Voicing a variety of memorable and impactful characters across anime and video games, AJ Beckles is a name you’ve likely heard and a voice you almost certainly have. Beckles is most recognizable for one of his most recent roles, voicing Okarun / Ken Takakura in DAN DA DAN to widespread appeal and recognition. In addition, he’s voiced characters like Takemichi in Tokyo Revengers, Musashi in ORIENT, as well as both Gremmy Thoumeaux and Kaname Tosen in BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War.
At this year’s Anime Central, we had the opportunity to sit down with the Crunchyroll Anime Award nominee, chatting about his process for approaching the ever-evolving character of Okarun, what he’s looking forward to in Season 2 of DAN DA DAN, and his experience voice acting in BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War.
Portions of this interview have been lightly edited for clarity. This article contains spoilers for DAN DA DAN Season 1 Episode 4.
Q: Looking back at the first season of DAN DA DAN, Okarun had some real pivotal moments of character growth as the season progressed. How did your approach to voicing him evolve as he did?
Beckles: Oh, man, it was tough because it was a — I feel like it was a group experience. Team effort.
Me and my director, Alex Von David, went back and forth a couple times figuring out the multiple levels of Okarun. He has so many different layers. He’s a lot more complicated, I feel like, than the average character in general, but especially in anime. There’s a lot going on underneath the surface, and in a lot of ways, I related to him. But I wanted to make sure that as I was going through the show, depending on who I was talking to and everything like that, different sides of him would show up based off the topics he was talking about. Whenever he was talking, sharing information about Nessie or a nerdy thing, I wanted to make sure that was very apparent, like he’s really excited about this thing. There’s other times where I wanted to make sure that he sounded a little bit more confident, not as nerdy. And that took a little bit of fine-tuning. I would ask my director, “Oh, do you think it’s a good time now to make him sound a little bit more embarrassed because he’s talking to Momo? Should he sound a little bit more confident because he’s trying to be cool in front of Momo?” And we went back and forth a lot. So it was a constant process throughout the whole thing, especially at the beginning. Trying to nail him down was a little difficult because he was screaming for the first four episodes. But yeah, it was a long effort. It took a lot of back and forth.
Q: How did it feel to be nominated for Best English Performance for DAN DA DAN?
Beckles: Ever since I started voice acting, specifically voice acting in anime, I always wanted to be nominated. With awards, you never know. There’s so many different factors as to how they choose who’s going to win. There’s voting, but there’s also other stuff that goes on behind the scenes, of course, that I’ll never know. But being recognized for the work that I do is incredible, especially being a person of color.
It’s super cool to be one of the few people recognized. My fiancé, Anairis, was nominated a couple years ago. Zeno’s been nominated a couple times. So it’s cool to join that group of awesome, talented POC. And just in general, the people that I’m nominated next to this year are awesome. Aleks, Sarah Natochenny. Mallorie Rodak for Frieren. So many, it’s stacked. So even if I lose, I’m not going to be sad about it. But I’m very, very happy to be nominated. It’s always a goal of mine.
In general, being recognized for my talent, above all else, is always what I’ve wanted. I’ve always wanted to kind of be a…I don’t know. I’ve always wanted to be a good role model for other people of color to know that this is something that you can do. It’s not specific to any one type of person or anything like that. If you have the ability to read and you can learn how to act, you can do voice acting. And I think being able to be in a position where someone like myself is nominated or just someone like myself is working at all, I think is really cool.
Q: Without spoiling too much, or in vague terms, what aspect of Season 2 of DAN DA DAN are you most looking forward to?
Beckles: I am looking forward to seeing how much crazier the story can get. You know, the first season, with the first episode, it starts off as this wacky adventure that really throws you for a loop, especially if you’re a first time — you’ve never read the manga or anything like that. You’re like, “What is this?” And so seeing how they expand upon that from the last season and make it even more crazy or what stakes come in and everything like that, I’m looking forward to seeing where that goes. And Science SARU did an amazing job animating, so I want to see what they do.
©Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc.
Q: As a BLEACH voice actor, how did it feel to finally see the return of BLEACH console / PC games with Rebirth of Souls?
Beckles: Dude, oh man. It was super cool getting to be Tosen in Rebirth of Souls and kind of go through his whole story. Because I’m not the first voice actor for Tosen — Tosen’s had a couple different ones. So I didn’t start off with him, so I didn’t get to experience that. So getting to go from the beginning of his journey all the way up to where the game ended off was really, really, really cool. And it’s amazing. Bleach hasn’t had a video game, I think, on consoles since 2009 or something. So to have it be well received and everything, I can’t wait to see what they do building off of it in the future. Yeah, I’m really excited.
Q: What’s been your most difficult scene to voice to date?
Beckles: DAN DA DAN, the end of Episode 4. It’s when Momo and Okarun — spoilers — it’s the end of their battle with the crab and everything. And he’s at her house and he drops her off at night.
And he’s like, all right, I guess that’s it. I guess our little adventure is over. And she’s like, “Goodbye.” And he’s like, “Goodbye?” What does that mean? Let me see you later? Does that mean we’re done? And they’re kind of going back and forth in their heads. And then that ending scene where she says, “See you later.” And he goes, “OK”. The whole time it was is it goodbye or goodbye? And trying to make that not sound stale, because I’m saying the same word over and over again. Same thing with Abby [Abby Trott]. That was really difficult. And I got frustrated. And I remember there was a time when we had to take a break. It was important to make it work. But it was kind of hard to wrap our heads around. We ended up taking a day and then coming back. And then Abby recorded. So we had some fresh — I got to hear her.
We had some fresh new ideas. We tried it out. And it went great. But that was actually really difficult, even though it was a very simple scene. It was very hard.
We’d like to thank AJ Beckles for a fantastic interview and thank the staff of Anime Central for organizing the interview. Anime Central will return next year from May 15 through May 17, 2026. They are currently accepting guest requests for next year’s convention and feedback for this year’s.
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