#i'm sadder than i thought i would be about this fallout between them...

[beif0ngs]

can we please take a moment to talk about these impact frames from that direct confrontation between Garp and Kuzan in the latest One Piece episode??? because oh my f*cking goD it's so beautifully(?) tragic...

and the way their past younger versions of themselves are reflected in each other's eyes just before they're about to exchange blows—

NO I'M NOT CRYING, YOU'RE CRYING 😭😭😭

[shihalyfie]

Between Hiro and Espimon, I kind of jokingly hope that Umi Tenjin and somehow Mona Marshall to do voices in Ghost Game as well. "The Koushirouing never ends~"

Oh, goodness, I am so glad I am not the only one who thought this. (For those unaware, Hiro's voice actress Tamura Mutsumi voiced Koushirou in tri. and Kizuna, while Espimon's voice actress Kobayashi Yumiko voiced Koushirou in Adventure:, and official has even pointed this out.)

In fact, Tenjin seems to have retired from voice acting -- she's had no new roles in over a decade, and she currently has no agency affiliation, which usually is a sign of withdrawal from the industry. (The voice acting industry is rather extremely make-it-or-break-it, and one of the really unfortunate things is that a lot of Digimon voice actors don't end up getting a decent flow of work in the industry, so a rather significant percentage has retired.) But she did return for Adventure PSP (2013) and the 15th anniversary drama CD (2015), and it seems she quietly showed up to a Digimon music event in 2019 with Kazama (Yamato), the probably-industry-retired Araki (Hikari), and the very industry-retired Tada (Terriermon/Lopmon), so she's probably not averse to picking up Koushirou again if it's for something short and not a full TV series. That said, I wonder if she would be willing to do so for a role that's a reference to Koushirou, not necessarily Koushirou himself (not that I think she'd hate the idea, but we are talking about dragging someone out of retirement)...

This is a bit of a digression (and perhaps a bit of a sadder note to divert this post into, I'm sorry about that), but I do wonder about things like this in regards to the extremely awkward circumstances Adventure-related things are currently in right now, something I've been calling a "divorce" situation between the old staff and the new staff due to the fallout of tri. and Kizuna. The most infamous part of it is the fallout between Kakudou and Kizuna production (which was only really the last straw in a passive-aggressiveness war that had been going on since the later parts of tri., this was just the first time it was so obvious in public), but I've seen other production staff members from the original Adventure and 02 also dancing around the topic of tri. and Kizuna/The Beginning on Twitter with differing levels of awkwardness. (I can't say I really blame them; considering how enthusiastically they like to talk about their work on the original series, it really seems to have been like their baby to them, so it's only natural something like this happening with something so personal is likely to give them mixed feelings.)

This awkward situation has been happening to a lesser extent with the voice actors as well -- for one example, Tochika Kouichi (Hawkmon) joined Twitter last year and didn't hesitate to re-establish contact with Natsuki Rio (Miyako's original voice actress), shortly after which the latter's profile suddenly updated from "Miyako" to "Miyako (2000)", as if the incident (and especially Tochika's promotion of Kizuna/The Beginning-related stuff in front of her) had given her increased awareness that she doesn't get to be Miyako anymore. But on the bright side, most of our voice actor testimony indicates that they seem to have also been understanding of the reason why this all happened; Fujita Toshiko gave her blessing to the new tri. voice actors before she passed, Maeda Ai was openly supportive of Yoshida as Mimi, and Urawa certainly took the fact Iori's role was basically taken away from her right in front of her eyes in stride for the most part. And after all, Tenjin being likely industry retired means she probably would have less of a stake in this than the actors who are still active and therefore really did have an important role taken away from them.

Meanwhile, Mona was lucky and got to voice Izzy every time (for those who aren't aware, people who know the American English dub generally agree she's got to be one of the most iconic voices in it), and I actually even wonder if they'll end up keeping her for the upcoming Adventure: dub despite the fact that the Japanese version deliberately changed out the cast (edit: I’ve been informed that apparently they’re definitively changing them out, ah well). If they do dub Ghost Game, she should absolutely voice Hiro. Either way, please bless another generation of kids with her. (In fact, she probably actually sounds closer to Tamura than Tenjin when you think about it.)