Chris Patton and me at Omni Expo!

Hello everyone and welcome back to Nerdy Shique Universe! Time for my second to last Omni Expo interview. My guest this time is the amazing Chris Patton! I know I mentioned how he cancelled his appearance at Omni and when I saw his name on the guest list a week later, I asked the convention and he asked to come back after cancelling what he was going to do that weekend. I was glad to interview him since it’s been six years since he came back to Orlando for a convention, which he was at Anime Festival Orlando back in 2008 with Monica Rial, which that is another guest who should return. Now onto what he does! You may know Patton for his role as Ayato in Rahxephon, Ikki in Air Gear, and of course Greed from FullMetal Alchemist! What did I ask him at Omni? Check it out!

Chris Patton: Hello!

Mari Blue Cat: ::laughs:: So, you have been at Anime Festival Orlando years ago…

CP: Yes!

MBC: So, how does it feel to be back in Orlando?

CP:I love being back in Orlando, especially for the warm weather and now I live in Maryland! This is nice and this is also my partner’s stomping ground. He couldn’t make it with me this time around and I feel like so close to him even though I am away from him right now and I’m also excited that Disney is doi8ng their 24 hour thing and we’re going to that tonight!

MBC: You mean that whole entire new ride!

CP: Yes, the Seven Dwarves Mine Train! Yes yes yes!

MBC: I heard about that!

CP: We’ll be heading to that, a big group of us! So I’m excited about that! I’m a big roller coaster dork and Orlando makes me excited about that! I’m so glad to be back in Orlando!

(Note: I went back to his table Sunday to ask about how he liked the ride and well he told me that he didn’t get a chance to ride it because the line wrapped around the entire park! It did get so much promotion that day, even a lady won passes that morning according to my driver that he heard over the radio. Plus, Chris had a three hour time limit at Disney with his group, but there is always next time since Disney will be here forever!)

MBC: You’ve been to so many conventions across the United States, what do you like the most about it?

CP: About conventions in general?

MBC: Yes!

CP: Probably just the fact that you get to see who appreciates your work, because as a voice actor, especially one who comes from the stage, you miss audiences. So you know you do most of your work alone and you go in and do what you know it is a good job and get directed and the engineer cleans up the mistakes you’ve made and that’s all and then you get paid blah, blah blah! You don’t necessarily get get to see people respond to your work and so it’s nice at conventions to meet your audience and that’s it, it’s simply that! I mean of course you get to travel and traveling is wonderful, it’s paid for it’s like free travel which is the wonderful bonus, that is what it is is you get to see the people that like your work when you’re behind the microphone.

MBC: What was the weirdest thing that someone has ever brought you as a gift or to get signed?

CP: Oh my gosh! That’s a great question! I’ve signed shoes!

MBC: ::laughs::

CP: I’ve signed a few 3DSes.

MBC: Really? There goes the value!

CP: Of course I’ve signed Yaoi paddles!

MBC: Ooohhh! I haven’t seen those in a forever!

CP: I know but the oddest thing I think I signed and I think a lot of male voice actors have stories of this, I did sign a breast one time! That is as far as weird stuff goes but I don’t think I got a weird gift but I can tell you the coolest gift I got!

MBC: All right!

CP: I one time got a Greed bobble head! Someone had made a bobble head of Greed and gave it to me and I still have it and it’s a wonderful thing! They put a lot of time into it and it was great and made me very happy! A Greed bobble head is the greatest gift I’ve ever gotten!

MBC: You have done series dubbed by ADV Films, which is now Sentei Works, and Funimation, how was the transition between both studios?

CP: There is a big difference between recording at Sentei and Funimation. One of the big differences is Funimation uses the beep system, which is what most people use, you know what it is…

MBC: Yeah, I remember going to Chris Sabat’s dubbing panels and it goes “Beep beep beep!”

CP: talk! Yeah! While ADV/Sentei they don’t do that! You just chase the audio, they basically just show you the clip you’re going to do and then you go and match the flap and there seems to be a change in the energy of the company. There seems to be a different source of energy or maybe work ethic or how things work in the company and that is all based on directors and it’s down to production…

MBC: How the script is written and flaps …

CP: Yeah! Different personalities and different people in Houston! The transition isn’t so jarring, especially there are times when you’re working for both! Kind of both at the same time and going back and forth and that is why I quit working at Funimation because I lived in Houston and the drive to Dallas is five hours!

MBC: Really!?

CP: Yeah and it was slaying me! So I just said “You know,” a lot of my friends are there and said, “I can’t do this anymore it was ruining me!” If I’d flown everytime it would be a45 minute flight but that gets expensive of course.

MBC: You have done so many characters in the past, which one was your favorite and which one would you record again?

CP: Oh man! My favorite character would be…even though I’ve been doing this for a long time and thought about it, I think my favorite would be a character named Fakir Fakir in a show called Princess Tutu!

MBC: Ohh yeahh! I remembered watching an episode of that!

CP: Oh yeah? I love that show! And the one I want to do again it would be Hajime in Ghost Stories because Hajime was so much fun! The way we did it and do it again would be modernized since we went off the cuff, we could do it with more modern references. I would love to do it again!

MBC: Have you ever thought about cosplaying as one of your characters?

CP: Oh God! I had people ask me to or dared me to! Some of these cosplayers look so good when they do it and they’re so good at what they do I figured “You know what, I leave the acting to me and and the cosplaying to them!” I would probably suck and look ridiculous!

MBC: What was the funniest thing you’ve ever done in the booth?

CP: Oh god! Probably this one time I was working on RahXephon, a show back in 2004, and I was the lead character Ayato and before my sessions I would drink a Red Bull and I just downed a Red Bull before this one session and the first cue in the session was a scream, it was a very loud scream! I was like “Yeah sure, whatever.” And the engineer hit record and I started to scream and then I felt this bubble come up in my guts and I belched so loud and so long and so disgustingly! And then when the belch was done, the engineer looked up at me and goes “Dude, you peeked the bass!” So, I’m half embarrassed by that and half proud of it! That is the funniest thing that ever happened to me!

MBC: Kind of like a blooper thing!

CP: Yes! I wished they could’ve kept it, that would’ve been hilarious!

MBC: Are there any new projects you can talk about?

CP: No! The thing is that I can talk about that is that there was a recent episode I done for Pokemon!

MBC: Really?

CP: I was a character named Sanpei in an episode that aired not too long ago!

MBC: Was it Black and White or XY?

CP: XY, I might be doing some more Pokemon pretty soon, not sure yet! But apart from that since I live in Maryland, I really am not doing a lot of anime but the only thing I know that I’m planning to visit Houston this summer and been in talk with Sentai in doing some work while I’m there! So we’ll see what the future holds! But right now I do audiobooks and commercials, stuff like that and an occasional video game, but no anime for right now but that will probably change!

Even though we ended the interview with talking about other works he has done such as Kids on the Slope, Another, which if you read my interview with the lovely Brittney Karbowski at the end of last year, she mentioned that as well which I may take a look into that! In the meantime, we will see what happens for Chris’ anime roles! I am still trying to find the first season of The World God Only Knows since MetroCon is coming up, I can try to find it there! And another question I did ask him, which was at the panel with him, Cara Edwards, and Kyle Hebert was something I didn’t realize until it came to me! I asked does he prefer recording as a villain or hero? What was his response?

“The villains tend to be more fun and more sort of fresh since I don’t get to play them as much because I mostly embrace the fact that I’m type cast as the seventeen to twenty-two year old pretty boys who are heroes and that is where my voice is than anywhere else and I’m totally cool with that! I love playing them because they’re the money roles because you record so much and you make bank on them as much as you can make on anime and they are the roles that tend to get you noticed for conventions and etc. Then you get thrown a villain like Greed or Asura and they blow up like crazy and not only that it’s a new road to travel, you get a new road to explore. It’s really hard for me to say, if I were to go in for a short, two hour gig, I’d rather go in and do a villain, it’s more fun. If I were to do a long haul thing, it is much easier on my voice to do a young dude who’s the hero of the show…long term hero and short term villain!”

That was his response to my question and the interview I’ve done with him! What is next? The final interview in my series of Omni Expo interviews, Chris Sabat! Til next time!