During the May 24 episode of TBS Network’s Weekly Sanma and Matsuko, Japanese voice actress Kana Hanazawa revealed the lengths she went to play Tohko Amano in the 2010 anime movie Book Girl (source: Oricon News). In an attempt to fully “embody the role” and put herself in the heroine’s shoes, she tore up the audition script and put it in her mouth – an act which, according to her, got her the part.
Based on the light novel series of the same name, Book Girl’s plot revolves around Konoha Inoue, a second-year high school student who joins the literature club after discovering that the president and sole member, Tohko Amano, eats stories by consuming the paper they are written on. Inoue ends up writing several short stories for Tohko as “snacks,” and ends up discovering more about his senior and himself in the process.
Hanazawa described Tohko Amano as a role she “absolutely had to land.” Realizing that she had to understand the character to get the part, she recounted that she had never eaten paper before. She then tore up the audition script and put it in her mouth: “It was salty, so I spit it out right away, but it made me think, So this is what it feels like…to live on eating paper.”
Sanma Akashiya, the show’s co-host, jokingly called the move “true character development,” and Hanazawa confirmed that this slightly bizarre move was what helped her land the role.
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