This is my translation of an October 11 blog update on the official NieR:Automata site.
All photos and original content is from there.

Since I think there may be many people who don’t know who I am, allow me to introduce myself first. I am the producer for NieR:Automata, Saito Yosuke.

Today I’m going to share a little report about recording the character voices for NieR:Automata, the majority of which took place while the summer heat was still raging.

This is our studio in Tokyo! (We conducted most of our work here over the summer.)

We took a bunch of photos to give you an idea of the atmosphere at the studio, so let’s start here…

This is the desk where the sound director and other sound engineers do their work. A little further down, you can see a huge soundboard and other equipment used for recordings. Every time I look at it, I think, “Man, that’s got to be hard to use!” How do they know what to press!?

Preparing for recordings, we use a lot of post-its in the script. A ton of them, actually. We have to be really careful to record everything we need, otherwise if we forget something, it would be disaster. Further things are added to the recording, which is checked in real-time.

We use a screen in the studio to playback the scenes that we’re working on to see how realistic the timing and the overall feeling of the scene plays out. Since scenes are generally completed out of order, sometimes we can only display the bare-bones, motion capture footage. It can be pretty rough on the voice actors, but it has to get done!

When we have a lot of things to record, it can also be relatively cumbersome to display multiple videos. We also have to follow a strict rule for naming files so things don’t get disorganized. Lines that are ad-libbed, things like heavy breathing or panting, will be added in later, so it’s extremely important to keep all file names in order.

Today, Hanae Natsuki has come in to record some lines!

First things first, Hanae has a meeting with the director, Yoko Taro. I wonder if poor Hanae will collapse from screaming his guts out during his recording session!? Since he thoroughly reviewed his lines before coming in for the meeting with Yoko, it seemed like they were able to achieve a harmonious atmosphere and everything proceed according to schedule.

This is the recording booth. Usually voice actors will stand during a recording session since it helps them to speak, so perhaps this photo shows Hanae giving his script one last read-through? You can also see multiple scripts on the table, too. The spoken script for NieR:Automata was organized into 4 separate books. 9S, Hanae’s character, has a considerable amount of lines to record, so I think he’s got his work cut out for him!

Here’s a shot of Hanae and Yoko after wrapping recordings for the day! They both seem to be super pleased with themselves, so I suppose the recording went well? Thanks for your hard work, guys!

Next up, we’ll talk about Ishikawa Yui and her experience in the recording booth as she recorded her lines for 2B! Stay tuned!

The original Japanese article was written by NieR:Automata producer Saito Yosuke.