An Unusual Approach to Voice Acting: Shūichirō Umeda and Yui Ishikawa on “Dusk Beyond the End of the World”

── Have you ever taken this kind of approach to acting—intentionally not reading the full script or story—for any previous works, including those based on existing sources?

Umeda: Not really. If there's an original work, I want to read it. Reading allows me to dive deeper into the story before recording begins. I can think about what kind of impression I have of the character I'm playing and why I feel that way.

── I see. So for this series, you grasped the content on a per-episode basis as you acted.

Umeda: That's right. Every time I received a script, it was like, "Oh, this is what's going to happen now." I wasn't able to reverse-engineer my performance based on future events.

── How was it to play the character Akira under these circumstances?

Umeda: My first impression of him, just from his appearance, was that he was sporty and physical. But in reality, he's a very straightforward and capable person who works hard at everything, not just sports. His driving force is Ōmaki Tōwasa, but he's also good at housework and knowledgeable in research, which was a nice surprise compared to the impression I had during the audition.

── Yūgure looks exactly like Tōwasa, who is Akira's motivation. When you were developing the character, did you keep Tōwasa in mind?

Ishikawa: I can't go into detail because it would be a spoiler, but even though they look similar, their personalities are different, so I didn't keep Tōwasa in mind at all.

── Yūgure is an android, but she's a very human-like character, isn't she?

Ishikawa: She's an android, but she's so indistinguishable from a human that I basically acted as if she were a human. However, I tried to portray her without the complex emotional nuances that humans have. For example, she might not fully grasp everything she's told, and her communication can be one-sided. That's what I consider my "android feel" (laughs).

Umeda: Speaking of that "android feel," what I found amazing was how she would sometimes speak from a place of pure knowledge because she's an android. I felt like she had a unique sense that humans don't—she would express an emotion in words and then try to catch up to the feeling itself.