Assassin’s Creed Shadows is now available and is the latest in the franchise. Ubisoft finally gave in to fan demands and set the game in Japan with a story following samurai Yasuke and shinobi Naoe.
Naoe is the beating heart of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, and we had the great fortune to speak with her voice actor, MASUMI.
Per her bio, MASUMI is “a child of both Japan and the US. Born in Los Angeles, her formative years saw her move between Tokyo, New York, Washington DC, and finally Dallas – where she began her Singer/Song-writer career.”
Below is our chat with MASUMI about acting, Assassin’s Creed and more.
MASUMI – Assassin’s Creed Shadows
PowerUp: Are you voicing both the Japanese dialogue and the English, or are you just doing English?
MASUMI: I’m just doing English. I honestly wish I could have done the Japanese, but I don’t think I could have done both ’cause it’s just so much.
PowerUp: How long did that take? Even just doing the English. How many hours of recording did it take you to get through all of it?
MASUMI: I’m not through all of it yet. (laughs)
So. Very, very, very long. I don’t know what a normal average would be because I’ve never done voice-over. I’ve never done video games, so it’s hard for me to compare, but I’ve been on this video game for two years now, and you know so it’s been a journey.
PowerUp: How did you get this job? What was this journey like?
MASUMI: I would say that the journey was like a miracle to me because I feel like it almost escaped me. The first time the audition came, this was quite a while ago, maybe 3 1/2 years ago or something like that, I really connected with the character. I was so excited that she was Japanese.
But I never heard back from the project, and a really long time passed. I want to say maybe even a year had gone by, and then they reached out to me again about the same audition, same scene. And that one I turned down because I really liked my first tape, and if they didn’t like what I did, then I thought it was OK with that.
Then, a few months went by, they asked me to come back. A callback. And that one was like an hour and a half long. And there were like 13 people there. It was a massive audition through Zoom. And then later on, I heard that, actually, somebody at Ubisoft, I don’t know who, and I would really want to say thank you to this person, but he dug through all of the self-tapes that they got because they were having a difficult time finding this Japanese lead and he found my tape and he thought there’s something here. Like, why don’t we give her another chance?
I can’t believe that person did that for me. That changed everything, and that was the reason why I got the call back, you know, and there there were so many other more, well known actors that also auditioned for this part, I know. So I feel really, really grateful that they gave me a second chance and and I got to be the assassin.
PowerUp: How does it feel, or how does it differ from TV or movie acting as opposed to making a video game? How do the two feel different? Or how do they even feel the same?
MASUMI: I think the biggest part that I had difficulty with was not being able to have physical contact with my partner that I’m working with. Not only was I unable to have physical contact, but I had to be kind of away, like unnaturally away, so as to never collide with each other,
Sometimes I had to be holding something, but in the video game, I can’t hold it in real life, and I have to be unnaturally far away. So those were obstacles that I didn’t realize I was going to have. Some mocap don’t use the head cap. But we had this head cap that made us kind of stand apart from each other? That was an interesting obstacle that I had to get around.
I had to really have such a big emotional life, activating me constantly. The fact that it’s just a white room and there are no props there. Nothing there to help guide me really visually or anything. And that could easily kind of get in your head, right? And a lot of the scenes we were doing are such intense scenes. So I really had to rely on keeping my imagination and visions, and also my emotions.
PowerUp: Both Yasuke and Naoe seem like they’re caught between these two worlds, and these two ideas. Given your personal history, did that help you with the character or help get into that headspace?
MASUMI: Yeah, definitely. I mean, being Japanese absolutely helped. I had a grandfather who was in World War 2. My father was born right after World War 2, so I had a lot of people to talk about. Was it like to? Live through a time like that. What is it like to lose people through war, and what does the feeling of guilt really feel like when you can’t do anything?
I think all of those conversations really helped me. There were nuances of things that I could advocate for being Japanese, like maybe some of the ways that she spoke, some of the Japanese, I could speak up about it, and we would always discuss.
PowerUp: Can you think of any examples of that where you said I think it would be more said like this or I think you know she would speak like this rather than what you were given?
MASUMI: I wanted Naoe to say Arigatō but in a formal manner; Arigatō gozaimasu. I wanted her to say the Japanese because, for me, saying it in English just felt strange. When we say thank you to our elders, we don’t say it in the casual form; we say it in a more formal way.
These are small things that I would talk about. Some things changed and some didn’t, and Japanese makes everything a little bit longer and a little bit slower, so I understand that for time wise too, but I was also able to give some insights.
PowerUp: Do you think that helped you find her as a character? Developing it with the team and your own ideas about how she would behave?
MASUMI: Yes, definitely. The writers wrote such beautiful stories. So it was definitely from the writers feeding me all of these beautiful stories that helped me understand Naoe so much more. And then another way was that I had kind of already done a character like this.
My very first movie was Yakuza Princess, and I was not even an actor when I got that lead role. I was a musician. It was another miracle that happened. She also became an assassin. She starts from a very disempowered place, and she becomes an assassin, and she goes through all of these emotional journeys, so I felt like I was kind of prepped for that emotional journey.
This one was so much more intense because we’re talking about war, constant war. And constant loss and grief. I definitely had the inspiration going, and with the writers’ help it became much deeper than what I could understand without them.
PowerUp: I’m sure that you have been made aware that Japan has been probably the most requested setting for an Assassin’s Creed game for 10-plus years. Did you feel that pressure and a need to deliver on that promise that people have been hoping for for so long?
MASUMI: I didn’t know that! Now I’m feeling the pressure!
But I think I always feel that, constantly being a Japanese person in America and being in films and TV. I always want to represent Japanese people respectfully, right?
It’s my country.
My whole family is in Japan, and I am proud of being Japanese. It’s not always that way, the portrayal of being Japanese in America. It’s something that I’m always caring about as an actor and I strive to do an authentic job.
I try not to think about how I am perceived, though, because if I start thinking about it too much, I think my creative fire gets smaller, and I have to protect that. And my way of protecting it is not thinking too much about what how people perceive me.
PowerUp: Before getting involved in the game, did you have knowledge of the period of time and those characters in history? Or did you have to learn about it as you went?
MASUMI: I had a general idea. These are very famous people in Japan’s history. I got to talk to my dad, who’s a huge history nerd. I’m not so much to be completely honest with you, but that was a cute moment where we started to talk a lot about the Sengoku era, and he had a lot to tell me about it and this person had this anecdote and blah blah blah and and it was just a bonding time with me and Dad, which was really sweet.
But I also did my own research, and the story that the writers wrote added so much more depth to the information that’s out there on Google or in books. It was actually much more fun to learn about these characters through the stories.
PowerUp: It’s important to show these characters in the right way, especially because some portrayals can be negative. Especially in this current period and especially in America right now. How much of that sits at the front of your mind versus the performance or what’s on the page, and how do you balance things of making sure it’s appropriate, but also an entertainment product?
MASUMI: I think it’s always there, qanting to portray Japanese people authentically. I am sometimes fighting with this feeling that I was born in America when I was 5, but I moved back to Japan and so I actually experienced a lot of difficulties fitting in in Japanese communities.
When I moved back to Japan because I was already kind of Americanized as a child and so I had this identity crisis of like I’m Japanese, but I’m also American, and I want to portray Japanese authentically. But it’s also true that the Japanese are now more international as well. So there are a lot of these complex issues and ideas.
It’s not just, oh, Japanese people love sushi. I have to know what’s important for me in every project. In every different project, what is authentic?
So it’s it’s an interesting dance and I have to always have this very nuanced dialogue with myself, which is an ongoing process.
PowerUp: Speaking of authenticity, Naoe’s speaking voice is different to your own. How did you develop her voice and make sure it was natural and not a parody of a Japanese accent?
MASUMI: Oh, thank you for asking me that. I used to have an accent for sure. I lost that accent. I worked really hard to lose the Japanese accent because I wanted to become a singer in America. So I think it’s interesting because it felt like I ad to go back and it’s something that I worked really hard to move away from.
That was the harder part, not wanting to sound a certain way because in my mind I’m thinking it should be more American, or because I’m speaking English or something like that. But I was not in America. I was in Japan, in the Sengoku era and every time I spoke in that language, in that accent, it grounded me and I would always start by speaking Japanese for a while. Tthen I go into the VO so I don’t lose the integrity of the accent.
PowerUp: Did you do any background prep or study with fighting or any of the martial arts or the Japanese arts in the game?
MASUMI: I was already training in Japanese sword fighting when I got the role for about a year. I was training with my sensei, and then I had just started another school where they teach you the oldest samurai form of sword fighting. In that school, they also teach you not only sword fighting, but also the whole mannerism in the samurai way.
It was really great timing when I got the audition because I felt like I was immersing myself. Training every day. I felt like I embodied that spirit very easily for the audition, and I was able to implement some of my knowledge of that into the character.
PowerUp: How much do you think the ideals and spirit of Shinobi and Samurai still exists in Japan in modern day?
MASUMI: For me, because I’m in a school where they teach sword fighting, and also when you advance, they teach us Ninjitsu as well, there is no doubt that the spirit is still there. There are still people teaching, and the samurai spirit is still there.
Modernization changes everything, but I very much love that part of Japan and the Japanese spirit. I always want to honor that spirit that came from the ancestors.
PowerUp: Have you played other video games before?
MASUMI: Do you know a video game called Don’t Starve Together? When you run around the little map and it’s black, you have to make sure you eat and stay alive and don’t get killed by the monsters.
PowerUp: Was there something that you took away from the experience, or a moment you remember that was special about the entire process that you’ll carry forward from here?
MASUMI: I grew so much through this project because everything was new. I really got to learn so many different skills with the help of everybody, and I think I’m only going to make the projects that I work on next better because of all of the skills and the things that I got to learn. So I’m very excited for what comes next.
Thanks to MASUMI for her time.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows is available now.
