Forum - View topicHey, Answerman! [2007-03-16]
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pat_payne
Posts: 179 |
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That is the $64 skill that many dub actors lack. I love the dub cast for Cowboy Bebop, because they actually can act. They know their stuff. In the same vein, I actually enjoy Vic Mignogna's dub work for Macross (and I was apprehensive about it at first because of the history of dubbing Macross -- the "Robotech" dub and the HK dub of DYRL having little to recommend them) because he knows how to act. Having been in drama classes before, I know it's not easy to get those sorts of skills.
Can I get an "Amen?" 
I agree with that, going back to the Macross dub. Mari Iijima, in the interviews in the extras, sounded a lot more fluent and natural with English than she did as Minmay, and I think that the director should have worked with her a lot more to help smooth problems with her accent a bit, to get that kind of naturalness she showed speaking extemporaneously. |
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HitokiriShadow
 Posts: 6251 |
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Okay, I'm a little late to the party (I read the first few pages and didn't see any interesting discussions starting and then I saw that Steroid had posted and had to see what he was up to now), but I wanted to address this: I may be mistaken, but if I recall correctly, it is not edited in the typical sense but rather, RightStuf was given the broadcast version of the show in which said scene was censored. In other words, it is the version originally shown on Japanese TV. It is still RightStuf's fault, to an extent, for not knowing about it and making sure they got the DVD version, but they didn't actively edit it out. I'm not saying that you said they did, but I wanted to clarify this. |
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6897 Location: Kazune City |
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Well, I don't know if being at NGP's panel at Akon 2006 and asking you about Niea_7 counts as "knowing" you, but it's always nice to see anyone from the industry step into the war zone that these forums sometimes become. And coincidentally, I've got a lots of respect for NGP's work on such series as Kamichu!, R.O.D. The TV, Paranoia Agent, Texhnolyze, Haibane Renmei, and even such "low-brow" series as Ikki Tousen. And what little I've seen of the Girls Bravo dub is a great example of creative work by the whole ADR team (direction, writing, and action) to make a series better and funnier. While I'm more or less a purist in that I watch a lot of anime in Japanese with subtitles and want things close to the original, I still give English dubs a fair chance, especially on rewatches. I find that most are of reasonable quality, some are exceptional, others could use some improvement, and once in awhile a true stinker comes along. As long as directors/scriptwriters/VAs make some effort to understand the background of the show & the characters, take enough cues from the Japanese performance to preserve the nature of the character, and make some effort to get name pronunciations right, I'll probably be satisfied with a dubbing effort. (The name thing is almost a regional issue--the LA studios like Bang Zoom and NGP do a pretty good job with it imo, while the Texas ones for ADV and Funimation tend to play fast-and-loose. The Canada and NY studios fall somewhere in the middle on that spectrum.) Given the number of people who've warned Mr. Klein about steroid. I think it's clear that we already know where his viewpoints and philosophies lie, and the unlikeliness that he'll change those views based on posts in these threads. I'm not going to lock this or anything just because of any derailment steroid may have caused, but a bunch of posts by other users bashing steroid don't contribute very much, either. The one thing I will say on the deceased-equine "support or not support" issue is that it's not hard to see why English dubs cater to the "silent majority" masses of casual fans. I've seen other mega-hardcore fans espouse similar views to what steroid has: that localization companies "water down" anime too much to reach mass audiences and thus their products aren't worth buying, especially not when readily-available fansubs meet their needs. So to sell product, they have to market to the casual fans who go into stores and buy anime, not the hardcore fans who use the mouse-click discount. (To clarify, not every hardcore fan is a hardcore pirate; but you can bet that almost any hardcore pirate is a hardcore fan. "Pirate" in the digital/online sense of course.) |
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bluepita
 Posts: 465 |
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I thought the policies here were to attack the idea or statement not the person. Though I don't agree with many thing Steriod has said, I find the way people have spoken of him here to be just as distasteful.
The overly enthusiastic yaoi fan girls whoj talk about learning gay rights from anime are so sad. Not the girls who are exposed to gay relationships there and go on to do real research, but those described in the column. Don't they realize that what they do is just as bad as what they argue against? You can't be upset about people discriminating against gays when you are turning them from people into objects (as has been said here mayn times, I guess). Hmm, better let this one go. Anyone who has that little sense is hardly worth getting annoyed over. |
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Dardre
 Posts: 166 |
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*sigh* Ok, this is actually making me tired so I'm going to be blunt. Which dubs do you think the voice actor is just 'reading lines off a page'? Give me specifics, not generalities. Yes, yes I'm aware that many feel that Naruto and OP have bad dubs, but that's only two series out of...how many released in the last year alone? The only reason most even noticed the two mentioned was because they had a fanatical fanbase who happened to be very vocal. Frankly, considering Naruto is being released on DVD with both audio tracks, the whole thing feels like people making a mountain out of a mole-hill. Just to put my money where my mouth is, I'm going to list those series I felt had at least a solid dub, and many of them had ones I consider quite good. Ahem. Rah Xephon, Escalflowne the Movie, Dual!, Full Metal Panic, Nadesico, Hand-Maid May, Noir, Princess Nine, Onegai Teacher, Haibane Renmei, Boogiepop Phantom, Chobits, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Saikano, Last Exile, Vandread, Ai Yori Aoshi, Elfen Lied, His and Her Circumstances, Hellsing, R.O.D TV, Steel Angel Kurumi, Trigun, Azumanga Daioh...*finally takes a breath* Whew And those are just the ones in my collection that I can see from my desk. All of them have dubs that I enjoy and thought were, at least, decent. Some, like GitS, Rah Xephon, and Full Metal Panic (as well as a great many more) I thought were great. Those three in particular I would say I like the American dub more than the Japanese.
Are these just aberations, like many sub-fanatics claim? Or are they instead representatives of the way American dubbing has improved by leaps and bounds since the sadly pitiful efforts of the past decades? Rather than lump all or most dubs in a single pile and call them 'bad', give me some examples. |
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TheVok
Posts: 613 Location: North York, Ontario, Canada |
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But dubs are already given an overwhelming 'chance' in the market, compared to subs. TV airs dubs. Legit streaming features dubs. Movie theatres sometimes feature only dubs (e.g. Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away). If dubbing needs to improve, there are already market forces to move it that way. By contrast, the market does not favour subtitles. |
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TheVok
Posts: 613 Location: North York, Ontario, Canada |
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I never said anything to the effect that I don't want consumers to have a choice. On the contrary, I said they should ... including within media like TV. But they don't. They're stuck with dubs. Yeah, on personal level, I do often wonder, "why even make dubs?" But that's just because dubbing is inherently so much more flawed a process than subtitling, as discussed in my earlier posts. It seems like a lot more work for a lot less effectiveness. You hire a bunch of actors and wind up with something laughable. But I can step back from that and understand there are a lot of fans of dubbing and I wholly support a market built on choice. DVDs are excellent and I have no complaints about them, but individual releases are not reaching as many potential viewers as TV channels like Cartoon Network and YTV can. |
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Keonyn
 Subscriber Posts: 5567 Location: Coon Rapids, MN |
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Alright, fair enough. It is really fairly off topic anyways, people have been venting their frustrations regarding him but enough is enough. My only initial intent was to let Jon know what he was dealing with, the last thing I want is for Studio Reps to come here and face such a barrage. You're right however and at this point I think the discussion regarding Steroid and his motivations should be closed, let's keep this on topic. |
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Dardre
Posts: 166 |
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My question for you is just how will CN and YTV do this? Show the American dub in one time slot and the Japanese in another? Perhaps the dub in the afternoon/evening and the sub at night? But then there will still be people who will be forced to watch the show in a form that they don't want. It's a nice, but ultimately unrealistic, dream. Why? I'll explain: Fact: The United States is an English speaking country. Fact: There are more casual watchers of anime than hard-core fans who prefer the Japanese audio. Fact: CN and YTV depend on advertisers buying slots in order to make money, both profit and to pay for their over-head costs of airing shows. Fact: The more ratings a show has the more CN and YTV can charge advertisers for the slots those companies want to place their ads in. Fact: Current technology does not allow stations like CN and YTV to broadcast a show with two different audio tracks at the same time on the same channel. TV/Cable/Sat. is not like a DVD player that, with the press of a single button, a viewer can switch from one audio track to the next. Fact: Both CN and YTV are for-profit companies. That means that there must be a sizable demand that they can present to potential advertisers before they will be willing to take a chance of losing money by airing subtitled shows. TV/Cable/Sat has always been a case of 'majority rules'; ratings determine whether a show continues or is canceled. There have been national TV stations in the past that have tried to air a subtitled show, and as far as I know, none of them succeeded; ratings dropped like a rock and the stations were flooded with complaints about how those watching 'didn't want to read TV' and the like. There are simply not enough sub fans for a company like CN to take a chance on something like this. While I would love to see subtitled anime on TV, I'm also fully aware that there is simply not enough people out there that would also like that. Rather than rant and rave at the unfairness of it all, I'm just grateful that there are stations airing anime at all. Take what you can get, because sometimes that's all you're going to get. |
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Mephistophilus
 Posts: 200 Location: Fresno, CA, United States |
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One thing that we could possible note about dub and sub tracks appearing on TV in the future is the forcible transfer to "All-digital" networks on February 17, 2009. With the switch to digital networks I would assume it would be easier to apply a "dual-audio" selection to the broadcast in question, eliminating some of the issues at hand. However, this sort of thing would probably still be expensive, and would probably not benefit the distributors (as TV anime airings do not really do so right now).
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CCSYueh
 Posts: 2707 Location: San Diego, CA |
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As somone who religiously watched the interviews with the Japanese cast as often as the American companies will include them--quess what. The Japanese are reading off a script. Many admit to not even looking at it until that day or maybe the night before they'll read thru it. Koyasu, Miki, Yamaguchi-all have scripts, turning pages, reading their lines. This isn't stage acting. They don't bother to memorize their lines. They ad-lib like crazy because they've been typcast so many times they can throw out standard lines in their sleep. In the artbook interview it is mentioned Kappei Yamaguchi apparently kept screwing up & calling Kikyo Akane because she was played by the same VA, but he was the only VA Takahashi asked for. Come on. If my 46 yr-old eyes can read subtitles & hear the cadence of the voices & see the characters moving, everyone here has to have noticed the Japanese actors don't particularly pay attention to lipflaps. They obviously care more about the lines they are saying & the emotions portrayed, because I've seen just about all of them start before or after the animated lips get going. It's Americans that are obsessed with lipflaps. |
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ikillchicken
 Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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But TV Anime is hardly the main place Anime is watched, especially among dedicated fans. Not to mention whenever TV airs Dubs, all alot of ya do is bitch about it. Plus, its not so much that more dubs need to be out there. its that people need to stop whining about them. The more people prefer their Anime dubbed, the more incentive there is for companies to do a better job Dubbing. |
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10円
Posts: 605 |
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That's almost like claiming a carjacker is a "hardcore automobile enthusiast." Being a hardcore pirate does NOT make you a hardcore fan, it makes you a hardcore leech, and the sooner people stop trying to propagate this sort of illogical nonsense the better. |
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ikillchicken
Posts: 7272 Location: Vancouver |
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I actually dissagree here. Its nothing like your example. Being a hardcore pirate mostlikely does make you a hardcore fan even though it also makes you a hardcore leech. Actually, its not so much that it MAKES you a hardcore fan, its just that it mostlikely indicates you are. If youre a hardcore pirate, you download and watch ALOT of Anime. If you watch alot of anime youre mostlikely a hardcore fan. |
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Mohawk52
 Posts: 8202 Location: England, UK |
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