Forum - View topicWhat's the Deal with Chicks Voicing over Guy Chars?
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x_silversurfer
 Posts: 163 Location: Hotel California |
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We've all seen an anime or two where a woman (voice actor) plays a male lead. Naruto, DBZ, Fruits Basket, etc, etc...
Does anyone know why this is going on? I know there was some form of theater in Feudal Japan that had men play the roles of woman, but that was "live action" and not anime. This struck me as odd when I was watching Fruits Basket and I noticed that one of the male characters sounded just like one of the sailor scouts off of Sailor Moon. I looked it up, and sure enough, the same person that plays the male lead in Fruits Basket had also played Sailor Mercury in Sailor Moon... But why?!?! Any assistance would be greatly appreciated! |
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6900 Location: Kazune City |
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Convenience and labor laws, I'm guessing--if they need a voice for a boy who's young or feminine-sounding, it's easier to have a 29-year-old woman play it than to have a 15-year-old boy play it, since teenagers have school and other obstacles to working. US dubs are starting to do this, maybe to be "more faithful" or something; the male leads in Abenobashi and Peacemaker are played by Luci Christian.
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Azathrael
 Posts: 745 |
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It's probably easier to hire a woman than to find a man who can do a male teenage voice. Most men simply cannot reproduce their teenage years' voice with the deep voices they have now while there are a lot of women who imitate teenage boys quite well. I'm not sure if there are any "traditional" reasons why women sometimes take on male character roles, but I don't think such traditions exist in anime. :)
Can't you do something about your title? Why on earth would you refer women as "chicks"? |
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hentai4me
 Posts: 1313 Location: England. Robin is so Cute! |
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its hardly a unique thing, Bart from the Simpsons is played by a female as well.
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fighterholic
Posts: 9193 |
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That's right, Nancy Cartwright. To make men sound young enough, they need a high enough voice which in certain instances, men cannot do. Sometimes that might be to make it comedic too. |
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P€|\||§_|\/|ast@
 Posts: 3498 Location: IN your nightmares |
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Azathrael suggested that there were probably not any traditional reasons why women voice male characters, and I am not sure of the existence of any motives based on history or culture, but I do think there is a certain typecasting involved in this phenomenon.
For instance there are female seiyuu who almost exclusively do male characters, not simply because they have masculine voices but I think because of circumstance. As with many things anime, there are certain cliches that seem to stick and continue to endure in order to develop its styling and presentation. And the presence of women as male characters is just one of those many aspects. Also if you notice the list of most prolific cast members on ANNs encyclopedia, you'll see that 4 of the top 5 are male. That is because there are so many more female voice actors than male voice actors. Which means males get more roles, but it also creates a shortage of male actors to actually do male voices. |
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hentai4me
Posts: 1313 Location: England. Robin is so Cute! |
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conversely Shakesperean acting used young boys to play women as they had to vocal capacity to play them and women werent allowed to.
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Deltakiral
 Posts: 3338 Location: Glendora, CA (Avatar Hei from Darker than BLACK) |
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Yea it nothing new, Ed and Al are both voice by women in the Japanese version. Also beside Bart, the one that is in my mind Tommy from the rugrats, he is voice by a girl name E.G. or something like that. I think it because women are more capable of playing younger women because their voice are lower.
Till next time, Delta Kiral |
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Tenchi
 Posts: 4536 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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One of the more interesting examples of women playing male characters is Mayo Suzukaze, who is the Japanese voice of Kenshin Himura, because her acting background wasn't primarily voice acting. She was actually an actress in the famous Takarazuka theatrical troupe, where all of the roles, male and female, are played by women.
She even played a woman playing a man (Oscar) in the Takarazuka stage version of Rose of Versailles. |
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darkhunter
 Posts: 2992 Location: Los Angelas |
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They sound horrible, imo. Kenshin too and I didn't like the voice as nearly as the dub. A lot of female can play male "kid" character like Naruto, but Kenshin isn't a kid. A lot of my friends was confuse by Kenshin's "famale trying to sound like a male but sound horse" voice too. |
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Kruszer
 Posts: 7994 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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They do it sometimes to fit the personality of the character for example Quatre from Gundam Wing is voiced by a female in the Japanese version. I'm not intending to sexist or anything, but it's done in some cases like these so that the character sounds more well...un-masculine (*Cough*femmy*cough*), compassionate, or frail and vulnerable in some cases. Also the issue that mens voices aren't usually suitable for playing kids successfully is valid as well.
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camelot187757
 Posts: 426 Location: The Nacirema Dream (17 and counting Asuka) |
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It may be more fitting for the charcater. A women can produce a non-bass voice for a young boy bettr than a male can. Heck, Regina King does the voice for both Huey and Riley for the Boondocks.
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Highwayman
Posts: 12 |
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Once your voice drops its hard for guys to get their voice back up in that register. Another reason is to ensure consistancy, if you use a real kid for the voice you better be doing a short series because his voice will eventually change and you have no way of knowing when that will happen. Also kids just tend to be crappy actors, don't get me wrong there are some out there but not many.
As many people have mentioned this is very common in animated series both here and in Japan |
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x_silversurfer
Posts: 163 Location: Hotel California |
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A lot of you guys brought up the dubbing in American shows and anime, but I was primarily refering to the original Japanese voives. In Dragon Ball Z, Goku isn't a "boy" character anymore, He is a man, an he gets pretty old by the end of the show, and yet they still have the same woman palying him, this might be for continuity reasons to make the voice sound similar, but I was wondering if Japanese people couldn't tell what was a boy's voice and a woman's voice...
If not that would be pretty bad. Oh, and I don't know why, but Fruits Basket is hard for me to watch because of the woman's voice that plays the "rat" boy. Is it just me that is having a hard time with all this? |
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jaybug39
 Posts: 552 Location: Oregon, Is it FOOTBALL yet? |
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Be grateful that there are women who are doing VA work. I think the lack of talented women has been the real problem with dub versions of anime.
Oh, here's one for you. Peter Pan was played by a woman on Broadway! Yes, Major Anthony Nelson from I Dream of Jeannie, his real life mom was Peter Pan. How many Haley Joel Osment's are there? How many young boy's can do effective VA work. And they do have the problem of growing up and having their voice change. Whereas a woman's voice isn't going to change. More reliability there you see. |
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