[Honey’s Anime Interview] Dragon Ball Super: Broly English Dub Cast (NYCC 2018) Part 3: Vic Mignogna and Ian Sinclair

Broly has been a very vocally-demanded character for well over a decade. How did you first get cast as Broly?

Someone from Funimation contacted me, we were on the phone, and asked me “Hey, can you do like a low, mean, kind of an angry voice?” And I said, “You mean on the phone, like right now?” And they go “Yeah just something.” And I did something, I said “I’ll kill you” or whatever. Whoever it was on the phone said “Ok, that’s fine. We want you to come up and play this role for this Dragon Ball movie.” And that’s how I got cast as Broly. I had already done Yu Yu Hakusho and a couple of other things for Funimation. So when the Dragon Ball Z movie 8 came along, they asked me to give them a little demonstration...and that’s how it happened.

With Broly being in the games for so many years, has your opinion on the character changed at all or do you have any regrets?

My only regret is that I don’t have the titanium larynx that Chris Sabat and Sean have. They’ve been doing this for many years, but I can tell you this: When I went into that first Broly recording sessison, I let it rip, I gave it everything I had. And by the end of the session I was like [breathes heavily], and I sat in silence for a week. But I was so happy to be a part of the Dragon Ball universe. You know, your voice will heal. If you gotta spin your voice on something, this is a pretty fun thing to do.

There’s only a rough cut of the film, have you seen it?

No.

Did you get your line count or anything?

No, but I’ve heard bits and pieces. I’m very excited to see more of it. Some people at Funimation have given me some basic information and told me a little bit, but I’m really excited to see more.

Considering that the character has been heavily changed for this film to fit in canon, do you see your approach to the character also being different?

Without knowing for sure, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some alterations to it. But since the character has already been out there and I’m the only English voice of Broly there’s ever been, I really think it’s a good idea to keep the same voice so that there’s a familiarity about it. So it’ll be interesting to see how the character will be fleshed out more and the story...there might be an adjustment to his voice, but that’ll be up to Toei, Funimation, and me to decide what is best and I’ll give it my best.

Were you contacted to reprise your role or did you come forward?

I didn’t come forward because I’m still alive and I’m still voice acting. I think it would be fair to assume that I wanted to do it. I mean, he’s my guy! When you play a character, that’s your guy. You feel a great connection to him. So, for all of these years, I’ve been hoping that there might be more Broly someday and here he is! So I think they probably knew already without anybody telling them that I wanted to play this role so I was very excited and honored when they contacted me.

Excellent, and we all are too. Thank you!

Thank you.

Everyone else is very loud and screaming all the time, so how does it feel that your character is very soft spoken and quiet?

It’s the best thing ever! No, it’s amazing. In Dallas, Dragon Ball sessions are notorious. Everyone talks about how “Aw man, you really gotta do that Dragon Ball session later” and you gotta take off work the next day. And legitimately, you have to. Like, you work on Dragon Ball on a Friday so they can spend days recovering their voice. I never raise my voice at all and it’s so great! I’ve been able to drop Vegeta and Goku without raising my voice. I have then gone on to video game sessions on the same day as doing Whis and then blowing out my voice. My agent goes “Oh, you got Dragon Ball before that, are you gonna be ok?” and I’m like “Oh yeah, I’m fine!” I just talk up in this voice (Ian was speaking in a high pitch from his usual tone) and frankly, the reason why I’ve been speaking in this voice in all my interviews is that it’s easier on the voice. It’s so much easier to talk like this [changes back to regular tone] than being comfortable. [Reverts back to higher pitch] I love it, I adore it. As a fan, I think Whis is a really cool addition because he, like the fandom, is just watching. He just finds it funny and interesting that these little monkey boys with glowing hair keep slap-fighting each other. It’s just funny to him, and that’s so cool to experience it and watch it with him having no stake in the game, just like Whis does, so I think that helps my performance.

How would you say your performance in the show and movies differs from when you originally voiced the character in the video games?

The very first thing we did was Xenoverse and I had no idea about him because we had no idea about him. I was spending more of my time trying to match his specific notes than leaning into those things that just make him Whis. I hadn’t spent much time with him. And then, after the movie, I was just like, “Oh, I know this guy!” And I know how he would kind of react to this thing and to that thing and the choices are way easier to make. I just became more comfortable with it.