The Floor is Lava: An Interview With Ray Chase, Max Mittelman, and Robbie Daymond

Note: Due to time sensitivity reasons, this will be going to the main Anime Herald site on July 11. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Interviewer: Seth Burn

Robbie Daymond: I’m Robbie Daymond. We’re all voice actors. I assume if you’re here, you already know that. This gentleman to my right is Max Mittelman. That’s Ray Chase. We’ve been in numerous things together. We're here to answer your questions. We'll try to make them short and bite sizable so that you can enter them into whatever things you’re doing.

Anime Herald: Hi there. I’ve interviewed Ray a few times.

Ray Chase: Anime Herald, they asked very fun questions. I can’t wait to see what you come up with this time.

Robbie Daymond: Well now you’ve built it up. I’m very excited.

Anime Herald: Here’s the thing: I’m going to give you guys a choice.

Robbie Daymond: Okay.

Anime Herald: If you want to touch the third rail I’ll ask you a question about unionization in the industry.

Robbie Daymond: Uh oh.

Anime Herald: Or you can give your most embarrassing Ray Chase story.

Robbie Daymond: Oh man.

Max Mittelman: Ray Chase!

Robbie Daymond: Ray Chase. He’s so boring, there’s nothing to be embarrassed about.

Max Mittelman: Well, what’s our favorite thing about Ray Chase?

Robbie Daymond: One of my favorite and most embarrassing things about Ray Chase is that he’s a little bit of a sloppy eater. So you have a 50-50 chance if you meet Ray Chase he’ll have some form of soup stain somewhere on him. So far today he’s in the clear. He’s started carrying a Tide pen which has really upped his clean percentage.

Max Mittelman: I was going to say my favorite thing about Ray Chase also has to do with food and it’s the speed in which he inhales it.

Robbie Daymond: Yeah, that’s true.

Robbie Daymond: I am also absolutely pro-unionization. I hope the industry starts to build itself around that. I hope that it provides insurance and retirement and a more fair and equitable salary for everyone who works on anime. Guess what? It’s no longer DVD’s that you buy in a Fry’s in 1999. There are movies that make $25M at the box office. There are huge streaming platforms built around them. The industry has been built around a non-union model for twenty years. It’s a hard thing to break out of. We respect that and understand it, but it’s time to shine some light on it and bring it into the 21st century.

Final Fantasy XV

Ray Chase: I will also say, and I know it’s a hot button issue, over the past five years a ton of studios went union that weren’t before. I feel like I’ve been doing entirely union stuff at this point. Aniplex has been completely union.

Robbie Daymond: JRPGs are starting to flip. Studios like PCB (Productions) are turning away non-union projects.

Ray Chase: Even a lot of Chinese and Korean mobile games have been union, which has been fantastic. I feel like a lot of progress has been made, which is awesome. A long way to go, but it’s been awesome.

(Editor’s note: Max Mittelman looked to be in agreement with what Robbie and Ray were saying, even if he couldn’t get a word in edgewise.)

Anime-Zing Radio: I wanted to know, with COVID and the ways you had to change going from in-studio to in-home, was that a big adjustment for you guys to have to make, especially where I know with Funimation titles, a lot of the voice actors had to not only record but edit their own stuff.

Ray Chase: Edit? We haven’t been asked to do that, I don’t think. We have to upload the raw file.

Max Mittelman: When the pandemic first started, I had one session from a major studio, who asked me to cut and record every single line and also slate the line myself. Which is crazy. To have to do that as an actor and also keep up and stay in the moment with the performance. They soon learned after that, that was the only time that they had any actor try to do that.

Ray Chase: Actors can't count.

Max Mittelman: We can't do that. We’re not smart enough.

Robbie Daymond: One. Five. Thirteen. Ah, I can’t do it.

Max Mittelman: You’re trying to count consecutively?

Audience: It’s impossible.

Ray Chase: What does consecutive mean?

Robbie Daymond: What?

Max Mittelman: Thank you for your question.

Ray Chase: But also, we did have home studios, all three of us had home studios before, obviously souped them up when the pandemic happened. They were really cracking down making sure everything sounded good. We were already recording all of our auditions from home.

Max Mittelman & Robbie Daymond: Yeah.

Ray Chase: There were some people who were caught off guard, especially if you’re first starting out. We’ve been recording from home on all sorts of random stuff.

Max Mittelman: I didn’t really change anything when the pandemic started, I already had the setup. They said, “Let’s start utilizing it.”

Robbie Daymond: I think just a few upgrades here and there for most of us who are pros. My setup was good enough to do broadcast-quality auditions and some commercials. But when it came to long-form sessions, for four-hour video game sessions or cartoon stuff, I had to do a few upgrades. I went from a three-quarter booth to a full booth.

Max Mittelman: I bought a new monitor for dubs.

Robbie Daymond: Yeah. We all probably downloaded Source-Connect. I didn’t have Source-Connect before that. I was just doing other things. But it was necessary. I think the whole industry caught up in what, two months? Within two months we were humming.

Max Mittelman: I might say thirty days.

Robbie Daymond: Yeah. It was a month of weirdness. Within that amount of time it was the industry standard.

Ray Chase: Yeah.

Max Mittelman: Yep.

Robbie Daymond: It was also miserable. I hated them over it.

Max Mittelman & Ray Chase: (laughs)

Robbie Daymond: I want to go into studios all the time. The best part of our job is interacting with people and being in the room with them even if they’re on the other side of the glass. And it’s just really disheartening to be…

I know a lot of people said “Oh, it’s opened up a lot of opportunities for casting people outside of certain areas.” I’m totally for that, it’s great that you can cast a wider net. But it’s just really creatively bankrupting sometimes, especially if you do a lot of scenes throughout multiple sessions.

Ray Chase: When you go to the studio you get free chips

Robbie Daymond: Hm hmm (nodding)

Max Mittelman: Yep.

Ray Chase:  And the fact I’m not allowed to have that anymore, I have to supply my own has been a real bummer.

Max Mittelman: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ray Chase: One of the worst things to happen during the pandemic I would say.

Robbie Daymond: Yeah.

Max Mittelman: Yes it is.

Robbie Daymond: That’s a joke by the way. A joke!

Smokey Brown (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure)

Honey’s Anime: Since you guys stream on Twitch, do you feel that has changed your relationship with the anime community?

Ray Chase: We do stream on Twitch at twitch.tv/loudannoying every Wednesday from 7-9PM.

(Editor’s note: Pacific time)

Max Mittelman: Yeah.

Ray Chase: That’s the only thing I have to say.

Robbie Daymond: It’s really fun though. A lot of people watch our…

Max Mittelman: It hasn’t really changed our relationship with the anime community at large or as a whole, but the community that we stream to, I feel like we’re really close with them. We engage with them a lot because that’s the way we have the most fun.

Ray Chase: Yeah. Our stream is very much a podcast in the sense we talk philosophy, we talk history, we talk new things that we’re learning about. We do talk about anime and things, but they get to know us as people in a really interesting way.

Robbie Daymond: It was also the regularity of it. We’ve been streaming for five years, but it was so off and on and piecemeal. Us committing to do it every Wednesday was born out of the fact that conventions died for a couple of years.

Ray Chase: Yeah.

Robbie Daymond: We were like “So how do we engage with our fan base and people who come out to see us? Oh, these VODs (videos on demand) are getting tens of thousands of views.” We did a marathon stream and 2,000 people tuned in to watch us sleep. We’re like “Okay, people are enjoying this.”

Max Mittelman: Yeah

Robbie Daymond: It was born out of a way to entertain people that weren’t at conventions.

Max Mittelman: One thing that did change was that we would do all of our streams in person before the pandemic and when we found a way to do them remote, it became more like a podcast.

Ray Chase: Yeah.

Max Mittelman: We still do it in person, but it’s fun that we can have another way of doing it.

Karamatsu (Mr. Osomatsu)

Boston Bastard Brigade: What are some of the challenges of adapting anime that have very Japanese senses of humor that Americans might not understand? For example, Mr. Osomatsu. What are some of the things you do to help the English-speaking audience not just understand it, but make it funnier for them?

Robbie Daymond: I went to the anime doctor and he said I wasn’t funny enough to be an Osomatsu. I took that diagnosis and stopped trying to be funny in anime ever.

Ray Chase: It really is about freedom. For [Mr.] Osomatsu, I think it’s one of the best adaptations. I watched the whole original Japanese show. And then for ours, just the freedom to do some fun improv and stuff. There’s so much where they’re all talking at the same time, and so we can all put in whatever we want that’s reasonable for the senior hand. Eventually, you’re making it for this audience, and if this audience isn’t going to get the joke, what’s the point of adapting it? I really think that having freedom is the most important thing. You don’t have to do it. Except for that horrible mahjong episode. There’s just nothing you can do with that. It’s just going to be a lot of mahjong jokes. English speakers will understand it.

Robbie Daymond: Yeah. Comedy is so subjective anyway, and it’s so cultural. It’s just so time-based. Comedy is one of the few things that just does not hold up that great. There are a few amazing specials that still exist that will always be amazing. But so much of it is that we can make a reference this year, we can make a Genshin Impact joke this year. In two years… we’re constantly changing.

Max Mittelman: Speaking of, two Genshin Impacts walk into a bar.

Robbie Daymond: Go ahead.

Max Mittelman: Ouch!

Robbie Daymond: Nice!

Ray Chase: Two Genshins Impacted into a bar.

Max Mittelman & Robbie Daymond: (groans)

Looper: How do you see the Funimation-Crunchyroll merger affecting the industry?

Robbie Daymond: I don’t know that we know enough about it.

Ray Chase: Yeah. We had this question last week. We do work for Crunchyroll. We do some work for Funimation. We just get sent auditions, that’s all we really know.

Robbie Daymond: What ideally it would be…? I don’t know. I don’t know enough about it. We’re really careful speaking on things we’re not certain about. I mean, I’m sure it will change things in a way, but at a certain point, you just pick projects based on whether you’d like to do them or not. So yeah, I don’t really have an opinion on that one. Sorry. What a crappy answer. I hope it shifts the industry for the better.

Ray Chase: I think they should change the company’s name to Crunchymation. That’s my official stance on that.

Max Mittelman: What about Funiroll?

Ray Chase: Funiroll Crunchymation?

Max Mittelman: Funiroll Crunchymation.

Ray Chase: That’s our official stance. You can quote it.

Max Mittelman: I just sent it off to the lawyers.

Robbie Daymond: Call the lawyers right now!

Max Mittelman: My new corporation.

Ritsu Kageyama (Mob Psycho 100)

Anime Herald: You talked about not being able to do conventions for a few years so you leaned into the Twitch streaming. Now that conventions are back do you think the convention scene has changed?

Robbie Daymond: Absolutely

Max Mittelman: I think people want to be here more. They want something to do. They’ve been pent up and now they’re ready to go out and do stuff.

Robbie Daymond: Yeah. It’s busier than it’s ever been. It’s more organized than it’s ever been.

Max Mittelman: And anime as a whole has become more popular.

Ray Chase: So much more mainstream.

Max Mittelman: People just watched it more. During the pandemic, people had nothing to do, so they watched anime. Not only are people more excited about anime, but the fanbase has grown now.

Robbie Daymond: What a good point. When I think about what people were lined up for five years ago, as opposed to now, I feel like so much more of it is anime. It was all JRPGs five years ago. Now that things have come back and so much stuff has gone to streaming, it’s so much more accessible.

That’s the thing, it’s so much more accessible than it used to be. It seems like the licensing has become more free, and there’s different ways to watch stuff. So yeah, I think anime is bigger than it’s ever been.

Max Mittelman: Absolutely.

Robbie Daymond: And people want to be entertained. Our shows are rowdier than they’ve ever been, in a good way. The audiences are hyped to be there and seeing something. It’s a pretty fun show. They’ve always been loud audiences, but now they sort of lose their minds. It’s really fun.

Anime-Zing Radio: I do an improv talk show. What advice can you give to someone who does a talk show completely unscripted, when things go unexpected, like when a guest cancels shortly before the show. What’s a piece of advice that you could give?

Ray Chase: Embracing all the mistakes, all of the crazy stuff. That’s one of my favorite things about improv, when things are going wrong. It’s an opportunity to let the audience in on the madness. That’s a great way to have candor with the audience. Not trying to hide something and say “Oh, this is going poorly”, but just really lean into it. I think it’s always welcome. People find that very refreshing.

Robbie Daymond: Yeah, and for those who thrive on routine and are made uncomfortable by sort of those changes that might happen, like someone canceling on you, or whatever, you really have to remind yourself why you're doing that and hopefully gets to entertain other people and try to make it less about you and more about what you're trying to do. That makes it easier to roll with the punches. If I make something so personal, and I let my feelings get hurt if someone cancels on me, it can make it harder to move yourself mentally out of that. But if you're just saying “No, I'm just here to make a show. That asshole couldn’t come? Fine. Let’s figure out something else fun to do. I’ll make this entertaining because I care about my audience.” I think that's good advice.

Ryuji Sakamoto (Persona 5)

Honey’s Anime: To follow up on the improv thing, do you have a background in improv? Also, I saw on Max Mittelman’s Twitter that the line “My bro, my guy, my dude.” line for Genshin Impact was improvised. Do you have a favorite improvised line that you’ve done?

Max Mittelman: What’s our improv experience? I took many improv classes at places like Upright Citizens Brigade and Groundlings and Second City. Ray, you were in the improv troupe.

Ray Chase: USC at school and ever since high school I’ve been doing improv, so a long time. Lots of different shows. Robbie, you too?

Robbie Daymond: Yeah. Same, since high school. My grad school work was very much improv-based, and not just comedy. We did a lot of mania work. We did a ton of bodywork. We did a lot of improv-based theatre. And then for two back-to-back semesters, we did improv comedy as one of our main courses of study.

Max Mittelman: And then our favorite improvised ad-libs. I like when I got to say “Yeet” for Ryuji.

Robbie Daymond: Oh, that’s a good one. It’s hard to pull them out because then they become part of the...

There’s this one in Final Fantasy [XV] that everybody likes, where I sing a song when I’m going down the stairs. And it was never supposed to be a song. It was never supposed to be anything like that. It was just supposed to be “We’re going down the stairs.” I was like, “I don’t know. Why is this…” I think it was because the Japanese was 32 seconds long or something like that, and I was like, “Why is this so long? The line is ‘going down the stairs’ and I was like ‘how do I fill it?’I guess I’ll just sing.”

Robbie Daymond: That sort of stuff pops up all the time.

Ray Chase: Yeah. So for me, it meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnsssssssss extending the line and making it fit five seconds.

Max Mittelman: I’ll change my answer. The beatboxing I did instead of the humming I was supposed to do for Breadwinners. That was probably my favorite.

Robbie Daymond: Good question.

Boston Bastard Brigade: You’ve worked on Persona 5 and Akiba’s Beat. Despite their differences in tone and style, they both share a lot in common when it comes to dealing with delusional characters and talk about acting as commentary regarding distrust in society. When working on either game did you find any parallels between what was going on in the game and what was going on in the real world?

Robbie Daymond: That’s a very in-depth question.

Ray Chase: I guess the reason this question is hard is because you’re asking about thematic parallels. When I think about [Akiba’s Beat] I think about working on it with Cup of Tea [Productions, Inc.] and Eddie’s house. It was at his house. Our memories of that game are very different than the finished product so it’s very hard to conceptualize things.

Robbie Daymond: Did we ever play that on stream? We tried one time, right?

No, we never did.

Ray Chase: No.

Robbie Daymond: We’re pretty familiar with Persona because we played fifty hours of it. What are the big themes of Persona…. Obviously, cats can be humans too. Corruption. Adults are bad.

Ray Chase: Adults bad. Kids rule.

Robbie Daymond: Kids rule. That was probably a big theme in Akiba’s Beat too…

Boy, we suck.

Ray Chase: We suck.

Robbie Daymond: Sorry. We’re ill-equipped to answer this question.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Bungo Stray Dogs)

Looper: For Robbie Daymond: There have been rumors, or at least one weirdly insistent Wikipedia editor, claiming that you are reprising your role of the eighth brother in the new Obi-Wan Kenobi series. Can you confirm or deny these rumors?

Robbie Daymond: I can fully deny them.

Ray Chase: I will be voicing the eighth brother in the series.

Max Mittelman: That weirdly insistent Wikipedia editor? That was me.

Robbie Daymond: I mean, if they’re done shooting Obi-Wan Kenobi, then I have not been in it. So that is your answer.

Ray Chase: Wait, they’re saying you’re in a live action show?

Robbie Daymond: Yeah, but the character I guess would be CG. If the character is even in it. I don’t think anyone really knows that. The reason they’re making that parallel is because they’re inquisitors in the show and they’ve been keeping everything else canon. But maybe they’ve pulled my voice from the show. Could be. You never know.

Anime Herald: We have a pianist. We have a beatboxer and drummer. We have a singer. Have you guys ever considered playing together musically?

Ray Chase: We talk about it a lot. He plays guitar too.

Robbie Daymond: I do play guitar. We do talk about [it]. We do little musical-ly things together. Max and I have messed around with some music productions and songs. I do a series on Youtube where I do covers with other actors. Ray and I have talked about singing one. Max and I have talked about singing one.

It’s so funny. In all of our creative life, we’re all musical. And we’ve never taken the time to bring it together. And I think that’s because most bands break up. And we’re too deeply invested to break up with each other. We’re waifus for laifu.

I had fun making a song with Max. We sing a song together at the top of our improv show. We’ve got a couple of projects coming up where we’ll be doing music for that. Max is in charge of it. Yeah, that’s an interesting question. How funny.

Ray Chase: It’s Anime Herald.

Robbie Daymond: We’ve never done anything like that, except you and I (speaking to Max). And it’s unreleased. I don’t know if we’ll ever release it. It’s just for us. It’s fun. Some things you’ve got to do for yourself.

Ray Chase: Yeah.

Max Mittelman: Yeah.

Robbie Daymond: Interesting. What do you think boys?

Ray Chase: I think you should release your frickin song. I’ve heard it. It’s really good.

Robbie Daymond: Thanks.

Ray Chase: I don’t know why they’re not. It’s honestly frustrating.

Max Mittelman: I’ll tell you why. There’s only one and if it blows up people are going to expect so much more, and we don’t have that yet. We need to make the album.

Ray Chase: People don’t listen to albums anymore.

Max Mittelman: They listen…

Robbie Daymond: What if we became a Tik Tok song?

Max Mittelman: If the three of us became a new Tik Tok song?

Ray Chase: No, if your song became the new viral hit.

Max Mittelman: Oh. You want to just put it on Tik Tok?

Ray Chase: Just put it on Tik Tok.

Robbie Daymond: Maybe someday. Who knows. But LAVA the Musical? Don’t hold your breath.

Gaelio Bauduin (Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans)

Anime-Zing Radio: You all have had some iconic roles that you voiced in video games and anime. Was there any particular character that stands out that you were surprised that they became so beloved by the fans?

Ray Chase: Surprise?

Max Mittelman: Surprise hit.

Robbie Daymond: Akechi! Akechi was a massive surprise hit for me. Max and Ray informed me Persona was a big property when I got the role. I was like, “I don’t know what that is.”

I play a lot of games. I watch a lot of anime. I’m into this stuff. I just never got into Persona. I was aware of it peripherally, that it existed, but I had no idea. I went in and I was like “Oh, this is actually a really cool character.” So I went hard in the paint and people tended to enjoy it. That was a big surprise for me. Never was there a moment when I was recording when I was like “Everybody is gonna remember Akechi’s name. Put it on my gravestone.” (Editor’s note: That was in Goro Akechi’s voice.)

Max Mittelman: Sometimes, it’s a surprise to me when characters don’t…

Robbie Daymond: Not more…

Ray Chase: Oh yeah. I was the main character of Anthem, which was supposed to be the biggest game of all time. Just crashed and burned. That was a big surprise.

Robbie Daymond: Yeah.

Max Mittelman: Especially when you are really invested in a character.

Ray Chase: Yeah.

Max Mittelman: And you think “wow, this is so fun to play,” and people don’t latch onto it and you’re like, “Oh, man!”

Robbie Daymond: Yeah.

Ray Chase: Yeah.

Robbie Daymond: I put my heart and soul into Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress. Like, I put my all into that show.

Max Mittelman: You put your soul into it. (Commiserating, laughing)

Robbie Daymond: People liked it I guess. It was the next big show from the Attack on Titan studio. It was all hyped up like “This is going to be the one.” and everybody was kind of like “Eh, it’s okay. We’ll give it a season and a movie.” I was like “Shit. I thought this was going to be my next big thing.”

Ray Chase: B: The Beginning. Netflix put all of their marking materials into that one and it went nowhere. Just one season and then a half a season.

Robbie Daymond: You truly don’t know what’s going to hit unless it’s already a monster manga or something like that. When Max was going through his callbacks for One Punch Man we all had an idea that One Punch Man would be the anime of the year, or whatever. So that happens every once in a while. But typically not. It’s a surprise a lot of the time. Like when Ray and I were working on Final Fantasy, we were like “Dude, this is the next Final Fantasy.”

Ray Chase: We knew that was going to be a big one.

Robbie Daymond: Yeah, but what we didn’t know is that fans would latch onto it so emotionally.

Ray Chase: Yeah!

Robbie Daymond: That it would be some of the most passionate long-term fans that we have. I mean, it’s been out for five and half years and we still see cosplayers. People still come up crying “I just played through it.”

Ray Chase: I remember before it came out we were like “It’s going to be about combat. It’s going to be about fighting. It’s going to be an adventure.” And what people love is the cooking, the fishing, the camping. The actual brotherhood of it. And that’s what it is as a game. It’s about hanging out with your friends. And that’s what came out.

Actually, a bit of a surprise was Bungo Stray Dogs. That one came out, not very popular, and then the pandemic happened, and people started watching that show like crazy. So Bungo was a surprise.

Saitama (One-Punch Man)

Honey’s Anime: This is a question for Ray.

Ray Chase: I’m being summoned.

Honey’s Anime: Since the Master of Masters from Kingdom Hearts is so shrouded in mystery, do you have any theories about him? About what his goals might be?

Ray Chase: I can't even imagine. All I know is that it is not whatever we are thinking, because it never happens to be. That was absolutely a role that I know the least about having played in for so many years. I can't say anything. I wish I knew more. I do hope that he comes in [Kingdom Hearts] IV, it’s called The Lost Master Arc, and he’s the Lost Master. So you’d imagine he’d be featured in that pretty heavily, but I’ve not been called in yet.

Boston Bastard Brigade: Have there been shows that you guys have worked on that have hit harder because of the pandemic?

Robbie Daymond: Shows that we’ve been in that have hit harder? In what sense?

Boston Bastard Brigade: Shows that have a deeper meaning now, or shows where your thought process of the show has changed because of the pandemic.

Ray Chase: You’d think Cells at Work! would be that one.

Robbie Daymond: Yeah, interesting.

I’m not certain that you can let those things affect your work. If we’re letting the conditions of the world affect our performances, that’s the wrong mindset. There have been times in the pandemic where I’ve been like “Oh, I’m so grateful to be working” or “I’m so happy I can still work.”

We watched our other friends who are on camera people, theater people, they just went out of work for a year.

Ray Chase: Yeah.

Robbie Daymond: No more productions, until people figured out how to Covid protocols. So, I would say no, we’ve all got families and people we care about, so being able to work was really important.

Max Mittelman: Speak for yourself. (Deadpan)

(Editor’s note: We laughed.)

Boston Bastard Brigade: The question actually was more about shows you worked on before the pandemic that now have a deeper meaning.

Robbie Daymond: I can’t imagine just because I think it might have more meaning for you as an audience member.

Max Mittelman: I was going to say I think everyone derives their own meaning from it depending on whatever is going on in their lives. One Punch Man can have just as much meaning to someone as Your Lie in April depending on what they need at the time.

Ray Chase: Vaccine Man hits harder.

Tuxedo Mask (Sailor Moon)

Looper: Looking over Ray Chase’s resume: Anime, anime, video games, anime, Licorice Pizza. So I have to ask, is Paul Thomas Anderson a Weeaboo?

Ray Chase: Absolutely not. No.

Ray Chase: I’m Mr. Anime JRPG guy and that year was Licorice Pizza and Malignant. I got to work with James Wan too in a crazy horror movie. It was really fun to branch out in that way.

Looper: Is James Wan a Weeaboo?

Ray Chase: (Thinks for a second) Probably. It didn’t come up when we worked on it. We talked mostly about what it would be like to be on the back of somebody’s head.

Robbie Daymond: Ray’s a real live actor. Did you know that? He’s like a real live actor. A lot of us are.

Ray Chase: We watched Licorice Pizza on the plane. It was fun. I took a screenshot “There’s my face on the screen.” It was cool.

Ray Chase: I do sign Licorice Pizza, people bring the soundtrack to me all the time which is really fun. But no one’s brought me the Paul Thomas Anderson manga to sign. Not yet.

Anime Herald: School of LAVA. If you were all professors, teaching acting and such, what course would each of you want to focus on? What would you want to teach?

Ray Chase: Now Anime Herald, I know you do your research. Robbie was an acting teacher at UNLV.

Max Mittelman: Yeah, but this is the University of LAVA.

Robbie Daymond: The school of LAVA.

First of all, it would be a scam, right?

Max Mittelman: 100%. We’d promise people we’d cast them in anime, and just make them dub One Punch Man and not release it. It would be great.

Ray Chase: A scam. Man, there are so many of those in LA. When you’re first starting out, it’s all “We promise if you take this class, pay us $800, and at the end of it you’ll get a showcase.”

Max Mittelman: Let’s call them out.

Robbie Daymond: I taught at the New York Film Academy. I’m so comfortable now, I’ll shit on that place all day.

Anime Herald: Why were they bad?

Robbie Daymond: They were a scam. First problem: New York Film Academy is in Los Angeles. Very suspect.

Max Mittelman: But there is one in New York as well.

Robbie Daymond: There is one in New York as well. It took place in place in an office building on Barham Boulevard. It was run by, and I think he ended up being some kind of skeeze bag, Brett Ratner, I think ran the thing. But I didn’t know that when I got the job.

(Editor’s note: Ratner has been accused of sexual assault by multiple people: Henstridge, Page.)

Robbie Daymond: So I left grad school, we got time, can I go down the rabbit hole?

Max Mittelman: Yes.

Ray Chase: Absolutely.

Robbie Daymond: So I left grad school, went to LA, bummed around with my band, then booked my first VO (voice acting) gig. Two weeks in I thought “This is going to be easy.” And then, recession, writer’s strike. I couldn’t get a job as a pizza delivery boy, and that’s a true story. I couldn’t get a job delivering pizza, there were lines around the block to wait tables at restaurants, actors with headshots. A ridiculous number of people, a quarter of a million, left in three months. Brutal time to be there. I couldn’t get a job to write. I was like “My savings are gone. My bank account’s red. I can’t get a pizza delivery job. This is all over.” I found an ad for teaching at The New York Film Academy.

I was overqualified to work there by far. They paid us hourly. I was bringing in real pedagogy. I taught there for a semester and I thought “This is all bullshit.” It was around $20,000 a semester. It was a bunch of Eastern European oligarch’s kids. I was teaching them Shakespeare. They were being told they’d be able to make it in Hollywood. That was what was being sold. It truly was a scam. I eventually had to leave because of this, “I can’t do this anymore.” When I found out they were offering a master's degree, they were an MFA and got accredited as a university, “I can’t be here. My conscience can’t do it.” And my acting career started taking off. I was there for about two years. Anyway… what was the point of this story?

Ray Chase: Do you think that now you could get a pizza delivery job?

Robbie Daymond: What?

Ray Chase: Do you think if you tried you could get a pizza delivery job?

Robbie Daymond: I’m overqualified. I’m forty years old. I don’t think I would get it.

Ray Chase: You’re not gonna get it.

Robbie Daymond: Damn it.

Max Mittelman: Your dream.

Robbie Daymond: I really don’t think I would get it.

Max Mittelman: What would we teach?

Robbie Daymond: Those kinds of places existed. I would want to teach something real.

Ray Chase: Our big thing that we talk about all the time on our stream, because we hear it from the fans who want to be in anime who watch a ton of anime and they mimic our performances, and that’s not the way it is to do it. You have to come from an outsider's perspective and bring your own viewpoint to it.

Max Mittelman: As much of a scam that you say that was, the only non-scammy part was learning from people like you who have...

Ray Chase: Who quit immediately.

Max Mittelman: Who quit immediately.

Robbie Daymond: To be fair, their faculty was pretty solid.

Max Mittelman: What I was going to say, the way to avoid a scam if you want to search out, you want to find people who are reputable, who are doing the work, and not just talking about it.

Robbie Daymond: And are honest too about your progress. That was the hardest part for me about that school. Because Svetlana was paying $20,000 and could barely speak English and move her body. If I were at a university I would give this person a D. I just can’t pass you in this course, you don’t have the skills. They were like “No, no, no, no. She needs a B- so she continues on this program.”

That was the part that was icky for me. I would like to teach real functional skills.

Ray Chase: Math, science, school of LAVA, hard core engineering, STEM, total STEM.

Max Mittelman: No electives.

Robbie Daymond: Russian history. Linguistics. Engineering.

Ray Chase: That was fun.

Max Mittelman: I can teach a thing or two about scientific research because I am a published scientific researcher.

Ray Chase: He’s literally a published scientific researcher.

Max Mittelman: I am, you can look it up. I did some research for this thing called Gmaps.

Robbie Daymond: He cut up fly genitalia.

Max Mittelman: It wasn’t that. It was studying the genetic lineage, it doesn’t matter, it’s all very complicated, what’s the next question?

Roswaal L. Mathers (Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-)

Anime-Zing Radio: This one’s for Ray, talking about Demon Slayer: How surprised were you to get the role of Tengen and how big the character has become?

Ray Chase: That was a weird one because I’m really good friends with Aleks Le who is Zenitsu in that. I remember the auditions went out, I had no idea what it was. That one I was surprised was a hit because I just didn’t know anything about it personally. I auditioned for all the Hashira, got Tengen, had like 14 lines in season one, I was like “Oh, this is just some lame character who’s just appearing for a second” and Aleks kept saying “you don’t understand, he’s like the main guy, just wait, just wait.” And I had to wait two years to work on season two, but man, watching that in subtitles every week before to prepare was one of the coolest homework assignments ever. That animation was as flashy as possible. I’ve never seen an anime like that before.

Anime-Zing Radio: It came before Sabito’s extended roll.

Max Mittelman: I don’t know if I’d say that. He’s like the main character in season 17.

Ray Chase: That was some of the most fun I’ve ever had. That one I requested to go into the studio for because it has to be so frame perfect, the fight scenes are so intense. Really fun.

Robbie Daymond: That’s a real answer. We did it.

Ray Chase: Yep.

Honey’s Anime: For Max, obviously one of my favorite roles of yours is Filbo from Bugsnax.

Max Mittelman: Obviously.

Ray Chase: Yay!

Robbie Daymond: Oh yeah!

Honey’s Anime: There’s a lot of complexity to him underneath his cheerful attitude. How did you use your performance to show how he grows and changes in the story.

Max Mittelman: I think he starts off very insecure, very needy, wanting to find Lizbert. He’s very insecure about her not being there. As he’s given this responsibility to run the town as the mayor, he grows and becomes more confident in himself.

Honey’s Anime: What in your performance did you do to show that change?

Max Mittelman: I don’t know how to describe it other than the way to perform it.

Robbie Daymond: I got you. One of the biggest “No no’s” in acting is to show.

Max Mittelman: To tell?

Robbie Daymond: To show and to tell. You don’t show. You never show. You never say “This is the safe.” Same thing.

Max Mittelman: I am ner-vous.

Robbie Daymond: Yeah. You don’t show, you don’t point at the safe, you just do it.

Ray Chase: Oh I see. If you’re playing someone who’s nervous they’re not going to say I’m nervous”, they’re trying to hide that they’re nervous and their nervousness goes through.

Max Mittelman: Trying to act like they’re confident but it’s not working out for them.

Robbie Daymond: If that’s what you took from his performance then that’s the perfect interpretation of it. Sounds like that’s what he was going for and what you picked up on. So that’s the perfect actor-audience relationship.

Ray Chase: Robbie with the save.

Max Mittelman: Thanks, Robbie.

This is why he has an MFA in acting and I don’t.

Robbie Daymond: I think that’s what was meant.

Honey’s Anime: I got you.

Raymond (OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes)

Boston Bastard Brigade: For Robbie: You sounded like you were having a blast playing Raymond from  OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes. I’m wondering how you decided how he should talk, what his personality would be like, and what you brought to the character that made him Raymond.

Robbie Daymond: When the audition first came out, he had a rose. I knew that the creator was a big anime fan. I thought that maybe it was a Tuxedo Mask reference. He had something like a tuxedo. I just did the horniest robot I could possibly do. Don’t tell anyone, I know it’s a kid show, but that’s the kind of voice that it was. He wasn’t being overtly sexual, but the voice itself was horny.

Max Mittelman: If that’s the word that helps you get into the voice, then use that and no one will ever know.

Robbie Daymond: I wasn’t making it sexual, but the voice itself is. You know who Tim Curry is? Even when he’s not being sexual, or playing a sexual character, he has a horny quality to his voice.  I think that was part of the inspiration. And there were some scenes with Raymond where he was flamboyant and over the top, and open and free. That’s how I worked my way into that voice.

Megumi Fushiguro (Jujutsu Kaisen)

Looper: Demon Slayer and Jujutsu Kaisen are neck and neck for being the most popular anime and manga at the moment…

Ray Chase: It’s really great being in both, isn’t it Max?

Max Mittelman: Yeah. It’s so great. (Deadpan)

Looper: And Ray and Robbie are in both of them

Robbie Daymond: And Max…

Looper: And Max is in Demon Slayer. I don't know if you are allowed to play favorites, but if you had to choose one, which would you pick as your personal favorite between the two of them?

Ray Chase: Whoa, I’ve watched them both.

Robbie Daymond: I don’t want to alienate anyone who likes them.

Ray Chase: ****

Max Mittelman: Yeah, I wouldn’t want to answer this question. I couldn’t possibly choose.

Robbie Daymond: They’re both great shows. They’re so different though.

Ray Chase: It’s hard because one is like Dragon Ball, which you can’t help but love, and one is like a darker, more hardcore Death Note. I don’t know. They’re both so different.

Robbie Daymond: They’re gonna make us “The Good Son” this.

It’s on a cliff.

Ray Chase: Sophie’s Choice it?

Robbie Daymond: Sophie’s Choice it. I never want to say “Sophie’s Choice,” but it’s probably the best.

Max Mittelman: Who are you letting go?

Ray Chase: Demon Slayer, because I’m done with Demon Slayer.

(Editor’s note: This killed the room. Laughter all around.)

Robbie Daymond: That’s a great answer. Oh man, I’ve still got the Swordsmith Village arc. I can’t let Demon Slayer go. Ah, I let Demon Slayer go.

Ray Chase: So the answer is we let Demon Slayer fall off a cliff and die. That’s the answer.

Robbie Daymond: Yeah.

Ray Chase: Quote us on that.

Robbie Daymond: Enjoy, Looper!

Sabito (Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba)

Anime Boston Staff: We have time for a quick lightning round and then photos.

Anime Herald: Alright, lightning round. This one’s for you, Max.

Max Mittelman: We can take our time with this.

Anime Herald: When you are voice acting for One Punch Man, playing Saitama, how do you get into a bald frame of mind?

LAVA collectively: A bald frame of mind.

Max Mittelman: Well, umm… Good question.

You start by being extremely nervous that you need to deliver to all the fans that are going to watch. You’re trying to strike a balance between a guy who’s not necessarily lazy, but he’s achieved all the things he wants to achieve, and [has] this sense of just being so bored. How do I get into character?

Robbie Daymond: How do you get into a bald frame of mind?

Ray Chase: This is the lightning round.

Robbie Daymond: This is a joke question. You’ve got to give a good joke answer.

Max Mittelman: A joke answer. Well, ha! Shave it all off.

Robbie Daymond: Nailed it! Max is already so hairy that it’s hard for him to go there. Look at these arms.

Max Mittelman: Get away from me! Get away from me!

Robbie Daymond: Look at these arms!

Max Mittelman: Get away from me!

Anime-Zing Radio: Performed as LAVA, how has that changed how you perform acting and voice acting?

Robbie Daymond: I used to like Max and Ray so much.

Max Mittelman: I used to hate these guys.

Ray Chase: It’s changed how we do panels, especially Q & A panels; we kind of treat it as show, no matter what we’re doing.

Robbie Daymond: It hasn’t changed our performances, I don’t think, in anime. Except they don’t really cast us together anymore.

Max Mittelman: No they stopped immediately!

Robbie Daymond: That’s too much power.

Ray Chase: Yeah, it’s true.

Robbie Daymond: I feel like we’re the naughty kids in class.

Max Mittelman: Yes!

Robbie Daymond: “You can’t sit together.”

Ray Chase: That’s why Max isn’t in Jujutsu Kaisen. Next question.

Honey’s Anime: For all three of you: What do you find to be the most rewarding part of your career?

Max Mittelman: Working with these guys.

Ray Chase & Robbie Daymond: Awww….

Robbie Daymond: It’s true.

Ray Chase: It is why we keep enmeshing ourselves in so many different projects and extracurricular activities, because we love finding like-minded people.

Robbie Daymond: I think it also adds to our entertainment value when we go to these events. One of the things we take most seriously when we go to conventions, and we do a lot of them. I think we’re going to 25 of them this year. We got together because we wanted to bring added entertainment to these conventions, which is where the idea of the show came from, which is where the two new panels that we do...

Max Mittelman: Tuna panels?

Ray Chase: Two new panels.

Robbie Daymond: Two new tuna panels. These panels that we do. Our favorite thing is to entertain the attendees. This gives us a new way to entertain attendees that so far, not a ton of other people are doing.  As far as we know.

Max Mittelman: Correct!

Robbie Daymond: It’s awesome.

Ray Chase: Next question?

Boston Bastard Brigade: It’s a little tradition we have. Normally we would ask if you were stuck on a desert island, which three of your characters would you bring with you. Since there’s three of you here, how about each one of you pick along one of your characters. Which one would it be and why?

Ray Chase: Can I choose Filbo Fiddlepie...

Max Mittelman: Damn it!

Ray Chase: Because he’s really good at crafting. He’s really good at finding hidden stuff. He’s a good mayor, so I’d want him to be the mayor of the town.

Max Mittelman: Okay. Fine. I need to think about it.

Ray Chase: You’d need to choose one of Robbie’s and Robbie needs to choose one of mine.

Robbie Daymond: I know.

Max Mittelman: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Robbie Daymond: I would choose… Ray, your characters…

Ray Chase: They’re all terrible.

Max Mittelman: Yeah, I know.

Robbie Daymond: I’d choose the guy from Anthem! We need someone who flew. That guy flies around the world. “Bro, I don’t care if your game’s canceled, get me some coconuts. I’m hungry” He’d be like “Sure thing. *Vroom* He’d come back with firewood. He would.

Ray Chase: His name is Freelancer.

Robbie Daymond: I’d hire him to be my desert island freelancer. I’d pay him in seashells.

Max Mittelman: I’d choose Robbie Daymond from Critical Role. That way I could have Robbie Daymond with me at all times.

Robbie Daymond: I would absolutely kill and cannibalize you both.

Looper: Question for the ‘Matsu’s. Was there ever any consideration, even as a thing among yourselves, of dubbing the banned first episode?

Max Mittelman: Oh yes.

Ray Chase: That’s all we wanted to do.

Max Mittelman: We begged them. We begged them.

Ray Chase: They wanted to do it too! It’s just a Japanese thing.

Max Mittelman: It’s not. It’s not a Japanese thing. It’s an American thing. We couldn’t get, they couldn’t get... the clearance to put that many references in an American show. Japan could do it. We could not.

Ray Chase: It’s the same way that, in JoJo, you have to change all the stand names from the real-life musicians. We couldn’t do that one episode.

Robbie Daymond: I don’t know this, what is it?

Ray Chase: It’s the best episode of anime ever.

Max Mittelman: If you watch one episode of Osamatsu, it’s just this episode...

Ray Chase: The first episode. They lampoon every anime that’s ever been made all at once. It’s hilarious.

Max Mittelman: The animation style changes along the way. It’s so great.

Robbie Daymond: It’s like one of those old-school Looney Tunes, they would walk into a bar and it would have everyone Hollywood person ever. And they lampoon them.

Max Mittelman: Yes. But also the animation would change, they’d make references to Pokemon and they’d all look like characters from Pokemon.

Robbie Daymond: It’s a licensing thing.

Max Mittelman & Ray Chase: It’s a licensing thing, yeah.

Max Mittelman: We should watch that in our spare time.

Robbie Daymond: Good questions gang.

Ray Chase: No Critical Role questions Robbie, how does that feel?

Robbie Daymond: We’re at Anime Boston! Good!