The Dragon Ball GT Scene That Made Sean Schemmel Physically Ill

Intense is just one of the words that could be used to describe "Dragon Ball." With over three decades of history, there's no shortage of blood-boiling battles tucked within its anime episodes and manga pages. And with its roster of supernaturally-powered martial artists, both mediums have done everything they can to sell the earth-shattering intensity of the franchise's combat. One of the ways it does this is with its iconic "power-up" sequences. Typically, these sequences entail a whole lot of squatting and screaming as the characters build up their Ki energy for a powerful attack or transformation.

As you might expect, these scream-heavy sequences can get pretty arduous for the actors voicing these characters. One of the most iconic examples of this is easily Goku's transformation into a Super Saiyan 3 in "Dragon Ball Z," which saw voice actor Sean Schmell pushing his vocal cords to what seems like the limit for minutes on end. If you asked Schmell, however, he would not point to the Super Saiyan 3 moment as his most difficult sequence (which he said was "awesome" and made him feel "like a rockstar"). Instead, that moment came in "Dragon Ball GT," when a similar power-up scene actually left Schmell physically ill.

During a fan Q&A at London Comic Con in 2012 (via Youtube), Sean Schmell revealed that he once fainted in the actor's booth. The voice actor behind Goku explained that his passing out during "Dragon Ball GT" had less to do with the intensity of the screaming, and more to do with his health and acting technique at the time.

"It was during the Super Saiyan 4 transformation, and I was really tired ... and hadn't been sleeping well. I miscalculated the amount of air you'd need for a Kamehameha, I think or maybe it was a power-up, and I made the voice lower," Schmell explained. "So as you get lower, when you're acting, the aperture of your vocal cords gets wider, and I just totally miscalculated."

Because his wider vocal posture allowed more air to escape his lungs than he expected, Schmell ended up passing out right there, which Schmell called "kind of fun... it was like falling asleep really quickly." Luckily, the booth was padded so Schmell wasn't injured, and after a few moments, he was able to get up and continue working.