Anya & Yor's English Voice Actors Break Down Their Spy x Family Code: White Arcs

The adorable and telepathic Anya and her secretive family are finally hitting the big screen in Spy X Family CODE: White. It’s a fantastic adventure for the whole family that releases in North American theaters April 19, 2024. The amazingly talented voice actors Megan Shipman (Anya) and Natalie Van Sistine (Yor) chatted with Screen Rant about their iconic roles, the film, and their experiences in the voice acting industry.

While the Spy X Family anime currently has two seasons adapted from the manga by Tatsuya Endo, the film is a stand-alone story that won’t require prior knowledge to enjoy. Characters like the young telepathic Anya and her mother, the civil servant by day and world-class assassin at night, Yor, get fantastic introductions in the film’s first sections.

The voice actors behind Anya and Yor’s English dub, Megan Shipman (Anya) and Natalie Van Sistine (Yor), are no strangers in providing memorable voices across many mediums. While their performances in series like Attack on Titan, Trigun Stampede, Vinland Saga, and My Hero Academia are phenomenal, their work with Spy X Family has helped make the series an excellent choice for first-time anime watchers and the Code: White film is a great place to start.

A Love Of Dogs Fill’s Anya’s Voice With Passion

Megan, Anya’s relationship with her dog Bond is a major highlight in Spy X Family, do you have any dogs of your own that may have helped inspire how Anya and Bond interact?

Megan Shipman: Yeah, I have my own dog named Jamie. He’s adorable. He’s half Chihuajua, half Schnauzer. He looks more like a Schnauzer, but he has a very big personality and quite the attitude. And he’s adorable, and I love him. I just love dogs. So I’m a dog person.

Natalie Van Sistine: I think they made Bond extra fluffy for the movie. The whole time he’s on screen I was like “DOG!”

Megan: I wanted to hold him!

While recording scenes between Anya and Bond, do you and his voice actor (and series script supervisor) Tyler Walker record together to get that dynamic?

Megan Shipman: No, we record separately, everything is done separately. Tyler is great, but I just let my love of dogs [fuel the performance]. Every time I see Bond I go “he’s such a good boy!” because I’m extra lovey-dovey with him because I love him, he’s one of my favorites.

Getting Into The Headspace Of A Little Girl And Her Assassin Mommy

Yor’s character goes through a large range of emotions throughout Spy X Family CODE: White. Which of her cadences do you have the most fun recording? When she’s really direct and serious? Or when she’s frantically ranting about her insecurities in her head?

Natalie Van Sistine: I think the easiest and most natural, oddly enough, is when she’s more confident, it sits a little closer to where my voice naturally sits. It’s easier to keep that level and be like, “I’m gonna do a murder.” You know, like a normal person, a normal human mom. I do really love when she has the outrageous internal monologues. They go from “What if?” to like “Ahhh! I’m gonna lose it, and lose everything!” It’s pretty relatable.

Megan’s performance as Anya reminds me of the innocent and charming performances from Rugrats, one of my favorite shows to watch as a kid. What is your process in crafting Anya’s iconic voice and what inspirations helped you prepare for it?

Megan Shipman: A lot of it was thanks to another actress in the movie who plays Becky and her name’s Danny Chambers. I had heard Danny years ago in a different anime voicing a kid. She has this amazing, natural [ability to] speak like a kid, with pauses like when kids are thinking through what they’re going to say because their brains are learning and processing words and things. And I remember hearing her do that little kid voice and being like, “Oh, I want to voice a kid like that, to do a realistic kid voice.” I was so inspired by that.

It’s really ironic that we’re both playing children in this show. She plays [Becky], who is a nice, posh, well-educated child and I have to be like the actual child. When I saw this [opportunity] I was like, “now’s my chance to use that truly goofy stream of consciousness kid voice,” I remember thinking that when I auditioned. When I auditioned, I could tell she was really funny, and there for comedic effect, along with just being adorable. And I remember seeing her face in manga and on the internet with little sprinkles of it here and there. And so I was like, “Okay, she’s like this kid. She’s kind of funny. She’s off the wall a little bit. But she’s still like a normal kid,” and I think that’s where the funniness comes from is her just being a normal kid, and being a little extreme, like a kid who doesn’t get a candy bar when they go to the store, and then the world’s over, you know something like that.

Becoming Anya and encapsulating that was really fun. Because I also get to base it off of what the Japanese version has done, and so you get that basis as well. And you’re like, “This is so cool. I see the vision here, and I can see what’s going on.” A lot of the tone and the tambor came from what they did in the Japanese version. Inflections and mannerisms came from me being inspired by colleagues, and then also thinking about what does a kid do? Because she is just a kid, and that’s kind of the secret sauce of Anya is that she’s just a kid at the end of the day.

Yor’s character is arguably one of the most formidable female characters in anime, which is a refreshing trope that seems to be scooting away the whole Damsel in Distress trope that was commonly used for way too long. Do you feel like voice acting industry has become more welcoming for female talent than it was in the past?

Natalie Van Sistine: It’s hard to say because I never really experienced any way where it was unwelcome. It’s not that it’s becoming more welcoming, because it was never not welcoming, but it does feel like the more that time progresses, we are seeing a stronger variety of stories that we are able to tell and it’s not just resigned to being the girl in the room or these particular tropes.

I love that Yor has both the power behind her ability to kill people and her confidence and her athletics and everything, but she also has that very humanizing element in there. It just makes her a much more realistic, well-rounded and interesting character to play. There are so many more layers you can get to [while performing her voice, compared to] if she is just the idealized assassin and there was nothing else to it. So I think that has been one of the most exciting things is to see so many more stories about female characters where they’re allowed to be messy and complicated and real and get to do a lot more things than just kind of fall into one specific or a narrow set of tropes.

Not that those characters didn’t ever exist, but I feel like the volume and number of them has increased, and we’re seeing so much love for them. There’s really just a staggering amount of good anime out there right now with some really phenomenal leading ladies. I think Spy x Family helped to lead that charge and continue to blaze that trail forward, and I’m all here for it. I think it’s great.

Megan & Natalie’s Work Should Not Be Missed

You’ve both played a lot of characters across games, movies and shows. What project do you feel didn’t explode like you were hoping it would, and you wish more people would check out?

Megan Shipman: That’s such a good question. I’ll just say the show that was really fun for me that I always tell people to check out, is a show called
If My Favorite Pop Idol Made It to the Budokan, I Would Die (2020).
The Budokan is a big concert venue in Japan. A women discovers an underground idol group in Japan, and they become her whole life and she becomes such a super-fan. She picks the least popular girl of the group and she becomes her best girl, she’s like her “ride or die, I love you to the ends of the earth!”

That character was so much fun because it was like the first time I got to voice a character that really was the embodiment of me, because I’m also a huge nerd, and I love idol culture, and I know a lot about idol culture, and music. It was just a role that I got to use my normal voice for which, at the time, I was like, “Oh, that’s really fun and different, and I love this.” It’s a really great show that has so many great moments. It’s really funny. I think that’s a show I wish more people would watch because it’s genuinely hilarious, and it’s also beautifully animated. Please go watch it! It’s wonderful, and not to toot my own horn, but I’m so funny in it!

Natalie Van Sistine: For shows, one of the first anime I worked on was a show called ARTE (2020). It’s based very loosely and inspired by the life of one of the rare female Renaissance painters and her quest to become her own independent person in Renaissance Italy. It’s so gorgeous, and I was really blown away by the depth of the storytelling, where it was going, how much it left open for the characters who continue to explore these really interesting relationships. Also, the way it dealt with a very specific historical type of feminism that she was trying to figure her way out. I thought it was so beautiful and so empowering, and it’s phenomenally performed. I had such a great time working on it. That’s one where I want more people to see it. I want it to get a lot more love. I want a season two so badly!

Speaking of fun roles the new season of My Hero Academia is rapidly approaching and without spoiling anything, I know that there are some incredible scenes for your character Star and Stripe that should be within the first couple episodes of that season. When voicing larger than life roles like hers, do you personally like to read those parts of the manga to prepare, or do you like to go from the script and form the character from there?

Natalie Van Sistine: With some of the bigger projects I definitely do try to visit the manga if I can. There’s been a couple of bigger shows where I’m really glad to I have the app on hand, so I can sneak ahead and see what’s going on and kind of understand what’s happening with the characters. I immediately loved her. Knowing [that her character is inspired by] All Might I immediately drew on that, and was like “how can I, with my voice and body, create the same vibe as All Might?” and try to channel that along with the character design.

I actually went a little safe originally because I wasn’t sure if they were going to stick to the manga style. When she comes out in the anime, she’s a unit, she’s here to take names. I actually had a call back, and they were like “we want to try to match how she’s so deep, and she’s so powerful, we really want to encapsulate that.” And I was so glad that they let me refine that performance and I had that Inkling that’s where they might go. And then I was like, “Ooh, maybe I don’t know if the manga is going to go that way, and I hope the anime does.”

Oh my goodness, there’s some amazing panels [in My Hero Academia] that I cannot wait to see them animate that whole arc, because the art is just so stunningly beautifully drawn.

Megan Shipman: When [Star and Stripe’s] little line came out at the end of the previous season where they were like “Here she is everyone!” I was like, “oh my god, is that Natalie? She sounds so big!”

Natalie Van Sistine: I just think she is so neat! *giggles

About Spy X Family CODE: White

He’s a spy. She’s an assassin. Together, Loid and Yor keep their double lives to themselves while pretending to be the perfect family. However, their adopted daughter Anya, a telepath, knows both of their exciting secrets unbeknownst to them. While under the guise of taking his family on a weekend winter getaway, Loid’s attempt to make progress on his current mission Operation Strix proves difficult when Anya mistakenly gets involved and triggers events that threaten world peace!

SPY x FAMILY CODE: White is the first film installment of the popular television series – delivering an original standalone story featuring secret agent Twilight, his deadly assassin wife Yor, and their telepathic adopted daughter Anya in an all-new mission. Based on the widely acclaimed Harvey and Eisner Award-nominated manga written and illustrated by Tatsuya Endo, the television series SPY x FAMILY originally debuted on April 9, 2022 and was quickly embraced by fans across the globe. The first two seasons are available on Crunchyroll.

Check out other Screen Rant interviews with talented folks who help bring anime to fans:

Spy x Family

Created by Tatsuya Endo, Spy X Family is an action-adventure comedy anime that follows the misadventures of a found family with unique quirks. The story follows spy Twilight (known as Loid Forger), who, while on assignment, builds a fake family to get closer to his target. Unbeknownst to him, his new family carries their quirks. His wife, Yor, is a kind but deadly assassin, while his daughter, Anya, has telepathic powers – and is the only one who knows their secrets.

Cast

Takuya Eguchi , Atsumi Tanezaki , Saori Hayami , Alex Organ , Megan Shipman , Natalie Van Sistine

Release Date

April 9, 2022

Seasons

2

Writers

Kazuhiro Furuhashi , Ichirō Ōkouchi

Directors

Kazuhiro Furuhashi , Takahiro Harada

Creator(s)

Tatsuya Endo