"Always Coming at Her with Everything I Had": Voice Actor Haruka Shiraishi on Building Her Character [TV Anime The Oblivious Saint Can't Contain Her Power Interview]

—— We'd like to ask more about how you built the character of Flora, and about your exchanges with Rie Takahashi, who plays Carolina.

Shiraishi: Building the character was genuinely difficult, but since Flora gets angry no matter what Carolina says, I played her with the mindset of "no matter what's said to me, my feelings won't change" — always coming at her with everything I had.

Looking back at the scenes where we played off each other, Carolina is stillness, and Flora is motion, so to speak. Flora's hatred — feeling that Carolina should never have been born — runs so deep that she throws it at her even inside a moving carriage.

—— Flora has carried that feeling ever since Carolina was born, after all.

Shiraishi: That feeling is always there inside her — it's definitely not something that was born on the spot (at the point of episode one). They never really had a chance to be alone together, so there's basically nothing she wants to say to Carolina, nothing she wants to ask her, and she almost wishes Carolina's very existence would disappear... It's an outrageous feeling I'd never normally have in my own life (laughs). I kept that feeling in my heart the whole time I was performing.

—— Looking at the script, Carolina's monologues dominate the early episodes, but Flora's monologues increase as well in the latter half, don't they?

Shiraishi: Every week, Flora's monologue sections on my recording script ended up covered in yellow highlighter. There are difficult terms scattered at key points too, so even when a take was going really well, I'd sometimes think, "I might have just stumbled over that line!" It was tough (laughs).

—— We're looking forward to watching it air. With your performance behind her, I think viewers will be able to feel Flora's emotional changes even more clearly.

Shiraishi: Flora has her own hidden efforts and a sense of who she wants to become, but as she watches Carolina grow happier, an even different, more intense hatred than before wells up in her.

As Carolina's circumstances change, Flora is swept along by that and changes too, and I think viewers will also see her wrestling with the pain of the gap between the person she wants to be and who she actually is. I'd be glad if you could watch over that side of her while rooting for her as well.

Of course, this is also a story where the interactions between Carolina and Edward will make your heart flutter — watching these two awkward, pure people who are both oblivious to each other is bound to stir up some butterflies. It's a wonderful work, so I'd love for everyone to simply enjoy the love story side of it as well.

Alongside the future that awaits Carolina and Edward, why not enjoy the story of The Oblivious Saint by also paying attention to how Flora, who has harbored such hatred, changes going forward?

Reporting, photography, and text: kato
(C)あーもんど/アース・スター エンターテイメント/無自覚聖女は今日も無意識に力を垂れ流す製作委員会