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.
[the op’s deleted so the rest of the article is gone but someone reposted it on reddit]
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”.
Two years ago she was a guest at Saboten Con in Phoenix Arizona, and in a panel with some other guests they were all asked something to the effect of what was the lowest point in your career, and she went to explain in detail this scene and the situation with Anno being a slave driver, and being genuinely afraid of what vulgar and abhorrent things were happening to her, and the situation she, and potentially the rest of the cast was in if they were to proceed with, I’ll be generous and call it “method-acting”. The entire ballroom fell completely silent no one could say a word, and honestly what could you possibly say to bring up the spirits of a crowd in that instance. People were walking on eggshells around her the entire rest of the convention being as polite and respectful as humanly possible, and there was a heavy drop-off in Eva related questions as a result of that.
I didnt need this to hate Anno and Evangelion, i had plenty of reasons already, but if this is the that puts it over the edge for you, thats more than enough for me. This man does not deserve any of the hype, or respect, or admiration that he gets for his own self-admitted grandest failure.
