On July 19th, Hey! Say! JUMP’s Yamada Ryosuke and Chinen Yuri attended a press conference for the upcoming 3D animated movie, “The Smurfs”, which they both voice acted for in the Japanese dubbed version.

Commenting on the huge FIFA Women’s World Cup victory by the national Japanese women’s soccer team, Nadeshiko Japan, Chinen said, “Since the Smurfs and [Nadeshiko Japan] are both blue, I want to continue to stir up Japan with this momentum.” Yamada continued, “I believe if we combine everyone’s strength together, we can do anything. I want to convey that through this movie.”


Regarding their aspirations, Chinen revealed, “I want to learn English with the intention to become international.” He added, “I want to sing with Justin Bieber.” Yamada mused, “Possibly… co-star with a Hollywood star!? Maybe that’s too big of a wish… But, I highly respect Johnny Depp.”

This movie is a 3-D adaptation of “The Smurfs”, a popular comic that originally started in Belgium. The Smurfs are described to be little blue creatures that carry good fortunes, and wears white hat and pants.

For the Japanese version of this movie, Yamada will be tackling his debut voice acting role with “Clumsy Smurf”. He said, “For my voiceover with this character, I concentrated all my wishes to create a character that is overflowing with happiness. This was really fun; if possible, I want to voice act once again.” He continued, “It was an easy role for me since I am clumsy as well. Most of the time, I used my natural voice for this character.”

Chinen, who has had prior experience voice acting in 2008’s historical anime, “Sword of the Stranger”, stated, “As I thought, voice acting is hard. It was quite difficult to go with the rhythm in the scene where I had to rap. I can’t believe I had a hard time when I had to sing…” and finished with a laugh.

Since Chinen will be playing a smart character called “Brainy Smurf”, he added, “This character is a little bit annoying. But since I can be quite annoying myself, maybe we are quite similar (lol). I am not smart like him but within [Hey! Say! JUMP], I have the most intelligence out of all of them.”

Yamada and Chinen, who are known to get along well within their respective groups of Hey! Say! JUMP and NYC, also demonstrated a warm friendship. Yamada said, “Chinen remembers dance quite fast and he also is good at reading the atmosphere as well.” Chinen replied, “When I go out to eat with Yama-chan (Yamada), he pays for me.”

This movie will hit theaters on September 9th.


source: allkpop