Interview conducted by Sandra Scholes


Active Anime: With Death Note now being a global phenomenon, what was it like knowing this and translating Another Note?
Andrew Cunningham: I've never put much stock in global phenomenon. I'd read Death Note from the beginning, and was raving about it well before it was translated, so it was more a pleasant surprise that something I liked was actually popular. As much as I like Death Note, I really approached the job less as a Death Note fan than a Nisioisin fan - he's one of my favorite authors.


Active Anime: What was it personally that drew you to the novel by Nisioisin?
Andrew Cunningham: I'd picked up his Zaregoto novels on a whim, and was so impressed by the first two that I bought and read everything he'd written. With Another Note, he managed to produce a novel that was true to his own distinctive style, but also true to the style of the manga. I'm hoping it works as an introduction to Nisioisin as well as a companion piece to the manga series.

Active Anime: As translation can be a tricky thing with any language, was there any section of the book that was hard to convert into English?
Andrew Cunningham: Nisioisin's writing style is always quite a challenge. He tends to really play with the language, and it can take a lot of scrambling to make the English reproduce that. There were definitely passages which made my head hurt trying to be as smart as he was. I actually got a bit lucky with Death Note, and a number of bits of word play worked perfectly in a literal translation.

Active Anime: Before reading Another Note, did you read the twelve novel series of Death Note? If so did you enjoy it as much as the book you translated.
Andrew Cunningham: For the most part. I'm not the biggest fan of the ending. I'm not a big mystery fan, and tended to skim the long deductive passages; the breathtaking plot twists, and kooky sense of humor were much more appealing to me.


Active Anime: What kind of person did you think L was, and what sort of person did you think Mello was? As they are both very different characters did you think they understood each other in a way?
Andrew Cunningham: One of the screenwriting classes I took in college did a lot of character analysis, to the point where it's kind of become second nature to me. I didn't really think about what kind of people L and Mello were; I knew what they looked like, thanks to the designs, and reading the text in the manga and novel, I could imagine what their voices sounded like. (I didn't watch the anime, so the voices in my head may not match that.) Once I can hear a character's voice, it's very easy to write their dialogue. L and Mello have very different voices, but I think Mello's voice is something of a reaction to L's - he turned out that way by deliberately trying to sound nothing like L. In that sense, I think he understands L pretty well.

Active Anime: If you weren't a translator, what would have been another dream vocation?
Andrew Cunningham: This job seems to suit my unique skill set perfectly; the only other thing I can imagine doing is editing other people's translations.


Active Anime: What is the single most challenging yet rewarding aspect of translating?
Andrew Cunningham: Since I'm a big fan of the books I'm working on, I ended up putting a lot of pressure on myself to do them justice. It's very important to me that the books be as good in English as they were in Japanese, even when the deadline is looming.


Active Anime: I heard on the grapevine you got really into Berserk as an Anime series - did you have other favourites which got you into
translating?
Andrew Cunningham: As a manga series, really. I liked the anime enough to pick up the manga, but the manga is much, much better. I did spend a lot of time trying to puzzle out the dialogue with my very basic Japanese. I'd say Jojo's Bizarre Adventure was the other really big influence - between graduation and before I found a job, I had several weeks in a tiny Japanese apartment with nothing to do but read, and I grabbed a big pile of Jojo's at a used book store and read it all. That was the series that made me stop using a dictionary, and probably the series that forced me to start thinking in Japanese.


Active Anime: Which characters from Death Note are your favourites, and who in particular would you say was a scene stealer as far as the books are concerned?
Andrew Cunningham:  Matsuda! He tended to beautifully undermine the grim mood.

Active Anime: Is there a book around that you would like to read if you got the chance?
Andrew Cunningham: I have several hundred books piled up waiting for me to find time to read them, so I would definitely say yes. I have a bad habit of finding an author I like and buying every book they've ever written, and a lot of light novel writers write so fast I can't catch up.


Active Anime: I think you have done a tremendous job of translating Another Note, and would think that you had as much fun with names like Backyard Bottomslash and Beyond Bridesmaid as the readers did. Are there any other instances where you translated humorous parts of manga novels?
Andrew Cunningham: I love those names a lot, and it's sort of Nisioisin's trademark - every book he's ever written has had extremely strange character names.

I've mostly translated horror novels, which are not known for comedy, but I did get a few more comedic stories in the upcoming Faust anthology.

Active Anime: This is a strange question but if you had your own Death Note notebook, but instead of it killing people if you wrote the names in it - what would you have the book do for you?
Andrew Cunningham: I think the lesson of the manga series is that there's very little it could do that would actually improve things. It's all very well to wish for a Make People Listen to Me Note but it ultimately won't make the world a better place.


Active Anime: Are you one of those people who likes to listen to music while you work, and if so who are your favourite musical artists or
bands at the moment?
Andrew Cunningham: I do keep a largely collection of music on constant shuffle while I work. The Hives, The Pillows, The Fratellis, Jet, Ok Go, The Last Shadow Puppets, Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros, The Who, Black Sabbath, Muse...