Japan's anime and entertainment industry is enjoying an unprecedented boom thanks to the tailwind of overseas expansion. And when you walk around the production site, you notice something. The fact is that there are quite a few foreign-born staff members among the names listed in the credits. Voice actors, original drawings, videos, finishing touches... there are people working all over the world supporting anime who have come across the world to see Japanese anime.
One of them, voice actress Zhenya, posted on her ``X'' page about her confusion over the changes in the system surrounding permanent residence permits.
As a result of that post, I contacted him and asked him what he had to say. We also sent an email request for an interview to Yuna Le Rousso, an animator from France who has been in Japan for seven months.
A voice actor who has been active in Japan for nearly 20 years and a new animator who just arrived in Japan. The words of these two people, who have completely different positions and backgrounds, revealed the common desire to support Japanese anime, the changes that AI is bringing about, and the challenges faced by Japan's foreign policy.
From a 16-year-old who admired Sailor Moon to becoming a voice actor
Zhenya first encountered anime when she was 16 years old and living in Novosibirsk, Russia. She said she was shocked by ``Sailor Moon,'' which was being broadcast on TV. ``I was drawn to the sound of Japanese. At that time, the first Japanese word I learned was ``rabbit,'''' he recalls. "In the Russian voice-over version, the name was 'Bunny,' but in the Japanese voice, there was a word that faintly sounded like 'Rabbit.' That caught my attention, so I looked up the meaning myself." It was from that one word that his interest in Japan itself suddenly grew.
As a first-year student of the IT department at the Novosibirsk State University of Economics and Management, he was early exposed to the then-rare internet environment, and around 1998 he started and operated an anime review site, and began singing Japanese songs in their original form (although it was relatively rare for him to translate them into Russian and sing them). Because the song was sung in Japanese, it became a hot topic in Japan as well. At a time when only audio data was being exchanged, the site became a hot topic on Japan's ``2channel'' and became so popular that it was flooded with accesses overnight, causing the server to go down.
In 2002, he came to Japan for the first time with the support of Japanese fans who had seen his activities and an appearance on the WOWOW program. Consolidating his desire to become a voice actor, he began living in Tokyo in earnest in 2005. However, the road from there was not smooth. He was only able to receive support from fans in the beginning, and it was difficult for him to make a living. Although he made a living by working part-time at a maid cafe in Akihabara and giving Russian lessons, there was a period when he was unable to find work as a voice actor.
The turning point came when an acquaintance introduced me to help translate ``BLACK LAGOON'' into Russian. This led to him being introduced to director Sunao Katabuchi and being present at the post-recording site to supervise the Russian language and provide acting guidance for the film's Russian character "Balaika" (voiced by Mami Koyama, a female executive from the former Soviet military). He attended other times as a visitor and learned first-hand about the actual dubbing process. ``At that time, my Japanese language ability was at the level of N3 according to the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (a level that allows me to understand basic everyday conversations to some extent).I didn't really understand what was going on, but I felt it was very important to take a tour.''
His voice acting debut was in ``Evangelion: Rebuild of Evangelion: Ha'' in 2009. Since then, she has appeared in numerous productions, including the role of Clara (a Russian exchange student from Pravda High School who is skilled in tank driving and fighting) in ``Girls & Panzer: The Movie'' (2015-). A major turning point in recent years was the ``Akiba Meidou War'' in 2022. She played the main character for the first time as Zoya (a Russian maid who is a former underground martial arts athlete who joined Akiba's maid cafe ``Tontokoton''), and also tried her hand at singing the theme song. From October 2026, she will also appear in ``Magical Girl Raising Project Restart'' (season 2) as Nako Osekata.
