### Insert Credit Gaiden #6 - Electric Sesame: An Interview with Jeremy Blaustein
Brandon Sheffield hits the Tokyo Game Show 2023 floor and interviews Jeremy Blaustein, CEO of [Dragonbaby](https://dragonbaby.com/) and translator of legendary games like Metal Gear Solid, Suikoden, and Silent Hill 2.
I am blown away by the amount of additional contents IC is producing lately, on top of the regular weekly Podcast, which itself is now produced in tandem with 52 pickups (which had its latest episode released today!). This is Podcast as a Service. Frankly, I feel these Gaiden episodes should be exclusive to Patr(e)ons or something.
Considering timeframes, the Jaleco game with Gokū mentioned early on is probably **Saiyūki World II** (1990)?
Another amazing episode - really enjoying these spin offs! Jeremy was a fantastic interviewee and @“exodus”#3 as interviewer. Thanks to all involved for sharing it
@“◉◉maru”#p145207 there‘s only one left in the pipeline now - they’re exclusive to patrons one week early, but maybe they could be exclusive period, that‘s an idea. If we do more I don’t think they‘ll be weekly like this. One of the tough things is I can’t tell whether it's worth it to do them - our download numbers have gone up by about 20%, but is that enough? Just hard to know!
I kinda miss living on the east coast. I could tell Jeremy was from Long Island right away!
I get the impression that to have an impactful career in video games one simply had to be a foreigner, learn Japanese, and find a way to move to Japan in the early 90s. This has got to be selection bias, right? It's wild to me that the guy who translated MGS and SotN is just some guy, undoubtedly smart and hardworking, from Long Island.
It was also touching when he shouted out his sister. She's an icon for sure. Funny how both siblings ended up doing VO and work related to VO.
The story about how they hired Guy Cihi for James in Silent Hill 2 was making laugh so hard.
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“He wasn‘t a good actor… and he couldn’t adjust his acting to (any?)… you‘ll find if you direct, there’s certain people that really get what you say and they‘ll change their thing, and there are some people that are completely incapable of doing it. Like 100% incapable. But, what he had, he was a very depressed looking guy. And because he couldn’t act, he had no emotion. He had no affectation at all, he was just a depressed guy. And it worked.”
Love how he came in for his kid to audition for a role and somehow landed a main role himself. Also how back in those days, VA roles were just auditioned by anyone who could speak English in Japan, so models, teachers, whoever could show up. What a wild west of a time.
Great episode! Localization has always fascinated me, so I love hearing professionals like Jeremy and the 8-4 crew talk about their work. Whenever they do so on Twitter, they get inundated with harassment; I suspect that many of the people who want “proper translations” have also had concerns about “ethics in gaming journalism.”
Listening to the new episode (the Saizeriya Feast) while having my own (Chinese) Saizeriya Feast:
My girlfriend has her DJ pupil over at the house right now. He has the hair and and fashion sense of a Final Fantasy character, but I unfortunately find him kind of annoying, so I'm waiting here until he completes his DJ lesson and leaves. Not sure how the menu here compares with Japan. They have the unlimited refills, but no list of Saizeriya-sanctioned mixes you can make.
Your Name also has a really good example of “how the fuck do you even translate this”
(for those who haven't seen it, it's a girl who freaky friday-ed into a guy's body and she's trying to figure out which personal pronoun to use so his friends won't be suspicious)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iowh6UxahKs
