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Answerman - Why Don't Dubs Cast Real Kids?


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Kadmos1



Joined: 08 May 2014
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Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP
PostPosted: Wed Feb 28, 2018 1:51 pm Reply with quote
Joshua Zarate wrote:
I wonder if the English Voice actress for Pino in Ergo Proxy was voiced by a child or a grown woman who can sound quite convincingly as a young child because I won’t be surprised if it was the former. It really did sound like a little girl was in the booth. If not, then my hearing is way off.

When they were recording it, Rachel Hirschfeld was 14 or 15 at the time.
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Green Luthor



Joined: 15 Oct 2003
Posts: 28
PostPosted: Wed Feb 28, 2018 1:52 pm Reply with quote
Famously, Charles Schulz insisted on only using child actors for all the animated Peanuts specials, starting with A Charlie Brown Christmas (one of several reasons CBS was hesitant to produce it in the first place). And, well... you can tell those were not professional actors. (Sally's actor was pretty much recording only a few words at best at a time instead of entire lines. Hence her delivery of "All I want is what. I have coming to me all I want. Is my fair share.")

And to be clear, I'm not knocking the Peanuts cartoons. I watch A Charlie Brown Christmas and It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown every year. But if you want to know why children aren't cast more often to play children, they're a pretty good example of what that can end up sounding like.
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Primus



Joined: 01 Mar 2006
Posts: 2814
Location: Toronto
PostPosted: Wed Feb 28, 2018 1:55 pm Reply with quote
Because most Canadian dubs are unionized, they tend to cast kids more than a lot of U.S. dubs do. The ongoing Beyblade Burst dub features a lot of teenagers, for example.

Boys are difficult to cast on long runners. The original Beyblade's dub had the five leads played by pre-teen/early teenage boys. By the time recording for the series and movie wrapped, at least one of them (the kid that voiced Max) had their voice drop. IIRC, the same one even wound up moving out of the Toronto area, requiring Nelvana to lease out studio time locally to him. That Beyblade series "only" ran for 3 years. Ocean's pilot for One Piece had a very young Andrew Francis as Luffy. Imagine if they got the dub and it was successful. They'd either have deal with his deepened voice or recast the lead.

If we lived in an alternate timeline where the dub wasn't maligned because of its U.S. TV run, recording Card Captor Sakura: Clear Card with its original cast would be difficult. Not only were the actors behind Sakura and Li both children when the dub was recorded, Rhy Huber, the actor behind Li, pretty much quit acting years ago.
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dragonslayer023



Joined: 05 Jun 2015
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 28, 2018 1:59 pm Reply with quote
Dub...directors?
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bhl88



Joined: 02 Oct 2011
Posts: 255
PostPosted: Wed Feb 28, 2018 2:06 pm Reply with quote
dragonslayer023 wrote:
Dub...directors?


Those that dub in different languages I guess.

Is Japan's aging population also another reason why using kids is a rarity?
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catbot158



Joined: 04 Mar 2017
Posts: 232
Location: United States
PostPosted: Wed Feb 28, 2018 2:12 pm Reply with quote
bhl88 wrote:
dragonslayer023 wrote:
Dub...directors?


Those that dub in different languages I guess.

Is Japan's aging population also another reason why using kids is a rarity?

Probably. Maybe. Again, it's more a U.S. thing than in Japan. I believe there are acting troupes in Japan that send their child actors out if an anime production needs a child actor. They have a bigger pool than the U.S.

@dragonslayer023 what do you mean by dub directors? Are you talking about ADR directors?
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H. Guderian



Joined: 29 Jan 2014
Posts: 1255
PostPosted: Wed Feb 28, 2018 2:32 pm Reply with quote
I'd just argue real kids just aren't appealing to listen to at all. That's be my main point.

I recall in Eureka 7 one of the other cast members also did a kid.
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Greed1914



Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 4609
PostPosted: Wed Feb 28, 2018 2:35 pm Reply with quote
Kadmos1 wrote:
Joshua Zarate wrote:
I wonder if the English Voice actress for Pino in Ergo Proxy was voiced by a child or a grown woman who can sound quite convincingly as a young child because I won’t be surprised if it was the former. It really did sound like a little girl was in the booth. If not, then my hearing is way off.

When they were recording it, Rachel Hirschfeld was 14 or 15 at the time.


I suppose that is one advantage of recording in LA since child actors are more common. On one of the commentaries for R.O.D the TV it was mentioned that Rachel was already involved with other non-anime productions. She was in the later seasons of Ikki Tousen that New Generation recorded, and she sounded different, which isn't too surprising since she was in her 20s by then.
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Nonaka Machine Gun B



Joined: 03 Feb 2009
Posts: 825
PostPosted: Wed Feb 28, 2018 2:51 pm Reply with quote
The original Beyblade dub used kids for the main group; the actors portraying Max and Kenny had noticeable voice cracks/changes towards the end. Acting-wise, the early episodes are very rough, but I think all of them got the hang of it by the end (150 episodes).
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Heishi



Joined: 06 Mar 2016
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 28, 2018 2:58 pm Reply with quote
Because most anime might not have suitable content for them to cast KIDS in.
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Sahmbahdeh



Joined: 05 May 2015
Posts: 713
PostPosted: Wed Feb 28, 2018 3:05 pm Reply with quote
Heishi wrote:
Because most anime might not have suitable content for them to cast KIDS in.


I can almost guarantee that is not the reason. You can see child actors all the time in live action horror movies, and most anime that has child characters is not going to be obscenely objetionable anyway. And if it is, the content of the work means very little in the first place, as voice actors generally know only the immediate context of a scene when they go in to voice it, unless they happen to be a main character. It's not at all difficult to shield a child from the content of the work they are acting in.
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explosionforgov



Joined: 16 Jun 2016
Posts: 80
Location: United States of America
PostPosted: Wed Feb 28, 2018 3:09 pm Reply with quote
Lord Oink wrote:
Even if you can't cast kids in America, you can at least cast people (women) who try to sound like kids. So many cartoons these days have kid characters who have voices that don't even attempt to change their 30+ year old voices, like Gravity Falls or the Ducktales reboot. It's so offputting.


With Disney specifically, it's partially due to celebrity stunt casting. People who may not usually watch cartoons might be pulled in due to the casting of an actor or comedian they like. Even films where the main character was voiced by an actual child, like Moana or Coco, the actors playing the supporting characters often received more attention than the stars in interviews, because they were played by people like Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Benjamin Bratt, actors people already knew. While I personally like the voice acting in both shows, I do agree Jason Ritter's voice is too deep to convincingly "sell" Dipper as a preteen boy. His actual acting is fantastic, though.

My favorite instances of an actual child actor in a cartoon is either Aang in Avatar: The Last Airbender, or Steven in Steven Universe. IIRC, Finn in Adventure Time is also played by a child (or was, I'm not sure how old he is now), but he was played by the current actor's older brother in the pilot-- it took so long that his voice had dropped, and he had to be recast.
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Top Gun



Joined: 28 Sep 2007
Posts: 4781
PostPosted: Wed Feb 28, 2018 3:14 pm Reply with quote
Greed1914 wrote:

I suppose that is one advantage of recording in LA since child actors are more common. On one of the commentaries for R.O.D the TV it was mentioned that Rachel was already involved with other non-anime productions. She was in the later seasons of Ikki Tousen that New Generation recorded, and she sounded different, which isn't too surprising since she was in her 20s by then.

Heh, I was going to mention Rachel Hirschfeld in ROD the TV as being the best example of child acting I've ever heard in a dub. Then again both that show and Ergo Proxy were dubbed by Jonathan Klein and New Generation pictures, and they were the top tier of all anime dubbing studios.
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Raebo101



Joined: 17 Mar 2010
Posts: 813
PostPosted: Wed Feb 28, 2018 4:08 pm Reply with quote
Top Gun wrote:
Greed1914 wrote:

I suppose that is one advantage of recording in LA since child actors are more common. On one of the commentaries for R.O.D the TV it was mentioned that Rachel was already involved with other non-anime productions. She was in the later seasons of Ikki Tousen that New Generation recorded, and she sounded different, which isn't too surprising since she was in her 20s by then.

Heh, I was going to mention Rachel Hirschfeld in ROD the TV as being the best example of child acting I've ever heard in a dub. Then again both that show and Ergo Proxy were dubbed by Jonathan Klein and New Generation pictures, and they were the top tier of all anime dubbing studios.


You're mostly correct, though Taliesin Jaffe was the ADR Director of R.O.D. the TV. I know this because R.O.D. the TV has what is probably my favorite English Dub of all time.
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MarshalBanana



Joined: 31 Aug 2014
Posts: 5498
PostPosted: Wed Feb 28, 2018 4:39 pm Reply with quote
bhl88 wrote:
dragonslayer023 wrote:
Dub...directors?


Those that dub in different languages I guess.

Is Japan's aging population also another reason why using kids is a rarity?
This seems to be fairly common going all the way back to the 60s, look at Mayumi Tanakas work before One Piece, she voices a ton of children.
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