Forum - View topicNEWS: Anairis Quiñones to No Longer Voice Yoruichi in Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War Anime's Englis
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penguintruth
 Posts: 8503 Location: Penguinopolis |
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I don't believe a long-running role of quality like Wendee Lee's as Yoruichi should have been recast to begin with, since she clearly wanted to continue to play the role from the beginning. However, as soon as it was recast, they shouldn't have taken it back from Anairis Quiñones, especially at the behest of a reactionary crowd. The dub studio needs to stick by their guns.
On top of this, Lee has acted very unprofessional on social media, disappointing me, a big fan of hers, greatly. She's tarnishing her legacy by behaving this way. |
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SpacemanHardy
Posts: 2511 |
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This was a sad way to find out what kind of person Wendee Lee really is. Never meet your heroes, kids.
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light turner
Posts: 190 |
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I'm mostly surprised Viz actually listened to their fans for once and brought back the original VA.
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Somer-_-
 Posts: 1023 Location: Canada |
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Lee should have never been replaced in the first place but I don’t understand why she went on a tirade AFTER she got everything she wanted.
Edit:
Also I find it hard to believe otherwise. Last edited by Somer-_- on Wed Oct 25, 2023 5:11 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4660 |
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Yeah, this would have been a time to just appreciate that she was back in the role and ignore if others were bothered by it. |
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Andrew Wonderful
Posts: 9 |
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It would be nice if voice actors had more protection from these kinds of recasts. I recall Michelle Ruff talking about ageism in the industry right around the time Persona 3 Reload revealed it's new English cast and she was no longer voicing Yukari and how people were upset the entire cast was changed in general.
I assume Laura Bailey was replaced purely for money reasons given she's moved on to bigger things and rarely voices anime anymore, especially if it's not a Union dub. The last thing I recall seeing her in was the Fruits Basket remake. I do hope it really was just a scheduling conflict like Wendee Lee said and it wasn't anymore else like she was forced to step down either due to her age or people behind the scenes not wanting her to voice a dark skinned character.
I think it was because you had some VAs expressing their disappointment she accepted the role back after Quinones started. I saw one of them said Lee was shitty for accepting the role back after it was recast and she should have simply accepted the fact she was no longer playing Yoruichi anymore and to move on. It probably stuck a nerve for her to see her peers say stuff like that. |
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ZiharkXVI
Posts: 388 |
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I'll bet the studio wishes they hadn't wasted time recasting her in the first place. Now they get pointless controversy.
I would criticize her actions after the fact, but after being arbitrarily recast for some unknown reason (why not recast everyone?), it's difficult to really say a person should react gracefully. She obviously really cares about the part. People sometimes react badly to adversity - and if we're honest with ourselves, we've done it too. |
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MFrontier
Posts: 14216 |
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I'm of the opinion that they didn't need to recast Yoruichi. I know that to some she's viewed as a WoC but to me she comes off more Japanese compared to other characters in Bleach, particularly in this season alone, who are more distinctly coded black (and have VA's to match for the dub). So I never saw an issue with having Wendee Lee stay in the role.
That being said, they did recast with Anairis, and suddenly pivoting and bringing back Wendee when Anairis had probably already done all her recording was extremely bad form, especially with Wendee's reaction to it. I mean, to me Wendee is Yoruichi in dub form, but there was a way better and more respectful way of handling it and it basically screwed over Anairis. Not only does she lose the role but someone she genuinely respected turns out to be someone not so worthy of that respect (and from what I've seen on twitter, this has sadly always been the case with Wendee). So basically this was just a badly handled mess on several levels.
Though the funny thing is they actually brought her back for an interview on Reloaded with the new dub cast. I think Yuri is in the game as Yukari's dad so I wonder if they have her voicing somebody else in the new dub. |
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FireChick
 Subscriber Posts: 2497 Location: United States |
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Who exactly said she shouldn't have accepted the role back after it was recast? All the other VAs were doing is consoling Anairis and showing their support (And not in the "Oh, the mean lady took your role!" way, in the "Oh, it sucks you got put in this weird situation" way), and Lee for some reason got mad at them for...just showing sympathy for Anairis, not even mentioning or attacking Lee in any way. I literally saw the whole thing go down on Twitter with my own eyes. |
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Turtleboy76
Posts: 166 |
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Legacy doesn't seem to mean more than diversity these days. Like roles in the Simpsons got replaced after like 30 years and iconic voices were changed and it was weird. Wendee I think deserves her legacy role but she handled it poorly. Right up there with Helena and her Bayonetta scandal.
Can we just let the right voice, voice the right character in the future regardless of colour? I mean most of these anime characters are Japanese anyway right? |
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KitKat1721
 Posts: 976 |
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Sudden recasts post-hiring due to creative or logistical differences between the studio, client, and/or actor happens. Probably a lot more than most people are aware of because it's often behind closed doors before the project or work is out and available to the public. It sucks obviously but it's often out of an actor's control and just an unfortunate part of the business. And I won't get into the debate on whether the initial recasting was the right decision or not since I'm not a Bleach viewer to begin with, nor do I think it's a productive conversation in ANN forums specifically.
I will say though, once you've made a decision like this and it's out there, studios need to stand by their cast. It's very obvious even not keeping up Bleach that much that Anairis received more vitriol online post-initial announcement compared to some other cast replacements (you can make all the arguments you want about the other cases "making more sense" because of union status, or the previous actor being upfront about stepping down, but it's still undeniable she got the worst of it). And by all accounts it looks like the powers that be, whether the client or studio, backtracked due to fan blowback or internal demand. The latter I think is less likely because I don't think a VA has that much sway in a situation like this. I can understand some Bleach fans being happy to have their original VA back, but I hope enough fans read the room and see the bigger picture here. An industry where creatives seemingly cave to the loudest (and often ugliest) portion of a fandom is not where you want things to be. No matter who the decision came down to (Viz, Studiopolis), I'm extremely disappointed in how this was handled as I believe it sets a downright ugly precedent. To address the Wendee Lee fallout, I just cannot imagine being a long time veteran director in the industry (not just a working VA), and thinking the correct response to others showing condolences to their own peer for a very unusually public and swift recasting situation is to passive-aggressively make it about you and be like "mistakes happen, your friend will live" and other equally unprofessional responses that can be viewed as mean girl pettiness at best, thinly-veiled threats to their career at worst. Frankly embarrassing when it costs nothing to either have some class or if you can’t manage that say nothing at all. I think this whole thing is extra disappointing because I had assumed when this story first dropped that Wendee Lee has been in this business long enough and has been successful in said business long enough in higher positions leading her own projects that I doubted she would have gone to the studio or whatever and demanded to step in (and again I still think the fan response was the main reason)... but obviously given her later responses, said assumption of professionalism is out the window. I'll admit I heard whispers over the years that she could be a demanding director to say the least, but I really chalked it up to being part of the old guard and set in her ways. Plus it's not like studios weren't casting her in non-reprisal roles (she's the lead in Discotek's recent Detective Conan dubs). But to see actors who have worked under her saying this is not surprising behavior in the slightest or that she was an outright bully in the director's chair is very sad to see unfold. So yeah, at the end of the day I feel for Anairis having to navigate a situation she shouldn't have to, but also for having to handle it with grace and tact she has because anything less would have gotten her labelled as ungrateful, rude, entitled, and the litany of words thrown at black women when they show an ounce of emotion under unfair and hurtful circumstances. |
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theNightster
Posts: 1329 |
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They should have just stuck with the recast instead of yanking it away from, on top of that all Wendy Lee had to do was stay quiet about it instead she acted unprofessional on Twitter and got into an argument with other VAs who said nothing against her to begin with.
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ZiharkXVI
Posts: 388 |
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I have no idea what you are on about. Fans caring about keeping an original VA is not "ugly precedent". When you have a series that's been around as long as Bleach has, studios messing with the way things were is asking for fan reaction. I thought the decision to bring her back was a breath of fresh air - means the industry listened to what the fans wanted. Isn't that the point? Pleasing the consumer? Of course, she did react badly afterwards, but that's a discussion about her as a person - not about the fans. |
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Cardcaptor Takato
 Posts: 5245 |
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Apparently it's been known Wendee Lee has been problematic within the anime industry for years and nobody has spoken up about it till now even though everyone knew. What else is being hidden from fans by the industry? And people are saying Wendee should have never been recast even though the Bleach dub has already done dozens of recasts for this new season and recasting only became a problem when a black woman was cast in the role.
Last edited by Cardcaptor Takato on Wed Oct 25, 2023 5:28 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Andrew Wonderful
Posts: 9 |
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This post by Michael Edwards was the one I saw being quoted and liked by a bunch of people. |
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