Forum - View topicKarin Dub
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Jedi General
 Posts: 2485 Location: Tucson, AZ |
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So, has anyone had a chance to check out the English dub of Karin yet? I have, and it's just what we all expected from the wonderful folks at Odex. It's "fantastic", if you get my drift.
The voices fit some of the characters in my opinion (namely Karin and Ren), but the acting is incredibly flat. It's quite laughable, in fact the very first line out of Karin's mouth caused me to burst out laughing. How the name "Usui" is butchered is quite funny too. I've got to give the VAs credit for trying, but even so they are terribly inept and it shows. Sometimes it sounded as though they were reading the lines for the very first time. Even Newtype USA gave mention to the poor dub, calling it "bland and inconsistent." It makes me sad that Geneon gave us Karin fans such a poor dub, when the dub of When They Cry (which might not even sell as well as Karin) is actually pretty good. |
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Martin_g
Posts: 22 |
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I guess I'm not quite as critical. I thought that most of the voice acting was fair. I've definately heard better, but over all I'd probably give the dub a grade of B-
Usui's voice seem to be a pretty good representation. I thought Boogey, karin, ren, and maki were all decent. Actually I liked the parents better than in the japanese. Probably because they made use of distinctive accents. I don't know if specific accents are very often employed by J VAs, but since i don't speak the language it's tough to pick up on them. Even so, I almost always enjoy the J VAs more than the american and overall, Karin is no exception. The big dissapointments for me were anju and usui's Mom. Anju's voice really lacked the right melancholic tone and Usui's mom sounded more like a teenager than a mom. Listening to the dub is nice for a variety, but if shareing the show with friends I would definately encourage using the subtitles. |
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6897 Location: Kazune City |
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I thought that show was called "Karen," at least based on the way everyone pronounces the female lead's name in the English dub
 Aside from that, I found the dub to be at least tolerable, based on just the first episode. The inexperience in the production shows, but I found most of the voices to be at least in the ballpark. Maybe up in the bleachers instead of at home plate, but it's still there.
The Euro-ish accents for Karin's parents worked, and I'd say the core family/friends were acted acceptably enough--it's some of the secondary students and teachers that sounded the worst. I'll have to watch the rest of the disc to see how other voices stack up. Usui's mom, though, is supposed to be almost like a teenager, since Karin and other characters comment that "she's so yooouuung!" So while it may be a bit painful, I'll continue on with the dub. One thing I did note, which I also saw with Fantastic Children, was the positioned subtitles for signs--it looked a little rough at times, but I always like to see that on DVDs. Now if only Ocean, Media-Blasters, Funimation, BangZoom, NGP, etc. would get with the program... One aside, I just hope that New Generation Pictures isn't going to go the route of Coastal Carolina and get self-priced out of the market, since they don't seem to be doing much aside from Ergo Proxy and the Hellsing OVA. |
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Iwatch2muchanime
 Posts: 1291 |
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Karen is a hentai, so if you really want to watch "Karen" go find it and watch it. Not that bad, not good, but not bad.
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Randall Miyashiro
 Posts: 2451 Location: A block away from Golden Gate Park |
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Position? Do you mean like Rightstuf's Kare Kano? This is pretty cool, although one weird side note is if you zoom via you DVD player (in order to fit a 16:9 screen) the subs will be misplaced. When DVDs are not anamorphic but widescreen (like Saikano and Betterman) I like to do this, and it retains the smaller subs relative to the bigger screen. I did this on an episode of Kare Kano to create the (Funi Dragon Ball style) cropping widescreen, and found that some of the goofy colored text was hard to read when it appeared in odd areas! I usually don't zoom to fit via cropping the top and the bottom though. The kana for Karin is indeed Ka Ri N. I didn't watch the dub but I think the little recap before the second episode didn't have the subs. It's not a big deal since the 3rd and 4th episodes have the same little recap. |
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the Rancorous
 Posts: 2248 Location: Hunting the Dragon in Gransys |
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Well, I have definitely heard better dubs, but i definitely didn't find Karin's dub to be "laughable," that award goes to D-Right's dubs of Gunparade March and Iria
Having said that, I was indeed dissappointed since I have just recently watched the awesome Geneon dubs of Black Lagoon and Ergo Proxy. But... I'm not too familiar with how Geneon does things, so maybe they went through a completely different agency/whatever for Karin, I don't know. However, it wasn't that bad IMO. I read the first couple of volumes of the manga before seeing the first volume of the anime and I agree with Zalis that Usui's mom is supposed to be pretty much like a teenager, that's the impression that I got from her anyways. Overall, I think that the dub is mediocre thus far: who knows, it might improve along the way, I guess we'll see .
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Jedi General
Posts: 2485 Location: Tucson, AZ |
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Well, I guess I may be a bit overly critical of this dub, based on the comments from others. Perhaps my hopes were too high and upon hearing it got an Odex dub I was crushed and may have over analyzed the dub. Anyway, I am indeed disappointed with this dub. Especially after hearing the Black Lagoon dub and other recent great Geneon dubs. Despite all that, I still think the dub is laughable based upon the first volume. I really did laugh at it several times and even my brother and sister laughed at it too before I told them what I personally thought of the dub. But, there's always the chance it could get better. I'll still be buying this series anyway, since I already love it in Japanese. I'm just unhappy that I can't enjoy it nearly as much in English.
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18404 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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I'm going to be commenting more on this in my review when it comes up (almost done with it as I write this), but the breakdown as I see it:
OVERALL: Substandard. About on par with Odex's dub of Zipang, in that a few roles are good but the sucky ones drag the overall quality down. Certainly better than the wholly awful Fantastic Children, though. I don't have a problem with Karin's name getting pronounced in the English fashion rather than the Japanese fashion, because that's how you would pronounce that in English. KARIN: Enh. Something about the voice just felt off in the first couple of episodes - an odd resonance or echo effect, perhaps - that probably wasn't the actress's fault. The actual performance didn't impress me at all, although I'll admit it did seem to get better as the volume wore on. KENTA: Did not like his voice, thought the performance was amateurish. KENTA'S MOTHER: Same as Kenta, but not quite as bad. PARENTS: The dub's high point. At least as good as the originals if not better. BOOGIE-KUN: Not really the same style as the original but fully acceptable. KARIN'S BOSS: The other good performance. REN and ANJU: Acceptable but not impressive. MAKI: Barely tolerable. NURSE: Bad. RANDOM SUPPORTING ROLES: Vary from acceptable to bad. |
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