Why is Anime Acting So Awful

It can be in Japanese, English, Mandarin, Spanish, or anything else. I don't know what it is but it never sounds natural.

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=0zxGXRovnPE
youtube.com/watch?v=H0lh3rGd8ms
youtube.com/watch?v=fBamkF0lp_M
youtube.com/watch?v=tf35jUK3IqU
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

That's the idea. Anime voice acting is supposed to sound expressive. That's why it is exaggerated.

Voices sound cartoony in a cartoon??? No way!

Gee, it's almost as if that's the whole point or something!?

Don't you talk shit about Iyami-sama, faggot

...

Shi...

What are you talking about zansu? Pic not related, right zansu?

I always think actors in American movies sound unnatural but then when I go to America I am reminded that they actually talk like that.

In other words, you can't judge the "naturalness" of someone acting in a language that isn't your mother language.

It's something I've noticed with most Japanese media.

All Japanese actors perform as if they are on stage, even if they're not on stage. Stage actors have to be overly expressive for the character's to come across correctly to everyone even in the back row of the theater.

Honestly most people just...talk. The only time you see significant differences in how people express their language is if they speak a tonal language that requires them to shift tones from word to word.

An actual Japanese person speaking in Japanese just sounds like someone talking but with different words. They sound nothing like any actor in any anime.

Trust me, people don't just "talk".
No country that speaks Spanish sounds close to american English at all. Japanese people speaking normally also do not sound like american English at all.

If people all sounded the same, like you say, accents wouldn't be a thing.

I like it a fuck ton more than how English dubs are.
>one retarded voice whispering the entire time
>no emotion or inflection or substance
>just reading lines off paper

Accents have nothing to do with tone/emotion, which is what we're talking about.

If your language isn't tonal, you can apply whatever tone, emotion or intensity you wish regardless of language.

Most anime are not acted very well. But thanks to not knowing Japanese, it doesn't sound bad to us cuz it's all gibberish anyway. So there's that.

You can tell the voice actors are at least trying for the most part regardless of the language.

Of course they try.

Whether they're any good is a completely different matter.

For all that I love Lain, her voice actress was ABYSMAL. I'm sure nips could point out plenty of poor voice actors in all kinds of anime, but it's rare for a performance to stick out so noticeably to someone who doesn't speak the language.

Do you speak any language other than English? Do you know how they say your personality changes when you speak other languages? That's because the way you express yourself in that language is different from the way you'd do it in your language, and you can't make the transition smoothly.

Trust me, when I go to America, I have a hard time believing people speak in a way that's so 'fictional' to me, because it's so different from how we speak in my country, and since I only usually hear american people talk in movies and TV shows, my mind thinks it's just how they act.

Compare the tone here
youtube.com/watch?v=0zxGXRovnPE
to this one
youtube.com/watch?v=H0lh3rGd8ms

Or this
youtube.com/watch?v=fBamkF0lp_M
to this
youtube.com/watch?v=tf35jUK3IqU

I'll be honest, those comparisons don't appear to me to show any noticeable expression shifts. Their demeanor seemed the same regardless of language.

>Cartoons don't sound like real speech
Though saying 'never' is hyperbole.

>when I go to America I am reminded that they actually talk like that.
Americans do not talk like that. No one talks like a movie script because movie scripts have to place relevant meaning in what's being said, but actual people don't use such diction or speech patterns (that should be obvious when you compare speech between different genres on theatrical film and especially TV).
Japanese people use generally similar tone, but it IS significantly different. The phrasing of a question is the most obvious; English drops in tone, but Japanese rises.

>but it's rare for a performance to stick out so noticeably to someone who doesn't speak the language.
It's rare because only complete morons think they notice it.

bullshit, when i was a kid i didn't understand english but i knew that megaman x4 and megaman 8's voice acting were horrible

I've watched hundreds of Japanese movies and close to a hundred dramas and I don't know what you're talking about here.

When an anime is intentionally doing bad acting, like in the amateur movies of Haruhi Suzumiya and Hyouka, you can easily tell the difference.

I like how many people assume that nobody knows any Japanese and that therefore we can't know the quality of Japanese voice acting and that therefore it has to be bad.

I don't see anything wrong with her acting.