I caught wind of Nick's interview with Eric Rolon from last night.
The first twenty minutes were essentially a brief synopsis of the horrible travels in Texas and how Eric got into acting and eventually voice acting. Nothing special, although Rekieta quipped this gem: “You have a rare anime voice acting voice where you don’t sound like a 12-year-old.”
Then Rekieta asks Eric about how he was getting less-than-frequent calls in recent years. Prior to July 2017, he and three other people usually hung out in a booth and record idle chatter before looping them several times for the shows they dub.
Then in October 2020, he had a falling out with a colleague over a difference in opinion (sound familiar?), particularly over the Coronavirus, and was even called a racist on this post. He confronted that colleague, expecting a one-on-one conversation. Instead, it spilled over into more than just one person and uncoincidentally, his work started to dry up.
Weeks later, more people were talking about him behind his back and he essentially felt disheartened that all of this hard work meant nothing over a stupid comment. The murmurs behind the scenes continued for another year and Rolon started to lose a lot of sleep all over it. Funimation cares so much about the community that even after Vic, they continue to backtalk about one of their own without addressing the issue to said person’s face.
That’s when Eric committed the cardinal sin and retweeted Rekieta’s stream on the Rittenhouse trial. He was amazed at the professionalism and intelligent conversations these ten lawyers displayed, something that doesn’t exist in a news outlet like CNN. Slowly but surely, with his wife’s permission, his “leash” came off. Well, we all know what happened within 48 hours.
Before that tweet, Eric
was aware of Rekieta’s streams, including those regarding Vic.
He’s done only two cons: UltraCon and the virtual FunimationCon. Oh, and the cons don’t pay enough.
On certain voice actors incorporating Western ideology into dubs: “I really don’t like seeing American politics or American news talking points get injected into shows, because, then…when you want to enjoy your pastime, you still don’t want to sit there and feel like garbage that you’re a part of the patriarchy or Pizzagate or thinking differently…you just want to unplug and enjoy the damn entertainment.”
Nothing of note happens afterwards for a while, although Rekieta says he hates the final
Rebuild of Evangelion movie and slice-of-life anime in general. Also, Eric does a really good Meatwad impression and can craft various things, including bullwhips, which explains why he’s now hated at Flower Mound.
Eric takes exception to companies catering to complainers, or in his own words “letting the weak set the pace”, because it forces the strong-minded to dumb down to what the status quo is or demands, negatively affects the atmosphere of working places and emotionally cripples your workers. It especially annoys him that people who complain about other people’s works for various reasons aren’t invested in it or even consider buying it.
Finally, we get to the chat questions. Here are some of the quotes from Eric:
“Wokeism has grabbed it by the Cajones and leading it. There is no more objective truth, it’s all subjective…Inside the world of anime and entertainment, they are trying way to hard to fit the mold of those who are bitching the loudest, those who don’t care and in effect destroying the relationship for those who just want to turn it on and escape to it.” – on the state of the anime voice acting community
“To a degree, yes, but I have made myself very, very clear, even through the course of this talk. I’m not here to take potshots at Funimation…or Okatron. I’m not here to drag any other corporation through the mud. My message here…for anyone who claims they don’t have a voice, you in fact
do have a voice. You get to choose as to rather to bend the knee or you want stand on your principle.”
-on if he fears any backlash for appearing on Rekieta’s stream
“I do. She actually directed me in a wonderful show called A3…She is a terrific human being.”
-his opinion on Tia Ballard
“If I was concerned about that, I’d never come on here.” -asked if he fears being blacklisted from Funimation
Lastly, I'm not going to write about this since
@TheClappening took a snippet of this from the stream (thank you, by the way). So I'll just let this speak for it. Let's just say that anybody who tells you that Funimation is the bastion child of tolerance and equality needs to watch this.
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