Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Is Anime Dialogue Recorded After Animation Is Done?
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MarshalBanana
 Posts: 5484 |
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dragonrider_cody
Posts: 2541 |
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I always find it a bit amusing when I see someone complain about lip flaps in an English dub, but they completely ignore when the Japanese track has the same issue. I've seen a number of Funimation and Sentai dubs where the audio was synced better to the animation than the Japanese version.
Also, it's worth noting that this isn't entirely due to the lip syncing ability of the actors, though that this a big part of it. A lot of digital manipulation takes place afterwards to help the audio and video sync up better. Not to mention, I think most of us are aware of instances where the dialogue was slightly altered to better fit the lip flaps. |
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Sakagami Tomoyo
 Posts: 943 Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
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I suspect it's what the audience is used to seeing emphasised and therefore expect. On the whole, Japanese animation prioritises detailed art at the cost of detail of movement, and Western animation prioritises detailed movement over detail of art. Western audiences have come to expect to be able to practically lip-read cartoons, Japanese audiences tend not to care about that but expect other kinds of details. Of course, many (most?) Westerns who watch anime get used to it, but for some it just feels too wrong.
I'll happily accept that an anime based on an otome game can be very well-made, but even if it is "barely a harem", there's just a very limited number of people it would be of interest to.
It could be that the disconnect between mouth movement and speech is less jarring when it's not your native language you're hearing. (Or maybe it's just fanboys being blind to the flaws that exist in their precious Japanese animation.) |
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jymmy
 Posts: 1244 |
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Depends on the show. For some it's the exact opposite, with the obvious example being any show where a significant proportion or even the entire show is ad libbed and animated to the voice acting. |
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DerekL1963
 Subscriber Posts: 1119 Location: Puget Sound |
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I suspect that happens because an English speaking audience is familiar with English lip flaps, and knows practically nothing about Japanese lip flaps. |
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HeeroTX
Posts: 2046 Location: Austin, TX |
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I was actually referring to the opposite (ie. that you can adjust how long a given frame of animation is on screen). Considering that anime is often "on the 2s and 3s" you should be able to adjust flaps with minor variance to the final cut without much trouble (unless it's a REALLY high action scene). And I'm saying western animation could easily do the same. Here's some old DBZ footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHsnba8-vvI&t=103s A LOT of anime (like this) doesn't bother with "lip" movements 90% of the time so the difference between various sounds simply isn't animated, it's just the mouth opening and closing. Try saying "What do you want" by only moving your mouth up and down (with no lip protrusion at all). If you're able to do it, I expect it feels highly unnatural. But you get that in anime all the time, probably western animation (like Adventure Time or Rick and Morty) too, but I don't watch a lot of US animation anymore. South Park does this, which is one reason they can turn episodes around REALLY fast.
I actually imagine a LOT of it has to do with trying to keep up with reading subtitles. You simply can't watch the mouths closely if you're tracking subs. |
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mangamuscle
Posts: 2658 Location: Mexico |
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I think that if you present this idea to any animation studio they (The inbetweeners, the key animator, the character designer and the director) will put you in chains and slap you.
Most of the people in the world do not expect lips to match the sound produced since: 1) Animation is done before the voice acting. 2) Even when english voice acting was done before the animation, when it is dubbed to other languages any mouth movements are lost since i.e. "Good morning" and "Buenos dias" require different movements of the mouth. |
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SWAnimefan
Posts: 634 |
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It's really down to direction and the animation involved.
With pre-animation voice recording, most of the time it's purposely to match not only the voices of the actors but also capturing facial expressions, which is a technique Disney uses often. This adds to a character design in giving them more natural expressions and mouth movement than simple lip flaps. But as someone mentioned previously, this also has a drawback in that if there is a change of a script after the animation is completed, the animation team has to go back to rework it. Which is a loss in time and money. Fortunately, with modern CGI tools, it can be a fast rework. Unlike a traditional animation team, whom would've needed weeks to correct. So if this practice is likely used for a movie with a huge budget (like a Disney movie). With post-animation voice recording, that we see with most animations (especially in Japanese anime), it's a quick process. Just a few hours in the recording booth, actors could complete a season or two of an animation. Thus being cheaper. Though the downside, the script and animation is locked in stone. So there is no room for improvisation or creativity for the actors if they thought up ideas. That in itself is a negative, unlike a live-action, creativity is limited to the lip flap duration. Personally, while it's more expensive, I find the pre-animation gives a nicer performance. But in the world of anime, the post-works a bit better. Especially with their limited budgets. |
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HeeroTX
Posts: 2046 Location: Austin, TX |
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"Animation staff" wouldn't need to do ANYTHING. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Raiz5MAb98Q&t=1m30s Clearly NONE of this was animated to match the audio. Is it perfect? no, of course not, but this was made entirely by some amateur fan for "fun". A pro timing editor could easily do the same. You just change the video timing so that instead of mouth animation frames going on: 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19, 22 You could make them fire on frames: 1, 2, 5, 8, 9, 13, 15, 18, 23 And thus get the mouth to move on different audio queues. There are limits certainly, but if you know in advance what you're dealing with you can limit the complicated parts. |
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yuna49
 Posts: 3804 |
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The voice acting for both Red Garden and Kurenai was performed before the animations were made. I've only watched a bit of Red Garden, so I can't comment on that, but this approach certainly lent a degree of spontaneity to the voice acting in Kurenai that is pretty uncommon. There are even multi-way conversations where the actors talk over each other as people often do in real life. The best example of this is the scene in episode three when Murasaki visits Shinkarou's school and gets into a heated discussion with him and his classmate and osananajimi Yuuno (whom little Murasaki calls "that vile woman"). Last edited by yuna49 on Tue Jul 11, 2017 3:20 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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belvadeer
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Exactly. |
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6897 Location: Kazune City |
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I always find it funny when the purists claim that Japanese audio tracks are superior because the animation was "made for" Japanese voicing. Clearly they're not aware that the Japanese VAs undergo essentially the same "talking over pre-existing animation" process that dub VAs do.
In the translated liner notes from the Madlax singles, Toshiyuki Morikawa points out, "There was color in the film from the time that we were recording Madlax -- it was a great environment to act in. I believe that this, too, was thanks to the extraordinary efforts of Director Mashimo's staff." From that, we can infer that recording to finalized/colored drawings is more of an exception than a rule, at least in Morikawa's experience.
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belvadeer
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Sub purists generally don't have much working intelligence beyond seeing Japan as a magical holy land of perfection. I could tell you stories of the amusing weeb ignorance I've seen on GameFAQs and YouTube. Many really don't understand the voice acting process whatsoever, but delude themselves into thinking they do just because they watch anime and play JRPGs in the so-called "superior language". EDIT: In the future, I'm keeping my opinions to myself. I'm tired of being the only one called out on my thoughts on extreme sub purists. Last edited by belvadeer on Wed Jul 12, 2017 11:05 am; edited 1 time in total |
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crosswithyou
 Posts: 2895 Location: California |
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HA! Sorry, but you're wrong. It's not just "a few hours" of work. In fact, for a half-hour episode, seiyuu block out 5 hours of their schedule. Of course the recording may not take that long, but they're usually in the studio for at least 4 hours an episode, even if they only have one line. Some accommodations may be made depending on the specific person's schedule, but in general, it's 5 hours in the studio for a 24-minute episode. They also record just one episode a week so a one-cour season will take at least 3 months to record. The script is also not "locked in stone." They do a test run of the recording, then the director, writer, and other staff may make some changes to the script or give instructions to the seiyuu for specific lines. Depending on the series and the atmosphere of the recording, there may be chances to ad-lib. Sometimes the script even directs the seiyuu to ad-lib something. Inoue Kazuhiko did a lot of (non-instructed) ad-libbing for Nyanko Sensei in Natsume Yuujinchou, and his fellow cast members have mentioned how sometimes what he says during the actual recording may be different than what he said during rehearsal.
Yup. It's very rare for seiyuu to have the opportunity to record to finished animation. |
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Apashi
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Hm, somehow I already knew this, but thinking about it now really clears some things up. I always found the mouth movements for both English and Japanese dubs were off when the characters were singing. It doesn't seem to be half as bad anymore, but now I'm sure that's because of computer graphics. I actually always liked the way this process looked better in general. The animation doesn't look as 'forced' to me the anime way. But it's much more obvious when there is more artistry involved with a voice like singing. Now I understand why the Disney characters could move their mouths with the song but the anime girls couldn't as well. But still, I think it has a cool effect when it isn't totally synced up. It's fine with me.
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