Forum - View topicHey, Answerman! [2010-03-19]
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Shay Guy
 Posts: 2324 |
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What was the purpose of these two lines? No, really, what? Your own satisfaction at getting to laugh at someone? It's not like it burst out before you realized what you were doing; you had to think about it, compose it, type it up, look it over, and hit submit. Accidental rudeness I understand easily enough. I do it probably way more often than I should. Deliberate, calculated rudeness? Going out of your way to belittle (not criticize) someone? What's the point? |
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LordRedhand
 Posts: 1472 Location: Middle of Nowhere, Indiana |
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Well I'm sniggering at the question as normally a "marketing director" doesn't ask a web columnist for where to find someone (or in one case a company...) Simply because they can and should have researched them (and for the artists cases publishers) to find and already getting in contact with them if they were serious.
There are also communities of freelance character artists that can be contacted online to facilitate it faster and may even have more contact information there. That question just speaks more of a lack of research and practically wanting someone else to do their job for them. I mean seriously they would have had a better response if they got in contact with Viz or Funimation or any other company that prints manga than asking here. |
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Levitz9
 Posts: 1022 Location: Puerto Rico |
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The question of manga-libel reminded me of the sad case of Kentaro Yabuki's To-Luv-Ru manga: he designed one of the characters (I think it was Haruna) off of his wife. Once he found out she was cheating on him, thought, well, he was devastated, and he started phasing the character out. What's more, she actually wanted to sue him for artistic similarities: Yabuki flat-out prematurely ended To-Luv-Ru just to avoid that!
Isn't it sad, Sacchin? 
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littlegreenwolf
 Posts: 4796 Location: Seattle, WA |
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Wow, I had no interest in the title before, but now knowing that lovely bit of drama I'm all for trying out the series to see the progress of this Haruna character. |
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Takeyo
 Posts: 736 |
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Brian's a kitten compared to Zac. Half the fun of his columns was his acerbic writing style (the other half was bunnies). |
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vashfanatic
 Posts: 3495 Location: Back stateside |
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The first answer pretty much summarized my opinions beautifully. Kudos.
I guess I've never found subtitles distracting, but then again. I'm one of those people who watches TV with the close captioning on. I read fast. Well, and at this point my Japanese is good enough that I only half use the subtitles anyway. That said, some subtitles leave a lot to be desires. It's not just typos or being too big on the screen. I love the original voice cast of Baccano!, but some of Funimation's choices with subtitles baffle me. They keep in the Japanese honorifics, so people call each other "-san" and "-kun" in spite of it being America in the 30s. Seriously, how hard would it be to make them match the location? (See Gankutsuou's use of French titles) When two characters are speaking over each other, there's no effort made to distinguish which character is which line of dialogue; they're both at the bottom of the screen, one on top of the other, in the same font style. And then the use of white, nearly-borderless text makes it difficult to read them, and indeed, since the subtitles are actually placed directly over other white text in the episode previews, those are literally unreadable. I mean, I watched Baccano! enough times in fansubs to have chunks of dialogue memorized, plus again, I only half use them anyway, but I could easily see why a person would want to switch to the English dub, cheesy accents and all. So yes, you need good subtitles! Otherwise you might screw over a fantastic Japanese dub. /end rant |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18461 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Um, no. Absolutely not. I'm nowhere near as good at placing seiyuu by their voices as a I am with English VAs, but there are several that I can consistently recognize specifically because they always have the same tone and inflection to their voice and never seem to make a serious effort to vary it. Granted, there are English VAs who are equally guilty of always sounding the same (Peter Doyle immediately springs to mind, and Steve Blum earlier in his career), but in my experience they just as regularly make an effort to vary their vocal styles and are much more prone to using appropriate accents. |
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loka
 Posts: 373 Location: Pittsburgh, PA |
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sign of a really bad dub: Random phrases that are not in the original, completely unneeded, but that the dub company felt needed to be inserted for English audiences. [obviously, Ghost Stories and its ilk excluded.]
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6901 Location: Kazune City |
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So would that include little cultural explanations like the bathhouse line in Spirited Away?
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OnanRulz
 Posts: 132 Location: The MPLS |
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New to the column? |
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Teriyaki Terrier
 Posts: 5689 |
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Probably he is. I've known people that stated they want to work on anime shows and such and 98% of the time, either they were joking or gave up because of all the hard work and dedication/talent needed. I certainly didn't think the guy was serious and actually enjoy Brian's commentary. |
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CCSYueh
 Posts: 2707 Location: San Diego, CA |
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Let's put it in a different light. Can you imagine some guy sending a letter to People Magazine asking them how to get Johnny Depp to do a commercial for their company? If the person is representing a reputable company, don't you hope they understand asking for top talent takes top dollar & also enough research to know they need to contact someone who actually does business with the people in question? Would you ask Fangoria to put you in touch with Stephen King or Stephen King's publisher? |
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DTJB
 Posts: 671 Location: Dubuque, IA |
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...
... ... I have so much disrespect for Raptor right now. P.S. Lilith is HOT!!! |
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larinon
 Posts: 992 Location: Midland, TX |
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I believe you are right, Key. Listening to Japanese dubs, you start to recognize the voices in the same way that you recognize English voices. A lot of the time the seiyuu, specifically the women, are using their "head voice" for younger characters and their "chest voice" for older characters. From what I've experienced the male seiyuu vary their voices even less. That said, there's still a lot that voice actors in both Japan and the US can do in their normal voices that can make an impact in the performance, and that is ultimately why we tend to like or dislike them. Still, one of the main reasons that I'll dislike an English dub is the instance where voice actors are trying and failing to sound much younger than they are. This is where I see Japanese voice actresses in particular succeeding much more often; it's much easier to believe their voice is that of a teenage girl than listening to an English actress trying to sound much more bouncy and often too airy. Probably this is something that I would lose if I were much more familiar with Japanese people and their voices/speech patterns outside of anime. Also, CCSYueh, I think you are spot on in your repsonse to Shay Guy. |
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CCSYueh
Posts: 2707 Location: San Diego, CA |
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First off, there is a slight dif between the US & Japan in the approach to VA's. Just watch the Baccano promos where they are proclaiming an all-star cast, listing VA's with the character pics in the commercials. It's a bit more like in-front of camera work here. You don't pay Jude Law to not be Jude Law. Our animated flicks are probably closer--Companies don't pay name Hollywood stars like Jim Carrey or Eddie Murphy to voice characters the audience can't tell are being voiced by name brand actors. You don't pay Kappei Yamaguchi to not sound like Kappei Yamaguchi. That said, you need to check out Takehito Koyasu. Honestly. He's my fav because he does manage a lot of variety to his delivery & he is excellent at a lot of stufff-from drama to comedy. He seems to go all out & part of my comparison on the dub is "Is the English dub actor putting out as much?" Andrew Watton in Gungrave played Ballardbird pretty much just as psycho as Koyasu did. Chris Patton did not take Flamesoul to the extremes Koyasu did in Orphen 2. Yeah, you can talk all you want about artistic vision & all, but I side with the idea that the voice acting is part of the original vision so the dubs at at least seem to pay some attention to the original are better to me in at least that light. That isn't to say I haven't preferred some dubs that are different. I've never really watched Hellsing in Japanese (Beyond Luke Valentine's bits) because the dub is so great. I prefer Bebop's English dub to the Japanese (Never really been a big Koichi Yamadera fan). Some of the VA's who are popular in Japan do nothing for me. I like Fukuyama, but Miyano hasn't really impressed me because, outside of Light Yagami, I've only seen him in pretty bland hero/lead roles that don't allow much room for acting. It's the character roles like Morita's Claire in Baccano that allow these guys to show off way more than whether they can sound so non-descript that the listener doesn't recognize them. Hell, when I was 15 (1975), I could name at least 2 dozen actors just by their voices. I disagree about the plot/character bit. They've tightened things up, but Japan still has more of a fondness for slice of life sort of stuff which really is more character-driven. I know I was wading thru a book of Japanese folklore & a lot of the tales just seemed so aimless compared to western tales (reminded me of Steve Martin's tirade at John Candy in Planes, Trains & Automobiles). There is usually less "waste" in our stories, but the Japanese don't necessarily see it as waste. As for the characters not being defined, like our stuff, there's a certain amount of shorthand. We put glasses on a character & he's a geek. They put glasses on a character & maybe it's a geek & maybe it's the really brainy guy who maybe feels superior to everyone. Or if it's yaoi, it's the glasses fetish stuff. We have the fat kid who's maybe a bully or maybe picked on, etc., etc., etc. The stereotypes exist to allow shortcuts in the plotting, but it doesn't mean there isn't character. It's simply a starting point upon which the character can be expanded. Take DBZ (your example). Vegeta is so fricken much fun & hardly one-dimensional. He's the prince of a warrior race brought up from his birth to believe he's the best of the strongest, most feared race, only to hit the reality that is Freeza. Instead of Daddy just squashing Freeza, Vegeta is given over as a hostage, submitted to god knows what sort of humiliation (doesn't Freeza's court seem to be the bullying type?). Most kids I know (& it appears Vegeta felt the same) expect mommy &/or daddy to save them. Vegeta's didn't. No wonder he's shown dismissing his planet--they couldn't even save a little boy. His only option at that point is becoming strong enough to avenge himself & his people by destroying Freeza...and he fails. That obviously hurt bad. And it colored most of his actions in the story. Piccalo also has to come up against his past & his present a few times |
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