Katsucon 2024: Paul St Peter Talks With Red Bard

• Interviewer: Kennedy (Red Bard)

• Interview Location: Katsucon 2024

• Interview Date: 2/16/2024

Kennedy: So for our readers who might not be familiar with you, who are you?

Paul St. Peter: I am Paul St. Peter, a voice actor out of Los Angeles. My best-known roles right now would be Kurama in Naruto, Naruto Shippuden, and Boruto, and the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox. And game-wise, my best-known work would be on Kingdom Hearts as Xemnas.

Kennedy: I don't mean to age you, but you've been in the industry a very long time. When did you start getting into voicing anime?

Paul St. Peter: I first began roughly in June of 1985. That was my first anime series, which was called Robotech.

Kennedy: Do you remember anything about that process? Cause Robotech is still like—when you talk about the biggest anime that helped make anime a large fandom in English language communities, Robotech is right next to Star Blazers, it’s what you point to. 

Paul St. Peter: Absolutely. What happened with Robotech was, it kind of brought what they call a “space opera.” Like a space, I should say, a soap opera. But the space opera brought the adult content and the adult plotlines to animation, and to the whole cartoon experience where adults started paying a lot of attention to it. The kids, of course, loved the anime, but the adults loved the storylines, and that's what helped establish that. And that was back in the 80s. Robotech, actually, in its original form was three different series and they originated in the 70s, but they put it together so you could have a 75 episode show.

Kennedy: Do you have any fun anecdotes about dubbing Robotech that you want to share? 

Paul St. Peter: Yeah, that's my beginning. It was still on video at that time, and we didn't have Pro Tools. We didn't have beeps—the way it works is you go “beep, beep, beep,” talk. In those days, we had to look at the time codes. And so, when your cue began, [it was] on 29 minutes, 10 seconds and four frames. And so we actually were timing out by frames, 30 frames per second. So we had to be very, very precise when we did this. So, this day, we're doing everything digitally with beep codes and things like that. That's why I'm a lot faster, even though I was fast then, because it's easy by comparison. Now, we don't have to worry so much about the tech side.

Kennedy: Wow. Now, since Robotech, you have worked with a lot of companies—a lot of companies that are no longer around today. Harmony Gold, obviously. Saban, of course, with Digimon, Geneon, all those. I guess what I'm getting at here is what do you think of that? Just like, how you've watched the industry rise, fall, and then rise again. What's that been like for you?

Paul St. Peter: Well, it's been kind of a rough ride. The beginning of trouble for us was when a lot of anime started going to Canada. We then had the reverse, to where they came back to America. And nothing saying bad about the Canadian actors. It's just we have a huger talent pool and greater resources in the US. Then, there was a drop in the amount of work we did because people went to Funimation. Part of the problem with going to Texas or going to other places, even Malaysia, for that matter, is they do non-union work, which I don't touch. So, if I'm invited to do a series for a producer that I know is well backed and has a real budget, and they say “we just can't afford to do union.” I said, “Well, thanks but no thanks.”

It's also been a product just of COVID. Of course, studios went under for that, but over the decades that's been happening, because some companies do not compete as well and some companies simply make bad decisions. Speaking of Saban, Haim Saban passed on Pokemon. It came to him and he said, “I don't want to do that silly little cartoon thing.” So it went on. Of course, it was doing extremely well. So when Digimon came along, Haim Saban grabbed it. He said, “I'm not going to let two of them go by.” Two of the biggest series ever.

Kennedy: Now, how long have you been going to anime conventions?

Paul St. Peter: This will be about eleven years now.

Kennedy: Eleven years! Is there a reason why you didn't go to cons for so long, despite having been an established anime voice actor?

Paul St. Peter: I didn't really know about them. Someone said, “Well, look on animecons.com.” So I had heard about actors doing the occasional appearance and all that, but I didn't know it was a big world out there. And when I went to animecons, I went, “They're all over the world and they're going on all the time!” And from those, I started getting asked to come to them. So it was one of those situations where had I been aware ten, fifteen, years or whatever earlier, I would have done them.

Kennedy: So to be clear, you started like early 2010s or so.

Paul St. Peter: Yeah. I think my first one, first official con outside of Robocons. I did Robocons from 1995, but just those. The other ones, 2011, 2012, thereabout.

Kennedy: Wow. Now you mentioned that you went to Robocons. Were you there as a guest or were you there as an attendee?

Paul St. Peter: Went as a guest, yeah.

Kennedy: Oh, wow. So what was that like?

Paul St. Peter: Well, that was a lot of fun. We had people coming in there, not so many cosplayers so much, but people with their collectibles that they wanted to have signed. And we did a lot of panels, got a chance to talk about the series. Much to our relief, most people come to the con and want to talk about you, the actor, as opposed to, “Well, remember in chapter two and episode 17 when this and this happened,” We can't remember all that stuff. Plus, we're not given the scripts. We don't get a chance to read them. So when we go in, we're doing the work cold, so there's no breakdown for us to be able to watch and listen and get an idea about doing the role or ideas that we have. How we fit into the story, that is explained to us very briefly at the beginning. And from that point, we're kind of on our own.

Kennedy: So what was it like going to anime cons like in the early 2010s, having only had the convention experience of Robocon in the ‘90s? Were you shocked at how big they'd become? Were you not shocked? Just general reactions you remember having to it?

Paul St. Peter: For me, it was a brand new world because I saw, in this case, many, many more cosplayers. I saw a lot more guests and people that I didn't know. Of course, since Robotech, I've done quite a few shows with many, many different actors. But at that point, when I was first getting on the road, I might have been the only person from Digimon. I would be the only person from Kingdom Hearts, for instance. So I would go there and be kind of representing, you might say, a particular brand or series or video game. So it was kind of a shock.

Kennedy: I guess my final question for you is, do you have anything you want to tell our readers? Anything you want to get out there? Any new, current projects you want to promote, or just any words of wisdom that you want to give us?

Paul St. Peter: Well, I would ask that all of the fans of anime throughout the world raise your voices very loudly against AI. There's a possibility that what we do can become extinct, and we don't want that. The loss to everyone from the live performance and the performance that I and my fellow actors bring cannot be duplicated by anything. Our worry is that AI will get so good to where they'll create performances people will buy into without actually having the actor themselves bring it to it, because I will bring a different thing to every session. There will be a vibe or a feeling or a sense of grounding for a character that they can't do with a technique, no matter what they try. So AI, die.

Kennedy: Hell yeah.