Part 56: Voice Actor Talk 1 - Komaru / Byakuya / Nagito

Voice Actor Talk

Hello, I'm Soundwave and I'll be guiding you goons through the fine voice actors behind the English dub of Danganronpa: Ultra Despair Girls. The Danganronpa games have an excellent dub so I'm here to give you some information about the folks behind it. I'll give as much information as I can about the actor in question, and maybe chip in with my own two cents.



We'll start off with our "common, boring" protagonist. Komaru Naegi is voiced by Cherami Leigh, a very prolific and well known voice actress in the anime scene. Some of her most well-known roles are Asuna Yuuki from Sword Art Online, Lucy Heartfilia from Fairy Tail, Makoto Nijima from Persona 5 and recently got a potentially huge one as Sarada Uchiha, one of the main characters of Boruto (Naruto sequel). She's an exceptionally talented actress who does great work in whatever she's been cast in.




Next up is the Ultimate Affluent Progeny, Byakuya Togami. His voice actor is Jason Wishnov, reprising his role from Danganronpa 1 and 2. He doesn't have many voice acting roles on record, but he is notably Nocturne in League of Legends and Chen Gong in Dynasty Warriors 8. The reason he doesn't do much VA work is because his primary job is video game director and designer. He's the CEO and co-founder of Iridium Studios, who have released Before the Echo and There Came an Echo, both available on Steam. Byakuya is a very stoic character, but Jason got the chance to really show his acting chops in Chapter 4 of Danganronpa 1, where Byakuya got angry when he was proven wrong in the class trial.




Finally, we have The Serva- uh, Nagito Komaeda. Like in Danganronpa 2, he is voiced by Bryce Papenbrook, who notably also voiced Komaru's brother Makoto in Danganronpa 1. Bryce is another very prolific voice actor, but is somewhat divisive due to him being typecast as 'every generic anime main character'. Some of these more well-known main characters are Kirito from Sword Art Online and Eren Jaeger from Attack on Titan. To a lot of people he just kinda suffers from overexposure, which is fair enough, but he generally does a good job. Of course, none of this applies to Nagito Komaeda. His role as Nagito is probably his best, simply because it really let him step away from the character archetype he's known for and go wild, with excellent results. As Nagito he's one of the stand-outs of the entire (extremely good) Danganronpa 2 dub. From his first appearance here in this LP you could probably tell he's playing Nagito a little bit differently this time. He's a bit more quiet and whispery, which makes perfect sense if you consider the differences between his mindwiped DR2 self and his appearance here.