and i still have my eyes on the stars..

John DiMaggio as King Dedede: I like the voice that Ted Lewis does for him in the English version of the Kirby anime, and I wanted to keep the southern accent for Dedede, but I also wanted to put my own spin on his voice with my pick, so that’s why I chose this voice for him. John DiMaggio has been in a ton of shows, and the voice clips I used here in this video are from his character Glenn Dolphman from Inside Job, but one of his most well known roles is Bender in Futurama. I feel like Dedede as a character is like a more child-friendly version of Bender, since like Bender, Dedede has moments where he’s self-centered, greedy, and lazy, but he also has a lot of moments where he’s kind, cares for others, and puts others before himself. I think DiMaggio could do a good job portraying both Dedede’s more selfish side and his more caring side.

Pedro Pascal as Meta Knight: Similarly to Dedede, I like the anime voice that Eric Stuart does for Meta Knight and wanted to keep the Spanish accent for him, but also wanted my own spin on things. The voice clips I used here are from Pedro Pascal’s character Oberyn Martell from Game of Thrones, but he’s also well known for playing Mando/Din Djarin in The Mandalorian and Joel in The Last of Us. In both of these shows he plays a character who’s very stoic and has some dark aspects to his past, but he meets and becomes a father figure to a child who ends up softening him a bit (Grogu/Baby Yoda for Mando and Ellie for Joel). In my Kirby AU that’s kind of what happens with Meta Knight and Kirby, Meta was raised by Nightmare and grew up to be this serious, stoic warrior, but Kirby and the other characters manage to soften him a little bit just by being in his life/by showing him friendship and love. He’s still his usual badass swordsman self, but he’s able to show his softer side around people he cares about and trusts, and he learns to not let his past define his future. Because of this, I think that Pascal could do a good job voicing him.

Colm Meaney as Blade Knight: Colm Meaney is an Irish actor most well known for playing Miles O’Brien on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I wanted him to have an accent but still be intelligible to people listening since in the English version of the anime he mostly just speaks gibberish. In my Kirby AU, Blade sort of serves as the engineer/mechanic on the Halberd, and in Deep Space Nine Miles is the chief of operations/essentially the chief engineer for the space station and its ships, so picking Meaney to voice Blade was a bit of an inside joke with the casting.