On 16 September 2018, three cast members of Summer 2018 anime series Grand Blue Dreaming gathered on the Kyomaf stage in front of their fans. Attending the stage event were Yuma Uchida (voice of Iori), Ryohei Kimura (voice of Kohei) and Hiroki Yasumoto (voice of Tokita (one of the naked-senpai)). As the person in charge of the Grand Blue Dreaming reviews this season, I had to be at the stage event and see what the voices behind those crazy characters would look like. If you haven’t read the reviews yet, you can find the review for Episode 1 here:

Grand Blue Dreaming Episode 1 Review: Deep Blue

The Essence of the Anime

The guys were greeted with many cheers from female fans, which was unexpected as the series doesn’t seem like a magnet for the female audience. Most of them were there to support the voice actors on stage than just because of how awesome Grand Blue is. If you have seen nothing of Grand Blue yet, I think the most essential information is that it is supposed to be an anime about diving but instead the guys in this series mostly get drunk and then get naked (not necessarily in that order). Iori is the main character who has just started his university life where he soon meets Kohei. The two of them are nearly forced to join the so-called diving club Peek-A-Boo, where Tokita is their senpai. He is also the one that gets naked first and has a very close friend called Kotobuki or ‘Bukki’, who also is always naked. Since they didn’t seem too unique, I stuck to calling them naked-senpais. They are together (and naked) most of the time, anyway. The jokes on this stage referred to the anime, for example Uchida opened the stage greetings and his voice cracked instantly, which might be okay for a regular person, but we are talking about a voice actor here! The first joke he cracked about that was that he drank too much last night, a good reference to the series and a joke the audience appreciated.

His co-stars were also similarly supportive of Uchida as Kohei is for Iori in the series (hint: not at all), because Kimura did his greetings next and pretended that his voice cracked too, which had the audience and Uchida in stitches. Even the host seemed to be in on the whole drinking joke as he asked Kimura if they were okay and not drunk. Two out of three is nothing, so when it was Yasumoto’s turn to talk, he also had his voice pretend-crack before he smoothly introduced himself.

Campus Life (Grand Blue Version)

They kept making fun of the lightness this series shows during the next part of the stage, where they conveniently put together a collage of pictures, taken from scenes of the series that would represent the kind of ‘campus life’ the members of Peek-A-Boo lead. Even though we do not have a picture of the collage they showed us, we can tell you that for a diving anime, there was shockingly little blue on it, and the cast made fun of it. Most of the things were pink from the naked skin of the club members. The three voice actors were asked which of the pictures they liked best and which was the scene they enjoyed most from the ones they could see on screen. Uchida chose a picture from Episode 7, where the other club members of Peek-A-Boo are all naked and passed out in the middle of the park, while Iori, Kohei and the naked-senpai are playing tennis against the tennis club Tinkerbell. Kimura liked a picture of the ending theme where the guys pose naked at karaoke. Lastly, Yasumoto chose a picture with Kotobuki, as if he wanted to prove that his character and Kotobuki can’t be separated.

Favorite Scenes

The MC also asked them about their favorite scenes in the anime so far. Uchida answered with the scene where Iori and Nanaka go to the aquarium. It was an important scene for his character, who suddenly realizes how charming the water is and that he would love to explore this world of water. He also mentioned that he personally, as Uchida and not as Iori, he likes the scene because of Nanaka. The others made fun of him for that statement and teased him. Another favorite scene for him was the tennis match.

Kimura talked about the scene where the guys go on their first group date and it turns out that all the girls were rather nice. Following was the scene where everybody goes and does the ‘pin-pon’, the scene where they knock on the door of one of their friends, who actually has a girl in his room and just wants to enjoy their time together. At one point, Kimura’s character Kohei starts to voice act to make the girl in the room run away from their friend. He speaks in a high-pitched voice to say lines that would suggest their friend is a player. From the perspective of a voice actor it must have been a funny scene, because thanks to it some famous female voice actresses came to put in an one-line performance. Suddenly, Kohei spoke with the voice of Rie Kugimiya and Inori Minase. The best part however was when Yasumoto pointed out that they pretend like the voices were all from girls, when in reality one of them was Shota Aoi, a famous male voice actor and singer. The three of them praised the person in charge of the casting since it was genius.

Yasumoto also mentioned that he liked the scene where Kugimiya appeared and the scene at the aquarium. Whenever they would suddenly talk about diving, he’d be surprised for a second because, yes, it is a diving anime!

Drinking in and off screen

If you don’t know this, the series is not mainly about diving but more about alcohol and the act of drinking and partying. So naturally, the cast was asked if everybody would often go out to drink after the recordings. One of them mentioned that with this kind of story, he would have wanted to go out more than they did. Yasumoto was able to tell that among his group Konishi (voice of Kotobuki) would know the best place and would also motivate everybody to go drink a next round somewhere.

How to Sing an Ending

The ending theme is showing scenes of the Peek-a-Book guys at karaoke while Iori and Kohei sing. So that’s why the talk turned to this theme and Uchida pointed out how he didn’t know how to sing for the ending theme (which is sung by him and Kohei) very much in character. So when he heard that the song they are singing is shown on screen as originally by someone called Kaya Mizuki, he said he would sing it in that kind of style. Kimura cut in and got angry at him, because he got to record his part of the song after Uchida and when they were telling him how to sing it, they said he should sing it like Nana Mizuki, which Kimura said was impossible. So thanks to Uchida, Kimura was forced to sing like he did.

With that, the stage ended with mentions of future releases and events in Japan and then the cast members said goodbye to the audience and the event ended with great applause and many cheers from the fans.

TV Anime Grand Blue

Summer 2018 | Anime Info