Forum - View topicAnime dubs watched differently than U.S. cartoons?
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Hitokiri Kenshin
Posts: 293 |
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A thing I've noticed recently is that a lot of guys watch anime dubs differently than they watch American cartoons. For example, I hear guys mention bad acting in dubs, but not counting cartoons for preschoolers, or made prior to 1990 as some haven't aged as well, I've never heard anyone say a US cartoon had bad acting. Why is that, or have people not noticed before?
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gsilver
Posts: 647 |
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Back when I was a kid, I lamented at great length how terrible some of the voice acting was in the X-Men cartoon.
"You are UNFIT! To lead!" Ouch. It still hurts to even think about it. IMO, the biggest problem with anime dubs is that they take steps to make it sound more "Japanese." In the EF - Tale of Memories dub, I heard a character say "Oni-chan" which has no place in a spoken English script. Voice actors are often compelled to try to emulate speech patterns of the original Japanese, which can be especially grating when trying to emulate the breathy vocal style of certain female characters in the originals. Native English scripts simply don't have these kinds of problems. |
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Hypeathon
Posts: 1176 |
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I think part of it (and I honestly don't relate to it myself) is to do with this purist preference where you would watch a show in it's original language, but not in any other language and if they did, they would think a show dubbed in any other language is automatically not as good as the show in it's orignal langauge. I don't know how many anime fans are like this, but I've seen some express their preferences in watching shows that way. There are definitely some animated series I've seen where actors were not as into their roles as they were later on in that show. It's a litle hard to explain it, but in Family Guy for example, Seth MacFarlene in nearly all of his roles sounded more like him speaking naturally than being as into his characters as possible. Like Brian sounded more soft-spoken in the initial seasons than he does now. The same goes for John DiMaggio as Bender and Billy West as Fry and the Professor in Futurama. It's that kind of thing where even in dubs, an actor who's playing as this character for the first time dpending on how he/she's directed have an idea how to experience playing this character. But after acting as their character and understanding more about their character as time passes, you'll hear how into it they really are. Even in Ed Edd, 'n' Eddy did that happen. Not knowing any better at one point, I had assumed Double D was voiced by a girl and not Samuel Vincent because of just HOW soft his voice was. I think dubs just get the flak by default because of the fact they get compared to another version of a show people already liked and seen before and those people will subconsciously compare that dub to the show in Japanese to see if it "matches". There isn't so much of a "critiquing it on it's own merits." It's also a lot harder knowing that not only do shows get watched by much of the younger crowd being into the Japanese language, but that most anime shows these days also take place in a Japanese setting. It adds to that whole authenticity thing and thus puts any dub at an automatic disadvantage. If characters in a dub don't try to sound Japanese, they don't win. If characters in a dub do try to sound Japanese, they also don't win! |
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TitanXL
Posts: 4036 |
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Do you have some kind of statistical evidence? I've seen plenty of people say US cartoons have bad VAing. I hardly doubt it's mutually exclusive. Also probably because we're on an anime forum, and most anime forums don't talk about US cartoons much so it never really gets brought up as often as dubs would. Probably won't find many topics dedicated to the tortured inner monologues and dramatic depths of the Fairly Odd Parents voice cast. |
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mdo7
Posts: 6361 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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I could maybe answer that. It's because there are bunch of people that said "dub suck" also said "American cartoon suck, Japan is superior" rant. I sometime called these people Japanese supremacist. It just like how people complain when US remake an Asian film, but never complain when Asia remake US films. These same people are not even aware Japan can have horrible voice acting too. For example when Japan dubbed Modern Warfare 2. Heck one person on ANN wrote an article about how bad voice acting can exist in Japanese also.
Also I have seen one American cartoon that had a shoddy voice-acting, Pryde of the X-men. It was a pilot episode which predated the well known X-men: The animated series. Now I got chance to watch it on Youtube and holy cow, the voice acting was not acceptable. Wolverine has an Australian accent, Professor X voice doesn't fit, and Kitty Pryde doesn't sound right in my opinion. This is the only American cartoon that had a shoddy voice acting. |
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TitanXL
Posts: 4036 |
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The article you linked to doesn't cite any sources. Granted, that's common practice for Kotaku, but I just figured I should point that out. |
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mdo7
Posts: 6361 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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the author of that article, Brian Ashcraft. He lives in Japan so he knows what's going on. Also if you watch the Youtube video, I think you can judge if MW2 had a good or bad dub. |
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Hitokiri Kenshin
Posts: 293 |
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I own Pryde of the X-Men on vhs. Yeah, it's not too great, though when I first saw it in 1996, I didn't mind it too much besides minding Aussie Wolverine. Though it might not have sounded as bad if seen back in 88-89 around the time it was made. Another thing I noticed that people badmouth anime dubs for, but not American cartoons is being able to spot actors when they do something similar. For example, I heard some girls say they didn't like the dub of the 2nd Cardcaptor Sakura movie because Syaoron sounded like Izzy from Digimon. I asked them if they watched the Powerpuff Girls, and if it bothered them that Buttercup sounded like Tommy from Rugrats. They said they never thought on it much.
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TitanXL
Posts: 4036 |
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I criticize both dubs and US shows for doing that. Steve Blum and John DiMaggio pretty much just has one voice (well, Steve Blum has his 'monster' voice he uses for Guilmon I guess.. so two). Tara Strong also always sounds the same and only has a voice she does for boys and a voice she does for girls. Jennifer Hale, Mae Whitman, Cree Summer the guy who does Coach McGuirk.... Cree Summer always seems to be typecast as 'the black girl' in a lot of shows, you'd think she's the only black VA out there. Though you have to wonder if it's just their lack of range, or of it's because of uncreative voice directors. I wonder how many times Steve Blum was hired just to be told "Hey, do you Spike voice" or something. |
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ArsenicSteel
Posts: 2370 |
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A voice actor only having one or two voices isn't a criticism because there's more to voice acting than how many voices one person can make.
It's funny how when a company doesn't cast people of certain ethnic groups for roles they fit, it is called racist or whitewashing. So when a black woman gets "black girl" roles it's typecasting. There's just no pleasing some people. |
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TitanXL
Posts: 4036 |
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It was more of an observation than a 'calling out', and more of the fact she's one of the only one I saw growing up. She voiced both the sisters in Kids Next Door, Suzie on Rugrats, the girl on Sabrina the Teenage Witch, the girl on As Told By Ginger, the girl on Batman Beyond. Pretty much every instance in a cartoon I saw when I was growing up. |
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