Forum - View topicFeatures - Interview: Crispin Freeman on Superman & Mang
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penguintruth
 Posts: 8502 Location: Penguinopolis |
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I love Ron Pearlman, but he's no Kevin Conroy. Kevin Conroy IS Batman. Boo to whatever company couldn't get him to voice Batman in that game. As for Superman, either Tim Daley or George Newburn would have sufficed - again, as much as I love Crispin Freeman, he's no Daley or Newburn.
Buuut, then, maybe they couldn't afford them, or there was a contract dispute. |
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v1cious
 Posts: 6229 Location: Houston, TX |
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i wonder if he's playing Hagi in Blood+. i mean that's the perfect role for him.
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jsevakis
Former ANN Editor in Chief
 Posts: 1685 Location: Los Angeles, CA |
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Heh heh... Poor Jonathan. I can't believe you had to transcribe all that. Crispin is a great guy, but boy, the guy can TALK. ESPECIALLY about anime and superheros. At least he's got some interesting ideas to share.
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Deltakiral
 Posts: 3338 Location: Glendora, CA (Avatar Hei from Darker than BLACK) |
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I so hope that what he was talking about for Blood+ since I finally got back into that series he would be a perfect pick for Haji. It's funny how Crispin is always a fan favorite for every character it seems. But it's hard to argue against his work his work on Last Exile made me a fan of his work. Till next time, Delta Kiral |
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xvkarbear
Posts: 21 Location: USA |
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LOL My thoughts exactly. I envision him just kinda vibrating with pent up energy, like he had three caffeine drinks and sugar coated breakfast. |
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RezSav
 Posts: 542 |
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Awsome, with the last episode of Hellsing airing on Encore Action! now I was looking for a little more info on the show.
Last edited by RezSav on Fri Jul 21, 2006 1:54 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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tlsmith1963
Posts: 100 |
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Crispin is right about American comic-books being more for guys. I can't stand a lot of them, but I love manga. Strangely enough, though, I don't read a lot of shoujo. Maybe it's because I was raised on a lot of Science Fiction & action TV-series & films. I just naturally gravitate towards manga with those kinds of themes.
Tammy |
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tlsmith1963
Posts: 100 |
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He's an interesting guy, very intelligent. I am always interested in what he has to say. I guess I don't have the anti-intellectualism of a lot of Americans. This isn't directed towards you, just a general comment. Tammy |
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DriftRoot
 Posts: 222 Location: NH |
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I haven't had a chance to meet Crispin yet, but I have this feeling like it would be a really cool experience. Hehe, I can see myself having a VERY intersting conversation with him about all kinds of things. I wonder if he's a Libra, too? Libras like to talk and get "deep" about all kinds of stuff.
His picture kind of took me aback. I'm not sure about those blond highlights.  He looks like a friend of mine from California who was, as I recall him saying, "a surfing dude."
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The Xenos
 Posts: 1519 Location: Boston |
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Ack! Tell Crispin Freeman to get the hell out of my head. Seriously, it's like the stole from random rants I've posted on message boards. Neo in The Matrix as Gnostic Jesus (which I also say is in Superman Returns). Frank Miller's take on Batman and Superman. The origins of Superman. Why girls will read shojo and turn their noses up to American comics.
Actually, I woukd argue with Mr Freeman on that one. There are good comics for females, superhero ones even. You just have to look past all the crap. There are a couple of female writers at DC I like who are trying to create good female characters, even if they are superheros. Namely Gail Simone writing Birds of Prey. Of course, not all comics are superhero. Vertigo has scores of female friendly book. Sandman. Y The Last Man. Fables. Ex Machina. Transmet (or any Ellis, he freaking rules). Kabuki (not Vertigo, but has a lage female following). They all have those mature relationships Freeman said shojo had and, generally, US comics lacked. I don't think US comics are lacking them, you just have to look beyond the headlines to find the good books. Hopefully, female fans of manga will eventually realize there are similarly mature comics in America. Then agian, from way too many female manga fans I see at cons, I hardly get the sense they're actaully that mature. Hell, I swear all you need to do is slap on two pretty boys on a cover, maybe give them wings too, and you sell your manga right there. (By the way, my roomate was the one who asked Clamp at Anime Expo this year why the hell all their books have people with wings in them.) It's like the fanboys who go nuts about Wolverine's claws or Powergirl's huge.. um.. tracts of land. Instead it's fangirls geeking out over two pretty boys with cat ears. I honestly think both fandoms have quite a lot of immaturity. Not saying that there are not serious fans of both US and Japanese books, but I don't think either can claim to be more mature than the other. Seriously, I'm a huge fan of both US and Japanese comics. It frustrates me when fans of one put up a wall against the other. There's amazing stuff and crappy stuff in both. There is no real difference in quality between them. They both seem to be different, surely looking at their evolution you can see how they are, but that's a whole other debate. Yet both have so much to offer and both of them have amazing books people should notice. Hell, just today I was wearing a shirt featuring Wolverine as drawn by manga artist Tsutomu Nihei. He did a whole Wolverine comic for Marvel. He also publishes manga in Japan. So here's an American comic done by a Japanese artist. And let's not even get into Paul Pope, an American published here with US comics and with Japan publishers. Tear down the wall, people. Don't let prejudices blind you from really good books. |
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Kholdstare
Posts: 61 |
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My thoughts exactly. That has to be the role he is playing. Kari Wahlgren and Crispin Freeman as major characters in a dub; now there is something I have never seen before  . But I am glad, because they always do a good job.
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Amibite
Posts: 196 |
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Yes, it's always annoying when ignorant anime fans bash and throw claims around about American comics and vice-versa. Both sides have crap, both sides have good series, people need to realise that and learn to accept both forms of media
I mean, what are magical girl series but superhero manga and anime? Girls with super powers fighting off evil badies. Then you got Birds of Prey, Y the Last Man, and other comics that can easilly be read by women. Just because it's not about a metrosexual guy having yaoi adventures with other bishounen doesn't mean it can't be enjoyed by women. If anything, I prefer a lot of "girl comics" in America because I'm sick to death of yaoi/yuri undertones.
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ava_star
Posts: 8 |
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>>"No, I believe in something, and I think it's possible to accomplish something, and c'mon, guys, let's all pull together." Sort of an Andy Rooney/Judy Garland sort of thing back in the day.<<
/laughs/ Um, I'm really hoping he meant Mickey Rooney. Somehow I can't picture Andy Rooney putting on a show... though it's an amusing thought. "And now, 60 Minutes presents... Judy Garland!" |
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The Xenos
Posts: 1519 Location: Boston |
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Also, I gotta say Crispin Freeman is easily one of my favorite VAs. Aside from his voice work, he is just a huge geek. It's interviews like this where he does this whole Scott McCloud literary analysis of pop culture that I'm amazed. He also did this at the Anime Boston I saw him at. Though I missed his main Escaflowne panel, what he said at his regular panel about the show surprised me.
Though I gotta say, looking at the photo, is it just me, or is it really weird to see Alucard has dyed his hair blonde? |
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ava_star
Posts: 8 |
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As a long-time female fan, I have to take issue with this on a couple of counts -- not for the sake of being defensive or argumentative (because I certainly see your point), but more to explain my reasons for disagreeing. 
First, realize that I grew up reading American comic books. Not so much the modern ones that were being released when I was a kid in the '80s, but primarily the ones I consider real "comic books" -- my mother's huge box of Superman, Batman and Archie comics that she faithfully purchased at her local dime store with her allowance each week when she was a teenager in the 1960s. They were published long before "graphic novels" were a viable force in the book market, so they were a very different animal than the modern ones, but they're still pure, undeniably American. I also own a modest number (maybe 100? 150?) of American comic books from the 1980s and 1990s that I've acquired as a collector of certain series. I say this to underscore that I am not biased against the American market simply because it's not Japanese. I am, however, biased against shoddy workmanship and poor imitations of what's popular, and what I see in the vast majority of modern American graphic novels is a drive to make comics so dark and dramatic and shocking and visually flashy that we skimp on things that I consider vital to a good story (namely, writing and character development). Out of the, maybe, fifteen American comic books I've picked up in the store this year (because I do go into comic book stores, a fact of which I'm not ashamed!), there has been exactly ONE that I was able to read without cringing or snickering at the mediocre (often manga-ripoff) art and stilted writing. (Granted, many manga have bad writing too, but the odds are much better with manga.) Even the series comic books that I've collected are not particularly well-written, and some of them have truly horrible artwork. But I wasn't buying those strictly as reading material, either. I'm sure there are good American comics out there as well -- I don't follow them as closely as I used to -- but for me, a fan of well-developed plot and characterization, manga tends to provide a deeper, more involved storyline and much more character exposition. That may be why many fans (I know as many men as women for whom this is true) shun the American-produced works in favor of the more intricate and varied stories available in the Japanese market. Subject matter has a lot to do with the choice, too. Manga has historically provided a wider variety of subjects and plots as compared to American comics. Traditionally, mainstream American comics tended to be dominated by musclebound superheroes in tights, with a smaller subset of comedy titles. Manga, during the same decades, presented everything from superheroes to race car drivers to adventure to space comedy to alchemists to swordsmen to talking animals to touching slice-of-life vignettes to historical fiction to simple love stories. I think the perception -- accurate or no -- of many fans is that all American comics are Marvel or DC superheroes, while manga offers every imaginable subgenre in an easily-accessible format. (I'll skip over the discussion of archetypical similarities here, even though we all know that all stories share fundamental elements; I don't think it's pertinent to this concept.) And, ultimately, it all comes down to intended audience. As far as female readers choosing one over the other, simply look at the marketing: Until the recent advent of shoujo manga-knockoff series like Harlequin Pink and Purple, American comic books offered only a handful of titles marketed to girls, many of which were in the same genre as the rest of their offerings (namely, action/adventure/superhero). Realistically, a girl who usually reads comedy or romance books is not going to pick up Birds of Prey, even if it is targeted to her demographic. However, shoujo manga has been going strong since the early 1970s, and it offers a variety of plots and genres that appeal directly -- and are targeted specifically at -- a female readership. Girls who never had an interest in superheroes might be interested in a story about the daily adventures of a girl struggling through high school. (The same is true of guys reading action-oriented comic books instead of shoujo, but nobody blames guys for discriminating against shoujo...!) So, holding shoujo manga in particular up to American comic books is not really a valid comparison; apples to oranges, so to speak. [Note: I am not attempting to imply that one of these is better than the other. I am merely trying to point out that people have different tastes, and some of us actually have well thought-out reasons for prefering one over the other. I have read and currently own both American and Japanese graphic novels, and in general I prefer manga.] To knee-jerk-react to the second part of the above statement, I would like to point out -- again, just for the record -- that NOT all girls are driven by shameless marketing of pretty boys and, God forbid, yaoi. I read lots of manga, including the occasional shoujo title. Many of them contain bishounen. The rare volume even has wings! But the vast majority of my anime and manga collection is chosen by virtue of plot, character development, writing quality, and what I find enjoyable to read -- not by the "giggle factor" that seems to drive the female fan base at cons. I am, frankly, awed and mortified by how stupid and immature some fangirls act at conventions. I am horrified to think that someone might lump me in as one of them because I happen to be of the same sex. Of course (continuing the unsolicited rant, while I'm already off the topic) the same sentiment applies for the lecherous, drooling fanboys I see at cons, following after girls in skimpy, barely-legal costumes. And again for the girls at cons who don't wear clothes, specifically for the purpose of attracting said lecherous fanboys. As with any large group, the extremists make all of fandom look disreputable. Anyway, please don't assume that just because an anime/manga fan is female, she is automatically in the above category. Otherwise we have to assume that all male anime fans are unwashed perverts who watch nothing but hentai, and I strongly suspect that's not the case.
Sorry for the long post; it wasn't supposed to last quite this long, or be quite this much of a rant. Anyway, I hope I've represented my opinion in a coherent way...
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