Despite the praise and love the creator and director of the classic “Neon Genesis Evangelion” Hideaki Anno and his creation may receive from many fans. The same adoration cannot be said for the voice actress of the ever iconic Asuka Langley Soryu, Yuko Miyamura.
Although Hideaki Anno has always been known
for being a tough director, not much can compare to Yuko Miyamura’s
experience doing her voice for Asuka Langley Soryu. Most specifically
during her time working on the final instalment of the series “The End
of Evangelion”.
Once all of the lines for
the film were recorded, Anno was dissatisfied with her performance and
summoned Miyamura to the studio to revise her final line. Seeing as the
scene was between both Asuka and Shinji, Megumi Ogata was brought to the
studio as well (despite it was only Miyamura’s line Anno had problems
with).
In the original script Asuka’s
finale line was “Anta nankani korosareru nowa mappira yo!” which can be
translated to “I’d hate to be killed by a bastard like you!” But no
matter what Miyamura tried, Anno remained unsatisfied with her, leaving
both Miyamura and Ogata at a complete loss as to what needed to be done.
Anno
then had Ogata straddle and choke Miyamura just as Shinji did to Asuka
during the final scene in the film. It was so rough that Miyamura had
difficulty speaking for the rest of the day. In Miyamura’s 2005 Anime
Yawa interview she told the story of what Anno said to her after the
choking idea failed.
“‘At last Anno asked
me ‘Miyamura, just imagine you are sleeping in your bed and a stranger
sneaks into your room. He can rape you anytime as you are asleep but he
doesn’t. Instead, he masturbates looking at you, when you wake up and
know what he did to you. What do you think you would say?’ I had been
thinking he was a strange* man, but at that moment I felt disgusting. So
I told him that I thought ‘Disgusting.’ And then he sighed and said, ‘I
thought as much.’”
*It is worth noting
that when she describes Anno as “strange”, the translation is a bit off
and can also be interpreted as “odd”, “freaky” or “creepy”.
The conversation between the two is what lead Anno to change the final line in the film to the iconic “kimochi warui”.
After
finishing her work on Evangelion, between the stress of her sex
scandal, having a stalker because of her voicing Asuka and many scary
incidents with fans Miyamura moved to Australia. She’s then proceeding
to do most of her voice work from studios there.
Prior
to the Rebuild films release and with no Asuka in the first film
“Rebuild of Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone” there were many fan
speculations all across the web and betting pools as to what new voice
actress would take over as Asuka as no one expected Miyamura to return.
In
Miyamura’s 2010 SMASH interview when asked about her experiences voice
acting and if she ever regretted anything, she admitted “At one point in
time, I thought to myself that I would never act as Asuka again” and
“For a very long time I wanted to erase Evangelion”. When asked if the
series was truly that hard to work on, she very clearly expressed that
“it was very hard”.
