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Naruto Actors Speak Out
Company: Tomy Ltd.
Product: Naruto: Ninja Destiny
With the upcoming release of Naruto: Ninja Destiny on the Nintendo DS, we recently got a chance to ask a few questions to several of the actors behind the main characters of the hit anime series, Naruto, and how they felt about working in the series and related video games. Included in the interview was Maile Flanagan (Naruto), Yuri Lowenthal (Sasuke), Brian Donovan (Rock Lee), and Kate Higgins (Sakura).

In this meeting, the actors discussed everything from what it's like to work on a project that is such a success, to their reactions the first time they saw someone dressed as their character on the street (or on Halloween). Flanagan (who also played Chicken Little and in Men In Black: The Animated Series) remarked about how hard it was to convince a little kid that she did the voice for the character he was dressed up as. Eventually, she had to give up the fight and let him move on to the next house.


When the conversation focused on Lowenthal (who has had many appearances in other video games), he was asked which character's fighting moves he liked the most. Much to Donovan's pleasure, the answer was Rock Lee. "While Sasuke has the cool magic movies," Yuri says, "Rock Lee's are real and can actually be done."

This discussion lasts for about 40 minutes, and touches on many topics, the least of which is the differences between TV voice acting and video game voice acting. All actors said that working on video games is tougher and more strenuous because you have less context to go on for the dialogue and, particularly in the case of fighting games, you will be doing a lot of grunts and yells, which is hard on the vocal chords.


This interview with these four cast members is really enjoyable for fans of Naruto (both games and the series). We will be hosting a copy of the conversation here (NOTE* This is a large file [23 MB] and may take a while to download), but we cannot guarantee the hosting of it after 3/19/2008. Enjoy!


Maile Flanagan (Naruto)

Kate Higgins (Sakura)

Yuri Lowenthal (Sasuke)

Brian Donovan (Rock Lee)


-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications
AKA Chris Meyer
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