Kaiji Tang is a multi-talented multi-medium voice actor who’s been in this biz for nearly twenty years. His popular roles are numerous, but his fans at Anime Central 2024 undoubtedly were particularly eager to hear his thoughts on portraying Satoru Gojo from Jujutsu Kaisen and Jinshi from The Apothecary Diaries, two of the biggest shows and most popular anime characters of 2023, and both titles having panels at ACEN spotlighting them and featuring Kaiji as a panelist. Beyond talking about his characters, Kaiji is a passionate advocate for the voice acting community and supporting newcomers to the industry, hosting a panel at ACEN with Tony Oliver to discuss what the voice-acting profession entails and giving fans an opportunity to try it out themselves.
Kaiji is unflinching about expressing his passions, whether it is his love of gaming, or criticizing the working conditions in the voice acting industry and advocating for change to give voice actors the credit, respect, and compensation they rightly deserve. We were able to chat with Kaiji about these two particular topics in a press conference with him at ACEN with two other outlets, Zealed Fujoshi and Tribe 3 Productions. Questions were submitted in advance, and moderated by press department manager, Eric Leitzen. We arrived a bit late to the interview, so we were not able to catch all the questions asked by the other outlets, but we did get there in time to hear Kaiji talk about the games he really gets into!
The following questions and responses may have been edited for length, clarity, and emphasis.
Tribe 3 Productions: What is your favorite genre of video game?
Kaiji Tang: Ok, here’s one thing. My favorite genre of video game – I play fighting games all the time. However, if you sit me in front of Civ VI – Civilization VI – I will literally spend 14 hours in front of the screen without getting up. I will! Like I will blink, and the entire day will have gone by. And so it’s very easy to enrapture me in grand strategy games, like I simply will play. So, if you need to capture me under a box or something like that, just put a laptop with Civ VI under there, and I’ll be under there.
Manga Mavericks: Since you made a tweet in January joking that people should now refer to you as “the wretched spawn of Loki” and that you would be signing everything as such from now on, have you actually followed through with it?
KT: No one has asked for it, unfortunately. So if anyone sees this and you come up to my table, if you ask me to sign as the “wretched spawn of Loki” – yeah, it’s actually on my Wikipedia now! Someone put it up there.
MM: Yeah, I saw!
KT: Yeah! Right, so… (laughs). And it’s still up there! It’s literally unchanged. It’s like a permanent fixture now. So, hey, if you want me to sign your Funko pop as “the wretched spawn of Loki,” I would be happy to do so.
MM: If I see you at one of your sessions, I will get you to sign with that!
KT: Yeah, absolutely! (laughs)
from now on you may refer to me as the wretched spawn of loki
i will be signing everything as such
— Kaiji Von Tang (@KaijiTang) January 31, 2024
MM: You’ve mentioned before that voice acting for anime is consistently the hardest and the lowest paid jobs you do and that the anime jobs you do are “for fun, not to eat.” What can be done in the industry to make this job a more sustainable career?
KT: (Sighs)… That is the magic question, isn’t it? Yeah. No one seems to be willing to pay higher for anime dubs. It’s, for whatever reason, in the anime industry… it’s getting a little – the perception of it is getting a little better. The pay, however, is not, right? As far as Hollywood is concerned, and maybe even SAG is concerned, dubbing is just like the little stuff trapped in the corner that no one really cares about. It’s like, you know, we’re all busy fawning over the movie stars and all that stuff and getting them their bonuses and all that stuff.
So… (sighs). You know, I tell folks there are so many people passionate about anime who want to voice anime, but it is important to keep your expectations realistic. You are gonna be paid so little. It’s… (sighs), it’s outlandish in my opinion, alright? When I’ve seen so many actors come from screen, come from everywhere else, step into the booth and try to dub for the first time and they’re like “what is happening?” “How do I even act in-between these little flaps,” right? How do you even tell this story when you’re constrained from every angle. It is literally acting with weights off. Literally, acting with weights off. And if you’re not trained to do it, it’s just, it’s like an alien-like activity, right? And, something so technically demanding really deserves a pay bump, right?
It’s like… (sighs). I’m trying to find a parallel in life. It’s like being paid to sit and podcast for two hours, right? And just give your opinion, and be paid for it, versus fixing a computer, right? You should be paid more for one thing than the other in my mind. That’s all I’m going to say.
MM: You mentioned that there was some frustration in the voice acting community about over SAG-AFTRA signing a deal with an AI startup to create and license digital replicas of actors voices.What needs to be done for SAG to better listen to, reflect, and fight for and in the interests of voice actors?
KT: Oh my god… (laughs). (Takes a deep breath)… We don’t have enough hours.
(everyone in the room laughs)
KT: Oh man… you know what’s so funny? We’ve had really, really passionate people in the voice-over community bring all these concerns to all the SAG meetings. You know what we were told?
(Sighs).
“We recognize that voice-over actors are on the front lines of the danger zone of the A.I. era, but we should wait to see what happens.”
And then when we complained, we were called low-level people.
Right? Yeah. That was interesting. So, SAG, if you’re seeing this video, do better. ‘Kay? That’s all I’m going to say. Do better. Oh my god. Yeah.
After the interview, we had an opportunity to take cover photos of Kaiji for our articles, and say our thanks to him for his time before he rested and prepared for his next interview with The Mary Sue. We thank Eric Leitzen again for organizing and moderating the press conference, and promise Kaiji the next time we see him, we’ll ask him to sign something for us as “the wretched spawn of Loki!”
Be sure to check out our other coverage and interviews from Anime Central 2024, with more to come!
