Part 58: Voice Actor Talk 3 - Masaru / Jataro / Yuta

With the end of Chapter 1 let's have more voice actor talk.



Masaru Daimon is voiced by Tara Jayne Sands, who might have been a prominent voice in some of the childhoods of the goons around here. That's because her most well-known are Mokuba Kaiba from Yu-Gi-Oh and she's also MOTHERFUCKING BULBASAUR. She's in some other anime and games but none really compare to her roles under 4Kids in terms of fame. She's a good actress who is known for mainly doing rougher, more boyish voices. She does a good job as Masaru, and I hope you watched Masaru's breakdown scene so you can hear her at work.



I was going to hold off on Jataro until we saw a bit more of him, but since he shares a VA with Yuta (who we won't be seeing again...probably) I might as well do them both.

Jataro Kemuri and Yuta Asahina are both voiced by Michelle Ruff. To call Michelle Ruff an experienced voice actress is an absurd understatement. She's got an absolutely massive resume of well-known roles and she's very, very good at what she does. Let's run through some character she voices. Rukia Kuchiki from Bleach, Yukari Takeba and Sadayo Kawakami from the Persona games, Yoko Littner in Gurren Lagann and Sinon from Sword Art Online. There are still a ton of characters where you could say "Hey, this character is famous! How come you didn't mention them?" because that's just how many big roles she's landed. Her style is...well god damn, she can do anything you need, really. She's avoided being typecasted because she's always doing something different, and all her major characters have different voices in some way. I'd say her role as Jataro is a stand-out even for her, though. She makes him sound absolutely delightfully twisted and she's very convincing. Jataro is a Gundham-esque character IMO, where the voice acting needs to be absolutely on-point for the character to work or be taken seriously, and Michelle nails it.

Yuta is the exact opposite, in that it sucks. It's very bad and I don't know why. I honestly think it might be the worst dub performance in Danganronpa? Not because Michelle can't act or whatever, just the voice is incredibly painful to listen to. It's hard to explain, but the voice is just...bad. Does not sound like a young boy at all, IMO. Swing and a miss, unfortunately. Only actual bad performance from Michelle Ruff I've heard though, and doesn't diminish her standing as one of the best voice actresses around.