ORLANDO, Fla. – MegaCon Orlando is back and the pop culture convention offers so much, whether you’re into comics, horror, anime, sci-fi, gaming — there’s something for all types of genres.
The packed four-day event includes celebrities, impressive cosplay, Q&A panels and meet and greets. Click here for a complete guide on what to expect.
For anime fans, a big lineup of actors will be there, including Sarah Natochenny. She replaced Veronica Taylor as the voice of Ash Ketchum in the English version of the show, Pokémon, during the ninth season in 2006.
She was 18 years old at the time and living in New York. She says her English teacher recommended her to a manager who got her the audition, but funny enough, she almost forgot about it. She didn’t realize it until the day of the audition. She went to a friend’s house to practice before going to the studio.
“They kept me there for half an hour, which at that point in my career, 18 years old, didn’t realize was a good thing, and I left the audition crying, sobbing, ‘How could I be so unprepared? I’m so unprofessional,’ the whole thing. Then I got a call, there was a callback, and I got the job,” Natochenny said.
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She says voicing for anime requires a lot of multi-tasking. She has to quickly memorize the script, watch the animation which originates from Japan, and then go between watching the animation and looking at the script to make sure what she’s saying matches up with how the character’s mouth is moving.
“You see the script in front of you, you have a TV in front of you, and it’s playing the Japanese, or whatever the original language is, in anime it’s usually Japanese, and you match. Each line has a timecode, timecode on screen, you match each line to what you see on screen. You have a director telling you what’s going on in the scene,” Natochenny explained. “It’s complex. Dubbing is technical and artistic in a sense, it’s a marriage of those two things.”
Besides Ash Ketchum, Natochenny also played 21 pokémon, Ash’s mom and many other characters in the show. She said it took four to eight hours a week to record an episode. She said she drew inspiration for the different voices from the subway.
“I’ve been riding the train by myself since I was like 10 years old, so just listening to people, not spending too much time with headphones on, you have every accent, people from all walks of life are there. So just listening, keep your ears open, that’s it,” Natochenny said.
She said she definitely related to Ash when it comes to his tenacity and he taught her to be more adventurous.
This is her first time at Megacon. She will be there Thursday through Sunday, offering autographs and table photos.
On Friday, she will be a part of Pokémon Trivia at 1 p.m., and then on Saturday at 3 p.m. she will have a Q&A, talking pop culture, Pikachu and all things Pokémon.
Tickets are available for purchase, from single-day to four-day passes. Click here to check out prices and options.
See Natochenny’s interview with Brooke Savage, the writer behind the Setting the Stage newsletter at the top of this story. She shared her favorite Pokémon, how she’s also doing theater acting in Los Angeles, and other things she’s working on.
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