Yoko Asagami, who played Yuki Mori in Space Battleship Yamato, reminisces about that time
Kei Toyama, who played Susumu Kodai, “was really kind”
The text presented here is an amalgam of coverage by Virtual Gorilla, Movie Walker, Movie Marbie, Yorozo News, and Eiga.com
A screening of the Space Battleship Yamato movie 4K Remaster (1977, directed by Toshio Masuda) was held at the Tokyo International Film Festival on November 3rd at Marunouchi Piccadilly in Tokyo. Voice actress Yoko Asagami (72), who played Yuki Mori, appeared on stage to greet the audience. She talked about her memories related to Yamato.
Currently, Asagami also works as a storyteller under the name Shunsui Ichiryusai. She has been familiar with anime since her school days, and is said to be from “the first generation that aspired to become a voice actor, and became one.” As she took the stage, Asagami addressed the audience in her old voice as Yuki, saying, “Kodai-kun…” and then said, “Thank you to everyone who loves Yamato, and everyone who supports Yuki Mori. The Kodai-kuns in my heart. And also to all the women who support Yuki. I am Yoko Asagami, the original voice of Yuki.” A big round of applause erupted from the audience.
“I loved anime from a young age and watched Astro Boy and Moomin. I wanted to meet Mari Shimizu (who played Astro Boy). I thought I could meet her if we did the same job.”
After graduating from high school, she joined the first class of a voice actor training school founded by her mentor Ryo Kurosawa. After graduating, she was selected to play the role of Lisa in the anime Zero Tester.
“At that time, Mari Shimizu was from a different studio than Zero Tester. That was 50 years ago. This summer, when I got together with my seniors, Koichi Mori, Michiko Nomura, Isao Sasaki, and Miyuki Ueda, to drink wine and eat delicious food, Mari Shimizu came. It had been 50 years since I’d last seen her. I met my idol Mari Shimizu for the first time in 50 years, and guess what I did? I took out my cell phone and told Mari, ‘Please say something as Astro Boy.’ I recorded it on video.”
Anime Royalty
This astonishing photo was posted on Twitter by voice actor Katsuji Mori (pictured at far left) July 20, 2024 with the following caption:
Tonight is a dinner party with some amazing ladies. Mari Shimizu from Mighty Atom is in the foreground on the left. On the right is Michiko Nomura from Sazae-san. In the back is Isao Sasaki, Condor Joe from Gatchaman Fighter. Next to him is Miyuki Ueda, Dr. Pandora from Gatchaman II, and Yoko Asagami, Yamato‘s Yuki Mori.
There is simply no higher voice acting pedigree in one room, anywhere. See the original post here.
A new voice actor plays the heroine Yuki Mori
Shortly after Zero Tester, she was selected to play the role of Yuki Mori in Yamato through an audition. “When I entered an old, small studio called Avaco Studio in Aoyama, there was a picture and lines for Yuki Mori on the table. The instructions were to say my name, the name of the character, and the lines.” After the audition, she was successful. “I wanted to voice an anime character, especially in a leading role, so I was very happy,” she said, expressing her excitement.
In the first series, Yuki Mori is set to be 18 years old, the same age as Asagami at the time.
“That made me happy. Back then there were no young voice actors, and everyone was using their acting skills to do their job. I got the impression that they weren’t people who liked anime.”
She was at the dubbing studio surrounded by her seniors, including Kei Toyama, who played Susumu Kodai, Hideo Nakamura, who played Daisuke Shima, Ichiro Nagai, who played Dr. Sado, and Takeshi Aono, who played Shiro Sanada.
“Everyone was much older than me, so I was really nervous. Later, Ichiro Nagai told me, ‘You were always unable to sit down, you were always clinging to the wall. You should have gone to the microphone, said your lines, and sat down. You were so nervous, you stuck to the wall, staring at your seniors.’ I felt bad that the chair would make a creaking sound when I sat down, so I tried to erase myself so that I wouldn’t make any noise.’
There was something she was conscious of when playing Yuki Mori.
“There were no voice actors of the same generation as me, so I thought it would be better if I didn’t play it like a role. I thought that if I put my genuine feelings into it, my current voice would be fine. At that time, the sound director Atsumi Tashiro told me that it was fine as it was, that it would be better not to make something up, so I took the courage to just be myself.”
When she rewatched the work in recent years, she had a very different understanding of it than she had at the time.
“In my head, I thought that the only thing I ever said was, ‘Kodai-kun.’ I remembered thinking I only had lines like that because I must have been terrible at it. Recently, when I saw the movie in 4K, I was really surprised at how much I talked. Did I really say, ‘Kodai-kun is going to die’ so softly? Wasn’t I shouting more? Was I really not trying to stop Sanada-san? The lines in the movie version were re-recorded after the TV series, and when I look at it again, it’s true that they are a little different. But I don’t remember having to retake anything. (Laughs) So I’m surprised at my own voice.”
When asked about her impression of Kei Tomiyama, who played Susumu Kodai, she said the following: “Kei-san was really kind. Because I couldn’t sit down, he would always say, ‘Yoko, this is your spot. It’s empty, so sit here,’ and he always gave me a place to sit. And then Akira Kimura (who played Hijikata) gave me strict guidance. He once told me that I had to be an actress from the time I stood at the microphone to the time I sat down.”
Yamato became popular after the TV series ended in 1974, and the movie version in 1977 caused a boom that became a social phenomenon. As the boom grew, fan letters flooded in.
“I received a lot of letters and I was very happy. I thought I should write back to them as much as possible. 50 years later, those people come to see me perform on the kodan stage, and they say, ‘I wrote you a letter and you replied to me.’ I was worried about what I had written, and I was also pleased with myself for having done it properly, so I was very grateful for their support.”
When asked why Yamato became so popular, she expressed her thoughts as an anime fan:
“I became a voice actress because I love anime. But I don’t think the people before me did it because they loved voice acting. The people who made Yamato started with Mushi Productions and they loved anime, but outside of Mushi, it may have just been a drama to sell toys. But the people who made Yamato and Zero Tester graduated from Mushi Productions and had the power to create anime they loved.”
What does Yuki Mori mean to Yoko Asagami?
The title of “Yuki Mori” must have been both a source of pride and a burden. When asked about this, Asagami said, “I just did it because I really liked it, and I didn’t think about popularity or anything like that.” She then mentioned the characters she played, Lisa in Zero Tester and Haruru Ajiba in Ideon, and said, “I was very happy to receive so many fan letters. But they were addressed to Yuki-chan, not me. At the time, I was confused about that difference. I wanted to play many different roles. I think there was a time when I felt that way,” she said, revealing the feelings of a voice actress who plays the heroine of a popular work.
When asked about her current feelings for Yuki Mori, Asagami answered with a smile. “She has a big presence. I was blessed to have encountered some really great works. There were many seniors with unique personalities. I said that I liked anime and my seniors didn’t like anime that much, but they liked acting and had unique personalities. I feel deeply these days that it was the intensity of their acting that made the anime of that time so deep. So it was a big thing for me to be in that studio.”
Many of her co-stars, including Toyama, Nakamura, Nagai, and Aono, have passed away. Still, Asagami remains positive and looks forward. The ongoing support from fans via social media and other outlets “makes me feel like we’re all connected forever, and it makes me want to live a little longer.” She reaffirmed her pledge by mentioning surviving co-stars such as Masato Ibu (Dessler), Akira Kamiya (Kato), and Kenichi Ogata (Analyzer), saying, “Everyone is doing their best.”
The announcement in October that a new Yamato film is being made by Hideaki Anno, director of Neon Genesis Evangelion, has attracted a lot of attention. Perhaps in light of this, Asagami concluded the stage greeting by saying, “There is a new Yamato, but the Yamato being screened today is the base, and I worked hard on it. I would be very happy if I could voice something in the new Yamato someday. So I hope you will continue to support Yamato in the future.”