Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Marissa Lenti. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Marissa, appreciate you joining us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

As a kid, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. My parents were always very supportive of any kind of endeavor I wanted to try, but I ping-ponged between a lot of different options. I did a lot of different extracurriculars and tried to pursue the topics in school that intrigued me, but none of them struck me as a job I could do forever. It got to a point where I was staring down the prospect of going to college, and I still wasn’t one hundred percent sure.

It wasn’t until I was at school and watching anime with my roommate that it occurred to me: The actors in the English dub we were watching must have been in the United States, somewhere, based on their accents. I had done child acting but had quit after a few years, the same with a lot of my other extracurriculars. But I had liked acting, I just hated the on-camera and/or on-stage aspects. The prospect not only of being able to act from behind a mic where my looks were not relevant, but also being able to be in anime (which I had developed a huge fascination with after years of attending conventions) was really appealing to me, especially as an awkward late teen/early twenty-something.

Streaming developed as an offshoot of the job I was already doing. I already spent a lot of time on my friends’ streams just hanging out, and I even streamed the entirety of a game I had starred in as a playable character, Borderlands 3, to a pretty decent audience reception. Vtubing was an evolution of that that did me the benefit of once again allowing me to abandon the camera aspect of the job that I so despised about acting, too. But, since Vtubing didn’t even exist as a career until a couple of years ago, I’m not surprised it took me so long to figure out what I wanted to do, haha…

Marissa, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Nowadays, I dabble in almost every part of the dubbing side of the anime industry. I write scripts, I direct, and I act, on top of occasionally producing entire projects. At this point, I’m well-established enough at each of them that I get sought out to do each job individually from a variety of studios and companies, which is very flattering as someone who used to not know what she even wanted to do with her life.

I sort of got into each job by total accident. I started as just a voice actor, but as time went on, people would approach me saying they needed a writer, a director, or just someone to help out the production side, and I would be happy to jump in and get my hands dirty. I wanted to learn about how this industry worked, and what needed to be done to make the best end products possible.

I pride myself on taking every job and putting full effort in, even if the base show has no prestige. I’m a full believer in the fact that a job well done is worth the hassle, even if barely anyone sees the end result.

Some of the work I’m most proud of is my directing work, as I get to put more of myself into those than anything else I do. Shows like Tribe Nine, Kemono Friends, Kageki Shojo!!, Arte, and Gunbuster are the crown jewels, in my opinion, of what I’ve been working on this last– nearly a decade!

Especially as someone who wants to do right by the industry as far as introducing diversity in the form of brilliant actors who no one else is giving a shot, casting and directing is the job that, I hope, I am most remembered for.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

There’s a lot of misconceptions out there about the anime industry. Primarily that the people working on localizing anime aren’t fans of it, or don’t care about how the dubs turn out– but it really couldn’t be further from the truth, especially nowadays. I grew up on anime– Pokémon, Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Medabots, Zoids, Monster Rancher, Cardcaptors… that was my media diet as a kid. And as I got older, I just got more engrossed in the anime scene, and expanded my view beyond just shows with cool monsters in them, haha. I got really deep into the Death Note fandom and even cosplayed as multiple characters for several years. I’m sure I’ve watched more anime at this point than any other media type combined. I would call myself a mega fan!

Now that I work in anime, I’m still a huge fan, it’s just that what I watch is dictated by what I’m working on. But I still become a giant fan of those shows. I look up reactions to the dubs I work on, to see how people are receiving them. If they like the choices I made, if they understand the plot and the dialogue, if the jokes are landing, etc. Nothing fills me up with happiness more than seeing people enjoy what I’ve made for the fandom, and, on the flipside, I’ve never beat myself up as hard as I do when I make a mistake. When that happens, I always vow not to let whatever it was happen again. I want my dubs to be as perfect as possible for the people who watch them– especially since, historically, dubs are usually the end-all-be-all for a particular show. Usually, no one’s going to ever come along and redo a show, so it’s important to get it right the first time. That’s how we feel about it.

Have you ever had to pivot?

As much as I love the anime industry, it’s a fickle mistress. When it’s slow, you lose all your income. It was during a recent slow period that I really picked up a love of streaming, particularly as my Vtuber alter-ego, Vixen. But there was a lot to learn. Streaming isn’t as simple as just turning on your stream and playing a game. The stream needs to be entertaining, not only thanks to your commentary or jokes, but also thanks to all kinds of extra systems I had to learn. Giving the audience lots of fun commands and rewards to play with was top of the list of things I had to quickly delve into and understand. I wanted people to be having fun, and as someone who pretty much only lurks in streams, I didn’t quite understand at first all of the interesting and fun ways someone might want to interact with a stream. I started frequenting other people’s streams and began to understand what was fun about interacting with them, rather than just lurking like I usually did.

And I’m still learning. This, weirdly, feels like one of the biggest chapter changes in my life, despite the fact that I can stream from home without changing where I live or much of my daily routine. I’ve moved across the country multiple times pursuing my anime work, but this still feels like a big turning point. I can’t really explain why, but streaming feels like something big. Like I’ve stepped into a brand new community and my world got twice as large in the process. It’s very cool.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.MarissaLenti.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marissalenti
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marissalenti
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarissaLenti and https://twitter.com/Vixen_VTuber
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@vixenvtuber
• Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@vixen_vtuber
• Twitch: twitch.tv/vixen_vtuber
• Threads: https://www.threads.net/@marissalenti

Image Credits
Borderlands 3 Trailer – Gearbox Fairy Tail – TV Tokyo Dragon Ball Super – Toei Animation Cookie Run: Kingdom – Devsisters