[ENGLISH TRANSLATION] MIYAVI x Natalie.mu ー working on ARCANE (LoL) soundtrack and voice acting

         

Original source Natalie.mu
Big thanks & credits for JP/ENG translation to @linhambabey / Janjan

Riot Games online game League of Legends has a player population of over one hundred million people and that world has just gotten an anime with 9 episodes set in its world called Arcane on Netflix. (ed: season II has been confirmed)

Arcane is set in a society where science leads progress in the town of Piltover, overshadowing the lower-town, Zaun, showcasing the dystopia between the two towns. The two towns are the backdrop to a chance reheating of the conflict between the two towns and picks up the sisters Vi and Powder to tell the story. The Japanese dub cast features Uesaka Sumire, Kobayashi Yu, and Hanae Natsuki.  The soundtrack features musicians from all over the world from Imagine Dragon’s to Sting to Pusha T.

We here at Natalie are crossing the three genres of Arcane into one; comic books, film, and music.  That is why we are happy to have been able to put all three together and be able to interview MIYAVI who both contributed for the soundtrack and provided the voice for one of the characters. MIYAVI spoke of how it felt watching the show with his two daughters, who in a way reminded him of the characters Vi and Jinx, he said “I got emotional.”. MIYAVI faced those emotions to create a girl power theme for one of the songs in Arcane. He also talked about the challenge of debuting as a voice actor in English and Japanese simultaneously. Read on for all this and more!

This rose my awareness as a father (lol)

--First of all, can you tell us the details of how you came to be part of the soundtrack for Arcane?

My management company got contacted by Riot Games. They talked about how there were artists like Imagine Dragons, Sting, and Pusha T. so they wondered, “What about MIYAVI?”  Because of their fast feedback, I got the opportunity.

--Do you yourself like games?

When I was a kid, I played a lot of Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, and Street Fighter. But they have a way of taking up all your time.  When I was in London filming a few years ago, my daughters got me to start playing Fortnite but I tended to loose track of time while playing so I realized “oh, this is dangerous” and stopped.  At the start of the pandemic, I had a ban on games at home but I started to lift it so I could play Riot Games Valorant with my daughters haha.  Being able to get involved with Riot Games through their anime based on their game League of Legends made me more aware of many things as both an artist and as a father.

--I see

E-sports are getting more and more recognition, such as being considered an official sport by the Olympics, this makes me want to look again at the importance of other sports.  What exactly is categorizable as a sport? For example, the abilities to be considered “good” at both soccer and archery are very different. At the same time, with e-sports you not only get a game that will expose you to other cultures and let you mature but it also allows you to develop communication skills to work well with a team.  Within things like the Metaverse, you can meet people and that feels so futuristic to me, I feel it opens a lot of new opportunities.

--What is the appeal for Arcane?

Firstly, I think the mixed media aspect is really interesting. With the addition of the new element “game” to the established dimensions of novels, film, and music, players can now participate as one of the characters already within the world. I think this is a really great achievement. It means we are getting a step closer to things like virtual reality, with being able to be immersed in it. We are able to feel both the pain and the joys that unfold in the story this way.  The work itself is completely new to the entertainment world and I think that is the greatest charm it possesses.

--That’s really true. There have been countless books or movies that I’ve watched and thought to myself, “wow, it would be so cool to be part of this world.” and now we are starting to get at least halfway to that dream coming true thanks to games.

 That’s right.  You get to live in them! But that’s also dangerous because you can get too much into it so we gotta be cautious haha.

What I told to my daughters

 --The plot of this story centers around the relationship between sisters Vi and Powder (Jinx). Having 2 daughters of your own, MIYAVI, did you have any emotional insight on these characters?

I saw a lot of my daughters in them haha.  I watched the show with my daughters and they both cried while watching. Their personalities are really quite similar to Vi and Jinx.  My eldest, Aily, is a bit of a tomboy and is very confident in herself.  She has a strong sense of duty to be strong and is the type to follow through with something to the very end.  She is very much like me. If you were to ask who my second child is more like, I would have to say she is like my wife, Melody, in that she has a very calm and has positive vibe, very Hawaiian. She also does ballet and is a talented drawer so she is similar to Jinx in that way.

--In the anime, the feelings of Vi and Jinx keep passing but missing each other….It feels like you can’t think of it as being someone else’s business.

I think the story drawn by Arcane is made to make us wonder if it would happen in our own world. A society where there are large differences, everyone is struggling to find a future where we can shine more brightly.  Whoever has a reason to believe that their brand of justice is right for everyone else will eventually pass others and such results-oriented people will create a situation that no one wants.  The irritation, the painfulness of that is it makes you feel a true clenching in the heart.  I took finishing this series as an opportunity to talk to my daughters about the importance of “having proper communication”. In order to overcome the unreliability of the world, you need someone on your side to confide in be it a friend, a lover, or a family member.  Under such circumstances, I think it is very important to always have open dialogues and to eliminate the friction between people and the heart as much as possible in order to build a healthy human relationship.

--It is natural that people’s hearts will change along with the passage of time. That is why I think that daily maintenance is very important in order to improve mutual relationships.

It’s absurdly crazy.  To go a little off topic for a moment, It is extra important to understand the context and pacing of things to understand the communication of today. That skill is always growing. We always have the pacing and time to reply within a conversation such as a phone call but the amount of communications taking place over text message or Line is very growing.  It is extremely important to be mindful of what emotion you are exactly communicating, and on the other hand what emotion the person reading it is interpreting.

--And it has become even more difficult to talk to people in person because of the pandemic.

Even with things like the stay at home orders, we are now easily able to interact with people even on the other side of the planet thanks to the development of technology.  There are even emojis or stamps that can be used with a certain nuanced feeling to convey words for us. But this is not something that is taught in schools and that frustrates me.

--Going back to the anime. The two worlds of Piltover and Zaun are a very strong metaphor for the profound poverty we find in our world.  I think you might see these kinds of problems first hand doing your work to help refugees?

That’s right, I think this anime did a really good job of vividly expressing that problem.  The differences between Piltover and Zaun really showcase the differences between those who have everything and those who are poor, it feels very realistic to our world.  As an official ambassador for the UNHCR I have had the opportunity to visit refugee camps and it proves that the views of LA and Tokyo are very different. Even with my work with Gucci (MIYAVI was chosen as the first Japanese ambassador to be a face of the brand with their campaign Gucci Off the Grid) I am working with a consciousness, keeping in mind that Gucci has a strong interest in solving the refugee issues and environmental crisis. We are also actively engaged in activities.  Disparities are widening around the world and the factors cannot be clearly distinguished as black or white. Even in things that seem white or black, there is still a gradation to it.  A key detail to Arcane's story is the Hextech. If it is to become real, who is allowed to have access to it and who can use its power? It is something for us all to face. There are a lot of expectations from the people in the story for how it should be used and it would be the same in the real world.  That made me think really deeply.

 

Girl power that can be conveyed by guitar riffs

--How was your song Snakes – feat. Pvris written?

This song is used in the scene where Vi and Jayce (a student of science who wants to adapt ancient magic.  He became an important person after announcing this technology at a conference in Piltover) have their fight. The key-word that Christian, the producer, gave me is “girl power”, requesting a song that “symbolizes the strength of a tough woman through guitar riffs”.  I thought of ways that I could put together the casual beat, a forceful sound that had pop hidden in it, that would show off the colorful delicateness yet strong nature of women. Until it was done, we just kept adding to it.  It actually started out very much more pop but Christian said “pull out some more dark parts” so we did. It was kind of moving toward answering “how do we find light while living in the dark?”.  And that’s kind of the base theme of Arcane as a whole.

--Did you listen to the other songs on the soundtrack by other artists?

Yes. I listen to Imagine Dragons & Jid’s Enemy and Sting ft Ray Chen’s What Could Have Been a lot. I think they’re both awesome.  I’m also friends with BonesUK who also featured on the soundtrack. We’ve played together in Japan and at a private party I had in America, their singer performed with me once. The choice of artists who participated in this are rich in variety but they somehow feel the same darkness in the world and we are unified in that message.

--What do you think of the theme of your song “girl power”?

Nowadays, it is common to hear songs about gender equality, erasing what we know to be “girly” and “boyish” and just existing as oneself.  I do still think “oh that’s something a girl does” or “that’s how boys do this” but I think it is time to get rid of such terms as “manly” and “womanly”.  It’s important for us all find a balance between both of those aspects within ourselves.  Soon, we won’t have to worry about whether it is a woman’s or a man’s burden.  So with that in mind as what the origin of gender equality is, we can then define girls power as being “charm and strength that is different from men”.  In fact, there are many moments when women are more enthusiastic than men. I think there are many strengths that only women have, including childbirth. I think we humans are all designed to complement each other, men and women, patching up the parts that we are missing with the parts that the others have.

--Is there anyone that you are reminded of when you think of “girl power”?

The number of cool women out there has really increased lately.  In the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, I was greatly inspired by the table tennis and gymnastics athletes, there’s the US Vice President Kamala Harris, Greta Thunberg from Sweden.  They all come to mind but if I were to talk about someone I know personally, it would have to be Angelina Jolie. And of course, the very first “cool woman” I ever met is my mother. I’ve also met Ogata Sadako, the first Japanese High Commissioner for Refugees; Yusra Mardini, the Syrian swimmer; and Sonita Alizadeh, the Afghani rapper. They are all strong and fighting women. I have been surrounded by people who are all very strong. To put it simply, there is a beauty in the relatability all these women hold.

 

A hope MIYAVI feels

--This time, you did not just participate in the soundtrack but you were also able to become a voice actor in this show.

I was really worried about it and decided to kind of overact it haha.  Before participating in Arcane, back when my tour was cancelled because of the pandemic, and while all the films and tv shows were cancelling production, there was a film starring Will Smith called Bright and there was a spin-off anime for it called Bright: Samurai Soul and that is where I was first cast as a voice actor. While we were finishing the recording for it, Christian, the director, said “hey, I have this character. What would you think of voicing him?”  They only had a tiny bit of the script, but I recorded it.  I thought “there is no way I’ll get this” but then I was cast haha.

--After trying it, what was it like?

Honestly, it was really difficult.  When I’m acting, I usually have my whole body but for this, I had to express everything with just my voice and I needed help.  Even more so because it was in English. It was as different as a soccer playing stopping playing soccer in favor of taking up flower arranging.

--It was that different? Haha

It really is haha.  I was absurdly nervous so I practiced so so much before challenging it.  I’m not a native speaker so there are a lot of nuances that I am unable to put into my performance but I still challenged myself to try and I think it went okay.  In the future, if they were to recast to a native speaker, I’m sure they would to a better job but I still went ahead and did my best here, I think.

--MIYAVI, the character you play, Finn, is nothing but a villain isn’t he.

This character wasn’t ever actually in the game so there weren’t any lines for us to work on with but we created that and grew him into quite a largely established character with just some small establishing lines, it was cool.  Finn acts within the organization based on his own beliefs and sense of justice but he just makes me think about his fragility instead.  Moreover, that brittle and weakness is beautiful because they are the reason why we are human beings.

--The way that video contents are able to impact people has greatly changed due to the corona pandemic and, as MIYAVI said at the beginning of this interview, the addition of an interactive layer has made it possible to experience new things once again through things like games. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Sure thing.  There is a strange sense that things that are local are disappearing. This is something that the show Squid Game (a Korean survival drama series) touches on very well. We now live in an era where even works that aren’t in English can become big hits.  I think a big cause of that is how fast things like subtitles are translated after a work is finished. With technology growing the way it is, one day I don’t think we will have categories like “Hollywood work” and “international” work anymore.

--I see.

And, following that trend, music will also just become more standardized. I myself can be in Tokyo and broadcast live all over the world.  I am always mindful when I am making my music that anyone from all over the world could be listening to my music. I am hopeful and I feel like is the beginning of the new era for the entertainment industry.

Original source Natalie.mu
Big thanks & credits for JP/ENG translation to @linhambabey / Janjan