Corey Wilder, the voice behind Zanka in Gachiakuta, sat down at Anime Central to talk about modern anime dubbing, improvisation and the roles that have made him one of the busiest voices in recent anime. From Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End to New Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, Wilder’s run of characters spans very different worlds — and very different kinds of performances.
Zanka (Credits: Anime Corner)
If you have watched much dubbed anime lately, you have almost certainly heard Wilder, even if you did not know his name. Alongside Zanka, he voices Land in Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, Will Serfort in Wistoria: Wand & Sword, Polyurethane in New Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, Rod Bauer in I’m in Love with the Villainess, Haruto Satō in Tales of Wedding Rings, Liu Xiao in LINK CLICK and Justice in ZENSHU. That range — from grounded fantasy to full-throttle comedy — is exactly what the Anime Central conversation digs into.
Corey Wilder on Gachiakuta dubbing and improvisation
The interview opens with two dubs that take a notably modern approach: Gachiakuta and New Panty & Stocking. Wilder says the two shows offered very different levels of freedom in the booth. On Gachiakuta, he had only a small amount of room to improvise, and he did not feel much was needed. The show, he explains, already feels coded for a contemporary, urban audience, so the existing script largely did the work.
He credits scriptwriter James Cheek and director Lee George, describing George as a brilliant director and one of the only Black directors at Crunchyroll, who pushed to make the dub feel like the cast’s own. That sense of ownership, Wilder suggests, mattered more than rewriting lines: the goal was a version of Gachiakuta that sounded natural rather than translated word for word.
New Panty & Stocking was a different story entirely. There, the creators left the cast a note before recording began, encouraging them to make the characters as Gen Z as possible. Off the clock, the characters are loose, joking and random; on the job, they turn deadly serious. Within that framework, Wilder says the cast could change lines as long as the story still tracked, adding slang and playful phrasing they had picked up over years of everyday speech.
Because he and co-star Hunter McCoy are both, in his words, 2000s babies, that freedom felt natural. The improvisation was not about changing the show’s vision, he stresses, but about letting the characters sound like themselves in a modern English dub.
Recording Zanka in Gachiakuta without breaking character
Wilder also talks about what it is like to record Zanka’s more ridiculous moments — including the infamous plunger scene, which did make him laugh. For the most part, though, he says he stays locked into Zanka while recording, to the point that even a co-star’s wild alternate take barely broke his focus.
He recalls a moment during Zanka’s second fight with Jabber, when Zeno Robinson delivered a gloriously strange take full of made-up sound effects and Tasmanian devil noises. Director Lee George expected Wilder to laugh. Instead, Wilder stayed in character, focused on the scene in front of him. It is a small anecdote, but it says a lot about how he approaches the job: comedy lands best when the actor commits fully, even when the material is absurd.
That commitment is part of why Zanka works. Gachiakuta mixes high-stakes action with humour that often comes at Zanka’s expense, and the performance has to sell both sides without winking at the audience. Wilder’s account of the sessions suggests a cast that trusts the material — and a dubbing process that trusts its actors.
Why Corey Wilder’s Anime Central interview matters for dub fans
Beyond the jokes, the interview touches on something dub fans care about deeply: how much freedom actors should have. Modern dubs live or die on whether they sound like people actually talk, and Wilder’s contrast between Gachiakuta and New Panty & Stocking shows there is no single right answer. Sometimes the script is already right; sometimes the creators hand the cast the keys.
For viewers following Wilder’s career, the conversation is also a handy map of his recent work, from Frieren’s quiet fantasy to Wistoria’s magic-school action. If any of those performances caught your ear, this interview explains the thinking behind them — and why embracing a challenge, rather than playing it safe, keeps showing up in his choices.
Also Read: Gachiakuta Manga Ends Hiatus, Returns November 11 in Weekly Shōnen Magazine
Source: Anime Corner — read the full story there.