Garnet With A "T": Diana Garnet Talks to Anime Herald

Note: Due to time sensitivity concerns, this will be published on the main Anime Herald site at 9:00PM EDT. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Interviewer: Seth Burn

Anime Herald: Let’s begin with the most important topic: Baseball.

Diana Garnet: Baseball!

Anime Herald: What is it like being an American baseball fan in Japan?

Diana Garnet: It’s a very different sport in Japan, which is what I like about it. American baseball is great, of course. Fastballs, home runs, woohoo! It’s great. But there’s not a lot of… real strategy going into it. What I like about Japanese baseball, in particular, is all the strategy that goes into it. They use squeeze bunts that you don’t see in professional American baseball, so that’s really fun.

It’s really exciting right now because (Shohei) Ohtani’s just slamming it out, doing all the things.

Anime Herald: He’s tremendous.

Diana Garnet: He’s not human anymore, at this point. He’s just too good! Japan’s going “Ohtani! Ohtani!,” so that’s really nice, to have a Japanese player at the forefront in the world right now. As an American who is a baseball fan that lives in Japan, it’s the best of all worlds.

Anime Herald: Do you have a favorite team?

Diana Garnet: Hanshin Tigers.

Anime Herald: I’m a Yakult Swallows fan.

Diana Garnet: I will forgive that. Last year was good for you.

Anime Herald: How does someone end up from growing up in Washington DC to singing Anisongs in Japan?

Diana Garnet: You know what? I don’t really know how to answer that.

Anime Herald: I know you won a competition in Japan and Sony signed you.

Diana Garnet: So, they're actually completely unrelated things. It was related in that Sony saw it and then reached out. It wasn't the kind of competition that you normally get. It's an odd one. It's a TV show. The story behind the TV show is that everybody loves Japanese music. There's regular people, office workers, or students, or teachers, and they come together. But half of the people there are professional artists in their own right, whether in their own country, or in Japan. You've got a variety of people. Some of them sing in jazz clubs, usually in English, but they'd like some Japanese songs too. Some of them are doing various musical theater, either in or out of Japan. So it's a mixed bag of amateurs and professionals.

At the time, I was an amateur. I went and signed up online and sent them a couple of the Utatemita covers that I had done on YouTube and Nico Nico Douga in sort of the early era of that community. I managed to get a spot on the show. I think the third or fourth time I was on the show, I ended up winning it. I lived in the area, so it was really easy for them to call me over. Anytime somebody dropped out, like if the flights didn't work out or something like that, or the visa didn't work out, they just call me over; it [was] just “come on over.” I'd call the school I worked at, at the time. “I'm sorry, I’ve got a cold.”

They'd ask “Is your cold okay?” I'd say, “Oh, yeah, it's totally fine.”

Anyway, so I was just an English teacher at the time. I had come to Japan in hopes of being a singer and voice actress. But, you know, there isn't really, like, a map or a guidebook for that. And there aren't really any other people that have made it work. I think, at the time, this was 2012. So HIMEKA had existed. She's a Canadian woman that had won the Anison Grand Prix. She ended up getting a Sony contract, but it was fairly short-lived. And she was Canadian, so it was a working holiday. So it was a very different visa type.

There was no guidebook; I didn't really know anybody else in the industry. I was just sort of shooting in the dark, for the most part. But with the exposure that I got from the show, one of the executives at Sony music artists, his son apparently really likes me. So, thanks to a seven-year-old boy. Thanks, seven-year-old children!

I’m very popular with children. He begged his dad to sign me. He reached out to the producers of the show. They contacted me saying that Sony was interested.

Nankai! Mystery 

Anime Herald: That's the best version of the story possible.

Diana Garnet: I know! Thank you, seven-year-old children! I do a lot of children's and educational content still. For me, anime has always been a family thing. My dad likes anime, we would watch it together, so it made a lot of sense.

Anime Herald: Could you talk more about the children's entertainment that you're working on?

Diana Garnet: Sure. As Diana Garnet (one T) I've always been family-friendly. I say that because it's my stage name, as well as my real-life name, because I'm not very bright. Never do that. Always have a separate stage name. Anyway, me as Diana Garnet-with-one-T has always made children's content. Naruto is of course Shonen Jump, so it's aimed at all ages. And then after that, I did Jiken Note which was aimed at elementary school girls. Specifically, it was a mystery for elementary school girls. And then, after that, Neko Neko Nihonshi which is another educational program aimed at all ages. It's called Meow Meow Japanese History in English. It's what if cats explained Japanese history.

Anime Herald: I can’t imagine a better show.

Diana Garnet: Right? They would boat over and then they'd be like “Oh, it’s wet! We don't like it. We're cats, I guess we'll give up. And that's how they've decided that they'd give up the tirade or whatever it was.” Anyway, it's a very cute show. So most of the music I've done professionally has been for either anime aimed at all ages, or specifically educational. Right now most of my regulars are also educational. So I do Kiso Eigo, which is a long-running radio show. It's a bilingual show, I do it in both Japanese and English. It aims to teach sort of native English to Japanese middle school students. I've been doing that for five years now. That's a daily radio program, very early in the morning. We tape it all at once. It's okay, but it's like 10 hours in one day. It's a lot, because we do a week at a time. And you know, I've done mostly voiceover for more educational stuff as well like Shimajirō, which is the cute little tiger boy. It's aimed at preschoolers.

I can't say what characters I perform as because Sanrio, Disney and Pokémon are all like that. You can't really talk about it. I can say that I work for Sanrio, Disney, and Pokémon, but I can't tell you what I did. And Shimajirō is the same. So I can tell you that I do several characters on Shimajirō, but I can't tell you which ones.

Spinning World 

Anime Herald: Not a problem.

Diana Garnet: If you find it bilingual one, it's probably me.

I do a lot of kid-friendly content. And I really enjoy it. I want to keep my work for families and people of all ages, because anime has always been a family activity to me. But I also want to make slightly more edgy music, and do a little bit more social commentary, as well. So I think I'll start a separate project for that.

Anime Herald: You said there’s no road map.

Diana Garnet: No.

Anime Herald: Are you going to try and provide the outline of a road map in your panel?

Diana Garnet: Exactly! I want to give people the resources I didn't have. It's only better for there to be more people in this industry, and for it to be more normalized for foreigners to be in Japan in general. There really aren't that many of us that work in a professional capacity. But it's not because we're unable to. It's because there's almost no way to make a living doing so right now. It's not seen as something viable, long term. As far as people that have lasted four years, or longer, it's just me and one other guy at this point. Everybody else has disappeared in a very short amount of time, just because the visa itself is not sustainable.

What I'll be talking about is how to smartly set up your career so that is sustainable, long term. I’ll talk about the importance of flexibility. I did not see myself doing mostly preschool and elementary educational voiceovers. But I mean, textbooks pay the bills. So there's a lot of me going “cu ah te, cat. Th ah te, that.” But it pays the bills.

Anime Herald: Yes.

Diana Garnet: If I had it my way, I would just be doing anime after anime and game after game. But you have to compromise in entertainment. I feel like a lot of people have to learn that. They're a little stuck on their vision. And they're unable to really see that there are other paths to sustain your career. Especially with Corona [COVID-19], I had to make a very hard pivot. Two and a half years ago, I had been mostly music based. And that disappeared overnight. I released a new single five days before the Diamond Princess docked. I had been planning on doing this whole big promotional tour, I was going to be playing at fifty different venues across the country. It was the first promotional tour we had set up since Nankai! Mystery three years earlier. So it was a big loss. I had to immediately pivot entirely to voiceover, which I can do for my home. I'm glad that I had set up sort of that backbone in 2018 and ‘19. I had started doing more voiceover work but it wasn't my focus. But because I had that precedence and that backbone, I was able to pivot when it was necessary. And I think it's really important for people to realize that they need a backup.

If it's a related field, for instance, voiceover is still voice, it's related. Or if it's related in that it's entertainment… I have one friend whose backup is production. So she would just go from in front of the scenes to slightly behind the scenes, but it would still set her up to be back in front of the scenes when that opportunity arises. These things are viable, but you have to look at your visa and to also be able to make sure that your visa is okay with that.

I have an entertainer visa. So I cannot do production. But my friend is on specialty in humanities, so she could do production. So just that kind of information. Nobody knows anything about these visas. There's three different ones that you could potentially do entertainment work on. That's artists, entertainment, and specialty in humanities. But with a specialty in humanities, your entertainment has to not be entirely in Japanese for a Japanese audience. Right now, I would be able to get that visa. But when I was in Sony, I was doing anime songs in Japanese for Japan only, and I wasn't doing educational content, so I couldn't get humanities. But now that I'm about 70%, educational, 30% Japanese-only, I could probably get humanities, which is a much broader visa that would allow me to do production as well. And translation and stuff like that, interpretation, that kind of thing. But I'm good with my entertainment visa. But entertainment is incredibly limited. I can't play at venues that serve food in Japan. In America I can, because I'm American. But in Japan, I can't play in live houses because they have alcohol. So I'm barred from most venues; I can do halls, domed stadiums, and larger live houses where the food is 50 meters away.

Anime Herald: It's amazing. There's so many rules and you have to follow all of them. Because if you ever break any of them, that could be your visa.

Diana Garnet: Exactly. I could be kicked out of the country just for accidentally messing it up. Honestly, even immigration doesn't really understand it. Nobody has the artists’ visa or the entertainment visa. I was going for the three-year entertainment visa. Apparently, streaming service work doesn't count. So even if I have a Netflix regular show, it doesn't count because it's not on TV or traditional radio. They only count traditional TV and radio. But a lot of my work right now is either a YouTube series, a Netflix series, or an Amazon Prime series. So, even if it's regular, contracted, salaried work that I've definitely got for the next two years, they won't count it towards my visa. So I could only get the one-year visa, which means that I couldn't get permanent residency. And if I can't get permanent residency, I can't broaden the scope of my work. Pretty complicated.

So yeah, I'll be telling people about that. Wow, like a lot of people that are coming over trying to be voice actors and VTubers, especially recently. And that streaming. So I need to let them know that it doesn't always count towards the visa.

Anime Herald: Wow…

Diana Garnet: A lot of people that are coming over trying to be voice actors and VTubers, especially recently. And that’s streaming. So I need to let them know that it doesn't always count towards the visa.

Meow Meow Japanese History

Anime Herald: That's amazing. I'm assuming those were the same rules that when you first came over.

Diana Garnet: Yeah, but I didn't know any of them. So I had made a mistake. Early on in my career, I didn't realize that my specialty in humanities didn't cover Japanese work. Because so many of my contemporaries in entertainment that did English voiceover or bilingual voiceover, were on specialty in humanities. So I actually started off on that visa. And we had to change it really quickly. And I had to bounce out of Japan to do it. But with COVID, it's hard to bounce. So had that happened at the wrong time, I wouldn't have been able to get back into the country. Because for like a year and a half. If we left we couldn't get back in.

Anime Herald: That’s rather fascinating.

Diana Garnet: I can't wait for tomorrow because, like, I think a lot of people want to be working in not just entertainment, but in Japan in general. And there are no resources for this.

Anime Herald: I assume you still have time to read some manga and to watch some anime.

Diana Garnet: So much, yeah.

Anime Herald: What are your favorites these days?

Diana Garnet: I’m currently reading Kabe Sa Doujin Sakka no Neko Yashiki-kun wa Shouninyokkyou wo Kojiraseteiru. It’s about a doujin artist who is childhood friends with an idol. It’s about their story of them figuring out their feelings toward each other.

I’m enjoying the anime Sono Bisque Doll wa Koi wo Suru (My Dress-Up Darling). I hope there's more. I'm currently reading the manga for it, as well. It's a little bit problematic, how much I like them. Marin-chan’s so perfect. Hirayasumi is another manga that I've been really into recently. It's the same guy that did Tokyo Alien Bros. It makes me cry every other chapter. It's just so heartwarming and wonderful. It's about an almost 30-year-old ex-actor, who made friends with a very old woman who left him her house after she passed away. And he's now taking care of his younger cousin. They're both trying to figure out their lives. He's sort of ,like, in a Peter Pan phase where he never grows up, but he's a very healing type [of] person. And he's pretty Zen with it. But he worries about his friends leaving him behind, making families, and having children. And then his cousin is an art school student who is struggling with both culture shock as well as her own dreams of becoming a manga artist and not a fine arts artist.

Anime Herald: Everything you’re mentioning, I don’t want to say they’re underground, but they’re certainly not part of the mainstream.

Diana Garnet: Probably not. I think Bisque Doll is really popular.

Anime Herald: Fair.

Diana Garnet: But yeah, I read weird stuff.

Anime Herald: Read what you enjoy.

Diana Garnet: Usually the stuff that I like ends up getting picked up, eventually. I think Hirayasumi will either get a drama or a movie. It seems like that type, more so than anime. Alien Bros. didn't get one either, but it was another one of those where people knew about it. It was surprisingly well-known. There were tee shirts, and everything.

Bisque Doll had an anime last season that just exploded. It absolutely exploded. And then, as far as Kabe Sa Doujin, it's never gonna get an anime. I love it, but it’s never going to get one.

Anime Herald: What anime are you watching these days?

Diana Garnet: These days? Because the world's been so difficult, I've been watching a lot of fluff. Bisque Doll, Kaguya[-sama: Love Is War], Shikimori-san[‘s Not Just a Cutie] Spy x Family, all of the things that make me feel warm inside. Vinland Saga, which doesn't make me warm inside, but it will, because I know where the manga is going. I'm caught up on the manga. I call it “Farming Saga” for a reason. It's farmland saga. So, as soon as Vinland gets to its more healing phases, I’ll be good. I tend to like historical fiction, and then these days, a lot of fluff. Komi-san wa, Komyushō Desu (Komi Can’t Communicate) is another one that I just if I'm ever not feeling good, Komi-san is what I read.

Anime Herald: Getting beyond manga and anime, have you read any mysteries these days? Anything you’ve really enjoyed?

Diana Garnet: Not much. It's been really hard to get new books these days. I picked up a fantasy at a different convention I did a couple of weeks ago. There was an author selling books there. I don't remember what they're called. It's very “Magic School” anime type. That's cool. More like Western fantasy, so it was pretty cool. But again, not really been reading a whole lot of books with words in them. A lot of comic books.

I’ve been trying to catch up on One Piece, all 102 volumes of it. That's taking up most of my time.

Anime Herald: Yeah, if you’re starting from the beginning that’s weeks or months,

Diana Garnet: I’m picking it up from 20-something. My dad and I were watching it together. I didn't want to watch it without him. But I realized that I'm way too far behind in One Piece to talk to my friends now, so I need to catch up.

Anime Herald: If you have the time, One Piece will always be there for you.

Diana Garnet: I want to start reading it before it hits 110 volumes. We’re at 102 right now, and I’m like “Oh, no!”

Anime Herald: What are your goals or plans for the future, and I know planning is hard these days.

Diana Garnet: Yeah it is.

Anime Herald: Three years from now, five years from now, where would you want your place to be in the industry?

Diana Garnet: Right now we're in talks with another label. I think, as I mentioned earlier, I want to start a side project. Diana Garnet will always have a place for bilingual entertainment and being a bridge for family content. But I would like to start making more artistic type content that isn't client based. As much as I love working for specific clients for specific needs. If Pokémon says I need a song like this, “Okay!”, I'll make anything you want, you’re Pokémon. But I also want to make... I want to be a little bit selfish in my artistic vision, sometimes. And I think that needs to be a separate project. So Diana Garnet for everyone, and then a separate project for myself. Just because especially, with how the world is right now I don't want to not get my thoughts and feelings, and honestly anxieties, out there. I think it's bad to keep it bottled in. I'm no longer at a place in my life where enduring makes a lot of sense. I’m just gonna go for it. We're talking to a label about that project.

Diana Garnet will continue to release music as myself. I've got something lined up for 2024 right now. But it's still top secret. I just got the NDA. I was like “cool.” So there are anime, and especially game songs on the horizon. I've also been more involved in casting and direction for voiceover. So, I've been working with Inti Creates who are here at [Anime Expo] with Limited Run Games. I'm now in charge of casting and doing the vocal direction, the acting directing for all of their games.

Lumen (Azure Striker Gunvolt)

Anime Herald: Wow.

Diana Garnet: Yeah. Azure Striker Gunvolt 3 will be coming out July 28th. I'm reprising my role as Lumen in that. I'm hoping that we can start localizing the music. Lumen, herself, has like 28 songs. So that's a lot. And then other characters as well have quite a bit of music. And they've always been Japanese only up until now, but the demographic is honestly more Western. So we would like to start phasing that in. And then I'm also doing exA-Arcadia, they’re an arcade cabinet maker. I'm sort of like their official... I do everything for them. So casting, voiceover, everything. I'm moving into that sphere of things as well, as Diana. And then, I've got another game announcing in the near future. I'm going to be the main character as well as performing the opening song.

Anime Herald: You’re wearing a lot of hats.

Diana Garnet: A lot of hats.

Anime Herald: Does one job connect to another, or are you just a master of marketing yourself?

Diana Garnet: I'm not very good at marketing myself. As you can tell from my social media, I'm not very good at it. I'm too busy for it. I was talking to my friend who specializes in it, and she's like, “You really need to talk about the things that you do.” No one knows I'm in Castlevania.

My bad. I forgot to mention it. I should probably post about that.

I'm terrible at marketing myself.

I think part of it is that these are skills that I have. If you get to know me, and we get along, I'm an easy person to hire, especially being in Japan. Inti Creates, in particular, the sound designer and director for the games is very particular about his vision. He's not comfortable working with a company. We talked to him and told him that there are entire companies that specialize in casting and direction and localization so that he wouldn't have to do it in-house. And he refused.

He's like, “If I'm going to do it, it has to be somebody that understands my art that I can talk to personally and also be there and backseat drive, and it's okay.”

I was like, “Okay, well, you can backseat drive. That's fine.” It's sort of an interesting position because I'm the vocal director, but... I'm there, he's there, and he's like, “is it like this? Are you sure?” and I'm like, “I'm sure it's like that, we're good.” So it's a collaborative effort. That's really nice. That came about because I was cast as Lumen, like six years ago, it was my first voiceover role ever. The guy that does all of their English commercials was like, “Oh, they want to dub it, but they don't know anybody. Can you do the main girl and then I'll find people to do the rest of it?”

I did the main girl.

Later on, they noticed that I was doing a lot of conventions, and they're like, “Do you know American voice actors?” And I'm like, “Yes. They’re friends on Facebook. It’s cool.” And they were like,” Oh, can you get them to do this game?” And I'm like, “Maybe?” And they said “Yes.” And I was like, “Well, I guess I can.” That's sort of how that ended up working out. That's really recent. It's been since Corona, essentially. Because they were like, “Can they do it remotely? And I'm like “I don’t know. Let’s find out.”

Anime Herald: Talking about living in Japan as an American, how has that changed in the past 3-5 years?

Diana Garnet: A lot of things changed two years ago, but the last three to five years... the restrictions, depending on who's in power will either get more difficult or less difficult to navigate. The last three to five years have been more difficult, generally. Every country in the world is getting more insular and nationalistic. It's increasingly more difficult. They increasingly need more things. The whole streaming thing, three to five years ago, it wasn't as common. They were like, “Yeah, that's work.” But now that it's more common, I think because of streamers and YouTubers, they're much stricter about it. So I just find that there's more restrictions over time. You’d think that there would be less but no, but it depends on the administration.

Anime Herald: Do you have any worries about flying home from Anime Expo and getting into Japan?

Diana Garnet: Not this time. The only thing I'm worried about is if I happen to catch COVID, I can't go back into the country. We have to take COVID tests before flying. I just got my third booster so it should be okay unless somebody licks my eyeball, but I'm not worried right now. Japan lifted those restrictions in May. I had thought about doing Fanime in May, but it wasn't sure, so I declined it. I did a convention a couple of weeks ago in Texas. I was really worried about it, but it was totally fine. My friend caught COVID though. She couldn't come back. She was stuck there for 10 days. I was like “Oh, no!” Her insurance covered itb but it was really terrifying. Honestly, this is the first time I've gotten traveler's insurance for that reason. But I'm not worried about getting back into Japan because they wouldn't completely block us. after. If there's like a state of emergency again, yeah, but I don't think that's gonna happen the next three days.

Anime Herald: Is there anything else that you'd like to talk about or anything else you'd like to tell our readers?

Diana Garnet: I know that things have been quiet for the last couple years. From here on out, I'm hoping to do like more expanded and broad things. I'd also love to connect with more people. I've been having a lot of fun connecting with indie creators for games and stuff. And I know that it's somewhat daunting to reach out to like a pseudo-celebrity online. That's gotta be terrifying. But you know, I'm totally happy to take at least hear it out and see what I can do to help any project. So if you need a song in English, or Japanese, or both, and or if you're looking to at least connect to see whether you can hire Japanese talent, but need somebody to, you know, be your middleman or vice versa, from Japan to English, my DMS are open.

Anime Herald: The ability to speak and sing in both English and Japanese, that has to be pretty rare.

Diana Garnet: I think, at the current moment, I am the most employed bilingual voice actress in Japan. There's a bilingual voice actor, Maxwell Powers. He's, he's amazing. And he's been in Kabaneri [of the Iron Fortress], Pokémon, all sorts. He’s Rotom in Pokémon. But there aren't very many of us. I would like to normalize it. Especially because then you don't have to cast two different people, you don't have to sort of change your vision. We would have the context of having done both, so that the character wouldn't change through the interpretation. That's, I think, something that there's maybe some people looking for.

I know Japan is trying to speed up simulcasting, in particular, because that's becoming really important on streaming platforms. Having to get the entire script ahead of time, cast it, and then record it in another location can sometimes be very daunting on these streaming services. So we'd like more people to come over to Japan, so that we could set up that kind of service in Japan. Because right now, there's literally a handful of us that do this. If we could get more people over in Japan, at least, that's something that we could offer.

There are other bilingual actors, but they're kind of scattered everywhere. And they don't even need to be bilingual. Just having people in Japan in the same timezone would really help.

My roommate is a producer. She does anime specifically. She’s currently working with both Disney+ and Netflix. One of the biggest problems is the time lag. It takes, like, two days to hear anything. It just doesn't really work for simulcasting. I think it would make a lot of sense to form an agency in Japan specializing in foreign voiceover or bilingual voiceover. That could be fun.

Anime Herald: Is that the kind of thing where someone who doesn’t speak Japanese would be able to get a visa to perform?

Diana Garnet: That's the plan, yeah. As long as there's enough work, you can get the visa. The problem is that there isn't contracted work generally. When I do voiceover, it's generally like,” Oh, next week, we need you for two hours for NHK.” And I'm like, “Oh, would have been great to know.” But we never see a contract. But for anime, it’s for three months to six months long. We get a contract for that. The shortest-term entertainment visa is three months. The longest term was supposed to be three years, but nobody ever sees anything longer than one year. Six months is a really common visa length. People could come over for six months or a year. As long as they keep getting regular work, it's fine. And the agency would be able to tell if this person usually gets an anime, we'll keep them here, even if they don't have one right now. And anime dubbing usually has, like, one person doing a couple at a time. If we could just like move Crunchyroll over to Japan. That would make sense to me.