hayami pays attention to how Aizen has a “different sensibility than normal people” and that Hayami’s approach is “economical” and so he avoids adding too much effort to his lines
Hayami emphasizes Aizen’s solitude that he actively avoids other cast members as joining them would “reduce Aizen’s individuality”
Hayami’s favorite moment from the dubbing process is the battle between Ichigo and Aizen in the Arrancar Arc, where there were over 40 actors playing as Soul Reapers watching Hayami and Masakazu Morita (Ichigo’s voice actor) deliver their lines in the studio.
This was almost the opposite for the Thousand Year Blood War dubbing, likely due to COVID-19 restrictions, although the author Tite Kubo was quite present across the dubbing process.
Notably, the voice direction for the Thousand Year Blood War was different as he was told to “sound younger” but he had to tweak it a bit when he sounded too young.
Of note, it is interesting that in the English Dub, Kyle Hebert sounded much older than when he did the role 20 years ago.
Hayami Had No Idea About the Aizen Twist
Hayami discusses the difficulty in portraying the subtle change between his kind and villainous personas as Hayami normally plays kinder characters.
Yes, it is confirmed here that Hayami was never told that Aizen would be a traitor, likely done to make the kinder Aizen sound more authentic.
So he had to ask how he was to interpret the character now.
Yet in spite of this difficulty, Hayami, the more villanous Aizen was more fun to play and much easier.
Aizen’s first-person pronouns also change as the kinder Captain Aizen used “boku” to represent his youthfulness and his true persona uses “watashi” to signify his higher self-esteem.
For Hayami, because he was fooled, he was able to fool the rest of the cast and the viewers as well and that it was good he never knew from the start.
Hayami shares his experience reading the Bleach manga, initially seeing it as a world that is only a little different from real human society and started out as a more comedic manga that changed tone because of Aizen’s fake death.
From this experience, Hayami explores the Past Arc or the Turning the Pendulum Arc, where he felt more progress in the plot because of the mysterious disappearances.
He also adds how symbolic stabbing Hinamori was and also how in Episode 31 of the Thousand Year Blood War, Aizen would show off his power just from sitting on the chair alone via the Kurohitsugi chant.
Hayami also revealed that his favorite Bleach character is Gin Ichimaru, who was a double agent that betrayed Aizen by the end, which for Hayami makes him manly, and that his favorite voice acting moment was the incantation for Hado 90: Kurohitsugi.
However, Hayami, like many in the cast, always wanted to say “Bankai” because of its universal appeal.
Hayami relays how local fans from the Middle East spoke passionately about their love for the ultimate technique of every Zanpakuto and how Hayami “totally got it” due to this experience.
And when he writes autographs, some fans ask for him to write Bankai as the kanji for the word has a certain appeal but Hayami thinks to himself that, “Aizen doesn’t seem to have a bankai though…”
Source: Twitter
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