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Anime Expo - Bang Zoom Panel

By Jason Yeh     July 03, 2004

Date: Friday, 7/2 at 3:00 PM

Panelists: Mark Rozett, Deb Munini, Mami Okada, Patrick Rodman, Eric P. Sherman, Kaeko Sakamoto, Kristi Reed, Lex Lang, Tony Oliver, Dave Wittenberg

The overall tone of this panel was lighthearted and jovial. Many of the main Bang Zoom! staff were in attendance, including a number of their regular voice actors. Dave Wittenberg started things off by introducing all the panelists, which was accompanied by clapping from the audience. Eric Sherman (co-owner of Bang Zoom!) then briefly described the history of the company. Their first title was Ninja Cadets, followed by Magic Knight Rayearth. Today they operate 4 recording studios and simultaneously work on 10 - 20 anime titles at any given time.

After introductions, they showed a promo music video, which was comprised of various clips from shows that Bang Zoom! has worked on. The video was well edited and displayed many of the company's works. They followed up by asking if anyone in the audience could name any 5 titles shown in the video. People that were able to correctly answer the pop quiz won a Chobits pencil board autographed by the dub voice actresses for Chii (Michelle Ruff) and Sumomo (Sandy Fox). As easy as the quiz seemed, some audience members buckled under pressure and excitement. One person cosplaying as Robin from "Witch Hunter Robin" couldn't remember that the promo video included several clips from the anime, until Bang Zoom! folks asked what show her character was from.

The remainder of the panel comprised mostly of Q&A. In the middle, they played another video that showed the general process of producing a dub. The video consisted of two separate scenes from Last Exile in different states of the production process. Each scene was first shown in the original Japanese format, then with partial English audio, and lastly in final dubbed form.

Q&A included a range of different questions. One person asked what was the most difficult part of setting up the company, to which Eric Sherman jokingly answered by saying, "No sleep." Another person asked what was the biggest success for Bang Zoom! After some thinking and audience feedback, the panelists answered with Rurouni Kenshin and Witch Hunter Robin. Someone also asked how one should go about getting into the voice acting business, and in particular what he would need to do to get a job at Bang Zoom! In response to the latter, Kristi Reed said one would need to get the words "Bang Zoom!" tattoed on the buttocks (which elicited much laughter from the audience).

Several current projects were mentioned during the Q&A session. In addition to the Scrapped Princess and "Planetes", the following were also cited: Samurai Champloo, Please Twins, Overman King-Gainer, Gungrave.

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