If the anime series Dragon Ball has taught us one thing over the years, it is that being a Super Saiyan isn’t the easiest – even for professional voice actors like Sean Schemmel. Schemmel, who voices Goku – the main character in the Dragon Ball franchise – often has to sell the combat-heavy scenes in the shounen anime, and the legendary Super Saiyan power-up that involves a lot of bright light and screaming. So much screaming, in fact, that it could be bad for your health.
During a fan Q&A event at London Comic Com 2012, the Goku voice actor revealed how he fainted in a booth while recording one of the legendary transformations we see in the animated series. However, the fainting spell wasn’t for Super Saiyan 3, seen in Dragon Ball Z, where Schemmel seemingly pushed his vocal cords for minutes on end as fans would expect. Surprisingly it was Super Saiyan transformation 4 in the non-canon Dragon Ball GT instalment.
“I never passed out in Dragon Ball Z. But I did pass out in Dragon Ball GT. GT, not Z,” Schemmel explained before revealing the details of the moment that physically drained him.
“It was during the Super Saiyan 4 transformation, and I was really tired … and hadn’t been sleeping well. I miscalculated the amount of air you’d need for a Kamehameha, I think, or maybe it was a power-up, and I made the voice lower,” Schemmel said. “So as you get lower, when you’re acting, the aperture of your vocal cords gets wider, and I just totally miscalculated.”
Luckily Schemmel’s incident wasn’t so severe as to kick the actor out of commission. According to the star, he was back to working a few moments after the accident. We will next see the Super Saiyan transformation in the upcoming anime movie Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, which is scheduled to hit Japanese theatres on April 22, 2022. Stay tuned for UK and US release dates.