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Sunday, 08 February 2009 02:04
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 Meowth is Dead. Long Live Meowth!
By Jacob Anderson-Minshall
When Maddie Blaustein passed away suddenly this December few of her fans realized she’d gone. Like many voice actresses who disappear behind the scenes while their alter egos garner all the attention; Blaustein faced a certain level of obscurity, despite the fact that the characters she voiced are recognized on sight—especially a little beige cat named Meowth.
In addition to voicing characters on Pokemon, Blaustein had voice roles in a half dozen other anime shows that 4Kids Entertainment brought from Japan and dubbed into English; including Kirby!: Right Back at Ya!, Ultimate Muscle: The Kinnikuman Legacy and Fighting Foodons.
She also provided voices for the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise (particularly Solomon Moto), as well as on dozens of both foreign dubbed and American produced animation shows (including El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera, G.I. Joe: Sigma Six and Cubix: Robots for Everyone) and on video games like Shadow Hearts, Valkyrie Profile and Sonic Riders.
Despite her omnipresence in the world of children’s anime, few of those viewing the Saturday morning line-up recognized that the voice of their favorite characters emerged from the vocal chords of a woman who used to be a man.
In 2006, Blaustein admitted to the gay news magazine, The Advocate, that she had already transitioned and was living as a woman when she first landed the Pokemon role, but she was living in fear, hiding her true gender-identity from her employers.
“Seriously,” she contended, “I was living a female-to-male transsexual experience because I would be strapping down my tits with Ace bandages, making sure there was no makeup.”
Then, when voicing the episode, “Go West, Young Meowth,” Blaustein recalled, “It touched me so deeply, I had a meltdown.”
In the episode, her feline character, Meowth reminisces on its struggles with learning to speak and read “human.” It was an out-of-place experience Blaustein could relate to. In the middle of taping the dialogue, she suddenly burst out, “‘I can't work, you have to listen, I’m a woman!’ and I just laid it out there. I thought it was going to be a big moment, and they were, like, ‘Duh!’”
Before launching her voice over career, Blaustein first broke into the field of comic books. In the 1980s, as Jim Owsley’s editorial assistant, at Marvel Comics, she got the opportunity to work on their flagship series, Spiderman. Blaustein later went on to pen several issues for comics like Milestone’s Deathwish, Hardware, and Static— before joining DC Comics as a production artist.
After leaving DC Comics in 2006, Blaustein took on the Creative Director role at the goofy tabloid Weekly World News, where she was in charge of creating the images of aliens and monsters that graced its pages. When the print version folded in August 2007, Blaustein turned to freelancing (including writing scripts for 4Kids Entertainment); which she was still actively pursuing when she passed away December 11, 2008.
Stricken by an undisclosed illness, Blaustein died in her sleep. She was 48.
A standup comedian with a caustic wit, Blaustein toured with the roving transgender performance troupe, Tranny Roadshow, in 2005, and her budding standup career had her performing weekly at New York clubs.
In the Advocate interview, Blaustein reminisced about her childhood and the goals she’d set for herself, “By the time I was 11 or 12, I knew that I was a transsexual and eventually I was going to have to do something about it. So for me, it just became another thing on the list: Become a voice-over artist, be a stand-up comedian, write comic books, become a woman.”
Although her life was too short, when Blaustein died, she had already achieved each of those goals. She had become a woman; written and edited comic books for some of the industry’s top superhero characters; conquered the empty stage and pulled laughs from reticent audiences and, through her roles as Meowth, Solomon Moto and a host of other characters; she continues to inspire a new generation.
Each time her gender is made public, Blaustein revealed to the Advocate, in 2006, “I’ll get really touching e-mails from [trans] kids, saying, ‘I’m so happy to hear that because I feel the same way.’ And that feels amazing.”
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