Q and A with Kotono Mitsuishi
Seeing Kotono Mitsuishi was cool! She seems really nice! I went to two panels and got to ask two questions. I got my Sailor Moon DVD booklet signed and my friend Bethany was nice enough to get the Juri part of my Utena booklet signed!
She said Sailor Moon’s transfomation and intro speech (twice)! Also Moon Healing Escalation, she did her Chibi Chibi voice too. She even did growling as Tae from Zombieland Saga!
AND she took a selfie with the audience, I’ll have to see if I can track it down.
Here’s some stuff she said:
-She was asked about working with a director as famously eccentric as Anno for Eva. She talked about him not eating meat (which I guess is considered more eccentric in Japan) and said he used to not wear socks and would be barefoot at work. But now he wears a suit and everything because he has a wife and can’t embarrass her.
-To follow up that, I asked what it was like to work with Ikuhara, who’s also famously eccentric. She said she doesn’t think he’s eccentric, surprisingly, but she does think he’s very handsome, so like. Ikuhara passing the Kotono Mitsuishi hotness test, yo. She said that though it would embarrass him for her to say this, but during Sailor Moon he was often depressed about not being popular with girls, but she feels this has changed now.
–I asked if she was close with and had any stories about the other voice actresses, and she said she’s close with Michie Tomizawa (Rei) and they still see each other. She said she and the other actresses from Crystal often go for Korean BBQ after work.
-She said the r movie was one of her favorite Sailor Moon things, and definitely her favorite Sailor Moon movie and told the dude doing the Crystal SuperS movie that, and he decided he had to do better (dream big I guess)
-Kotono says in Japan the manga is more poplar than the 90s anime, which is a bit surprising considering how shoddily and inconsistently Crystal’s been treated.
-She said she’s still filled with regret over missing D-point and those episodes were painful to watch because of that, though she watched them so she could understand where Usagi was at emotionally at the beginning of R. She mentioned that doing that cassette where she got to act out those scenes eased her regret.
-She told the story of how when everyone died at D point, many Japanese school girls could not eat because they were so shocked and upset. She says it made the news!
-She seemed to have a hard time understanding the name pronunciation/name when asked if she had anything to say about Shiho Niiyama, the late voice actress for Seiya, but got extremely choked up and tearful when she realized who was being asked about, saying she misses her.
-She said when she was rehired for Crystal while the others were not, she said she was told she needed to carry on the “gene” of Sailor Moon to the next generation.
-Her fave character songs are “I am Sailor Moon” and “Moon Revenge”.
-Her favorite scene for Usagi is ep 124 when she tries to transform to help Saturn despite not being able to and her feelings get through.
More on her and Anno:
-She also said she first met Anno when he came to help out with Neptune’s henshin sequence.
-She said the part of the Eva opening with Misato holding her leg and sitting down is based off a time when she was very tired and sitting like that- Anno was inspired and put that in the opening. She was a little embarrassed that Anno saw her inner vulnerability so clearly.
-She joked that since she’s gotten older since the first time she played Misato, it made her very angry when Anno said she was being “too mature” and needed to be “more innocent” as Misato during the reboot movie
More tidbits:
She was EXTREMELY surprised how many voice actresses the original English dub had for Sailor Moon, and also was very shocked vas didn’t do their character’s songs as often in America. She said she only listened to the English dub once a long time ago when it first came out, and says as long as the actress has “the feeling” of Sailor Moon, that’s all that matters.
-When asked what she would say to anyone who wanted to grow up to be a magical girl, she said ’if you believe you can become a magical girl.”
-She was asked if she felt Sailor Moon had done good things for “women/the image (?) of women” in Japan, and said she felt Sailor Moon sent a good message and was happy when she saw so many little girls playing Sailor Moon and rushing to get home to watch it.
-She said whenever she dubbed Meredith on Grey’s Anatomy (WHICH APPARENTLY SHE DOES THAT) she would mumble into her coffee cup to simulate a surgical mask, and she did put sticklike food in her mouth for that scene with Tae in Zombieland Saga.
