Yoshikazu Iwanami
From Transformers Wiki
Yoshikazu Iwanami (岩浪美和 Iwanami Yoshikazu, born May 19, 1962) is a Japanese voice director and story editor. He is responsible for the radically altered Japanese edits of all imported Western Transformers cartoons from Beast Wars thru Prime and continuing with Cyberverse.
Some other American cartoons Iwanami has been head of localization on include the '80s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV Tokyo version), Saban's X-Men (TV Tokyo version), Biker Mice from Mars, the '60s Dick Tracy Show (during its 1991 rebroadcast) and the '90s Iron Man cartoon.
He also has directed a fair share of theatrical movies including the first X-Men movie, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, Malcolm X, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, The Eddie Murphy Nutty Professor, Spy Kids, Scooby-Doo, Training Day, The Exorcist - Director's Cut Edition, The Matrix series, Monty Python's The Meaning Of Life, V For Vendetta, Jason X, 3000 Miles To Graceland, What A Girl Wants, The Scorpion King, 10,000 BC., The Perfect Storm, Shanghai Noon, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
In terms of anime, Iwanami is also quite accomplished having done the sound direction for many iconic anime including JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Sword Art Online, Psycho-Pass, Konosuba, Kill La Kill, Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, Baccano!, Ah! My Goddess, The Slayers and numerous Fate anime series. However, he also did the infamous sound direction for the Berserk (2016) anime.
Contents |
Director of Japanese dubbing and script localization
- Beast Wars
- Beast Wars Metals
- Beast Wars Returns
- Animated
- Prime
- Cyberverse
- Transformers: Beast Awakening
- Transformers: EarthSpark
- Transformers One
Director of audiography
Notes
- Iwanami is particularly fond of adlibbing and has employed it in many of his dubs. In addition to extensive adlibbing in all of his Transformers localizations, the TV Tokyo versions of X-Men and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (which he directed) were also notorious for their adlibbing. The Legends Convobat comic, via a fictional Beast Wars film, actually poked fun of the constant adlibbing of the "actors" as a reference to Iwanami's dubbing style.
- Iwanami appeared for a special extended interview (conducted by Toshiyuki Morikawa) in the "Transformers: Prime Perfect Transformation Late Night 2-Hour Special" to discuss his long-time history with the Transformers franchise. Some of the cast are then treated to a compare/contrast experience as they watch the original English version of "Predatory" (a slasher movie parody) alongside the Iwanami-localized Japanese version of the episode (a Pepe Le Pew parody) and proceed to comment with bewilderment over how different the two versions of the same episode are.
- A fictionalized version of Iwanami appears in the anime Shirobako, funnily enough voiced by one of his Transformers dubbing regulars Mitsuo Iwata.
- Amusingly he, Frédéric Meaux and Susan Blu all of shared the duties of voice directing for Beast Machines and Prime in their respective language dubs, while Iwanami and Blu also worked on Beast Wars and Animated too.
