To those who understand spoken moon decently: Are the jap actors as terrible as the English dub ones usually are?
One of the main reasons I watch with original voices is because it's hard to take anything seriously with the English actors. Maybe I'll have that problem anyways if my jap gets good enough
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It depends, really.
Depends on what you count as good, personally I prefer jap voice actors since the guys tend to have more midrange voices and most of the female voices are much less annoying. But it's personal opinion really
No, normal japaness is nothing like what you see in anime, its horrible, i had to mute the volume when i watched japanese porn
>normal japaness is nothing like what you see in anime
Well yeah, I know that. That's obvious even if you don't know any Japanese.
No. Voice acting in japanese is genuinely good.
Kind of. Whichever way you slice it, most anime is melodramatic as fuck. Even if it's good, it's still going to be hammy a lot of the time.
For what it's worth, I'm an ESL who's studying Japanese, and English anime dubs sound like shit to me, especially the female voices.
In comparison Japanese voices, English voices in non-anime stuff and even my country's dubs sound much, much better.
I hear you. I tried watching K-On! with somebody whose English skills weren't good enough for just subs, and so we turned on the English dub and it was horrifying. Ritsu is fine, Yui is tolerable, but the others, holy shit. If my cowatcher hadn't decided to drop it, I would have, and I love K-On!.
As long as the dialogue sounds fitting that's all I care about. If I AM THE BONE OF MY SWORD sounds cooler with Suwabe than it does Liam O'Brien then I'll want to listen to Suwabe more.
Japan has established a separate anime style of speaking, English hasn't. It's like if you go watch a play and everyone is speaking in that weird half-british sounding accent, but everyone's fine with it because that's how plays are supposed to sound.
Some are, yeah. Is funny when people say dubs sound forced, when the jap VA is teh definition of forced. Thing is, since over there VAing is an industry they tend to have better preparation for their work.
Thankfully, the new generations of 'merican dub actors seem more enthusiast about this shit than folks from the 90's who just wing it, I don't care much for them since I still won't watch dubbed anime, but since vidya companies still force dubs on us, at least it's reassuring to find out the dub isn't total dogshit. They still have ways to go when working with some character archetypes though, younger characters and genki girls are still out of their reach.
Going back to the jap dubs, is kinda funny when you hear an SS rank seiyuu totally wing his lines. Lately, the worst offender has been Koyasu Takehito, the man doesn't give a fuck anymore
It is actually possible to hear bad Japanese voice acting.
If anybody has seen the anime for Full Moon o Sagashite, you know what I'm talking about
At least Jap VAs don't put political bullshit into anime, unlike the English group that did Prison School apparently.
Most people here are too young to have watched that. A recent example that even non-jp speakers can pick up on how BAD it was is that imouto character from that show with the pink hair teacher dude (Completely forgot its name, sorry).
They hired an idol for that role and the bitch was 90's english dubbed hentai ova levels of bad. She didn't even bother to act, she was just reading her lines. Remember that scene from the recent seiyuu anime with the newbie going over her head from getting a lead role and the seiyuu reading her lines awfully on purpouse to demonstrate she wasn't ready for it? That bad.
I don't know whether this counts as forced or not, but despite not speaking Japanese I can kind of recognize certain voice 'archetypes'. Often I think two characters have the same voice actress, only to find out that they don't. Their voices just sound similar because they're doing the same 'archetype', or at least that's my theory. The voice archetypes are such things as
>The sultry, older woman voice
>The high pitched tsundere voice
>The oblivious shonen protagonist voice
>The yakuza voice (HORRRRRA, ARR SOUND SAME!)
>The ojou-sama voice
It's kind of weird when you think about it. Out of all countries in the world Japan probably treats their VA's the most as a big phenomenon (perhaps on par with live action actors), yet they all sound so incredibly similar. It's pretty rare for me to hear a truly unique voice (though that says nothing about the range of individual voice actors, which can be insane).
Oh? What did they put in the English dub then?
Some stupid comment about gamergate.
Not that guy but They made gamergate joke for the simulcast dub. They removed it for the dvd release though.
Regardless, it was kinda tasteless and so out there, Funi got backlash from both sides
>Thankfully, the new generations of 'merican dub actors seem more enthusiast about this shit
Still a long way off. It's pretty amazing that FMA's dub was nearly 15 years ago and while that's set the bar for what it means to do the original script and audio service, it hasn't been pushed much further. The actors are the ones getting more passionate, but the most of writers, directors, and casting directors are still the same losers/cousin of one the localization executives they've always been. Good dubs still feel like once in a blue moon. They don't even need to match the original Japanese perfectly, but the audience should be able to watch the show in English without feeling like they missed out on a significant part of what made the show an immersive experience. Like someone already mentioned in this thread, women especially are really self conscious about the material in comparison to men. They don't really want to take things seriously even when the material is lighthearted. There's still a good pool of ladies to pick from, but finding new ones is a bitch.
No, once you've heard what a bad jap VA sounds like you'll slap yourself for ever asking that question.
Naturally, dubbing anime tends to bring more restrictions compared to video games and the like. Having to stick with someone else's dubiously translated script and trying to fit into the right lipflaps tends to cause issues with acting. Writing and casting characters with a voice in mind tends to make lines fit better.
Thanks guys. I just looked it up on youtube.
youtube.com
I know that "cringe" has become a buzzword as of late, but I can't think of a better term to describe my sentiments right now. It's incredibly forced and utterly unrelated to the context. And in a way, this makes the biggest mistake you can ever make in any kind of entertainment medium: insulting the target audience.
I don't know about you but the ones you hear these days don't sound similar to me at all.
I mean maybe they might not be particularly unique but I've never confused one with another.
I'm so used to Japanese because it's what I grew up with. When I do transition from the Japanese dubbing to English I feel out of my comfort zone.
some recent examples of dubs done right are the God Eater games and The legend of Heroes games.
I was extremely worried about Nana's voice in God Eater because usually, that's the kind of character that sound terribly in a dub, I was surprised when I finally heard her english voice, it wasn't quite on the jap level but still very good for what it was (and could have been). Legend of Heroes flops with characters like Millium who is a genki loli and sounds awful in english, but other characters like Fie, Vita, Sara and Towa sound really good, some I even liked them more than the originals.
Again, this mostly affects me on the videogame side, but it's still nice to hear better performances rather than the usual instant-undub crap from the ps2 era
Ask yourself this:
>Are English voice actors for English-language cartoons as terrible as English anime dub voice actors?
There's your answer. Anime dubs sound like shit because they're terribly low budget productions that utilize the cheapest "talent" they can find. Just because they sound shit doesn't mean English voice actors in general are terrible, it's just that the good ones work on domestic cartoons and not on dubs of foreign imports for a niche audience.
And to Japan, anime is "domestic cartoons"
The video game side of things has been getting a lot more care since the dedicated audience is much more likely to actually want English options and will feel scorned when it's left out.
Anime on the other hand is still struggling. Actually that's not really the right word, it's coasting, it's lazy. Funimation is the only big English localizer right now and it's content to just skirt by with small profit they get out of each dub. They never try to expand or get out of their comfort zone or try to find a dedicated fan group to take advantage of in the US/Canada. I'm half-sure the process of localization is some money laundering scheme. The opportunity to get anime to air on networks other than Adult Swim once a week past midnight is there but to seize it would require effort and they're making enough as is. Just throw it on the website for streaming, whatever.
Can't say I've had much of a problem with that. There are of course bad VAs and bad performances there too, but not enough that it bothers me. I don't think it's something you should worry about. Subs have plenty of mistakes and inaccuracies too, so the pros will still outweigh the cons once you learn it. You also get to better experience manga, LNs and VNs (if you care about that).
The difference between "anime" Japanese and "normal" Japanese is heavily exaggerated. It's the same fucking language. Sounds more likely that you suffered through your average JAV actress' awful voice.
I'm not a moon speaker, but I think attitude has a lot to do with Japanese coming across as far more natural. Or maybe its cultural. I just can't hold a suspension of disbelief when I hear English actresses, sometimes even actors, not deliver their lines with the cynicism and bitchiness I've come to expect out of the medium.
I don't like US dubs because everyone has that awful American accent and every time they pronounce a name or location it's cringe.
dubs with honorifics are even worse
What I don't get is who they were trying to appeal to? Do they think SJW types watch anime like Prison School? I mean, how fucking out of touch can you get.
With anime, the kind of people that are going to want dubs in the first place are so used to dubs being bad at this point it's not going to deter them, while those that don't want dubs just watch the original. There's no massive potential audience sitting there going "I don't want to watch bad dubs and I don't want to watch in Japanese, so I never actually watch any anime... but if the dubs were SLIGHTLY less bad, I'd buy twenty DVDs a month."
The dubbers have no reason to waste money on improving, it's not going to make them more money at this point.
Yeah, this is actually a problem. Americans can't pronounce japanese for shit. It is really painful when they try to use jap words. There was a game where one of the characters kept pronouncing Omotesando in a horrible manner, and recently I watched a clip form the maid dragon dub with them pronouncing Kamui as Kamooey.
>then they make fun of how English names are pronounced in Japanese
The main issue with so many English dubs, especially earlier ones from the 80s and 90s, is the actors were given no real direction and just handed a script, so the lines felt very stiff and there was often little or no coordination between actors so they couldn't "interact" with each other in a realistic way cause many times they never even met the other cast members. Whereas in Japan, it's common for the entire voice cast to be in the same room while lines are being done, they can respond to each other more naturally. That and the cast is vetted by the director and original author if it's an adapted work, so the Japanese cast is usually more fitting to the characters since the English dub will just use whoever they have on hand.
You'll hear people say stuff like the Japanese voices are all super exaggerated, but that's true of the writing and the situations they're acting in as well. They act to suit the material. And really, nothing will give you a better appreciation of Japanese voice acting than watching comedies. There's not really a better genre for showing off the range, timing, and skill that a seiyuu has.
>Americans can't pronounce japanese for shit
Except for the 1 or 2 actors who can, but that just makes them stand out really awkwardly because there's almost no quality control in the American dubbing scene. A good example of this is in YYH's dub every character pronounces Yusuke's family name wrong. Except for the principle. You'd think somebody would have noticed the discrepancy, but they probably just didn't care.
Your model neatly explains the situation of a complacent business satisfied to make what money they can by as little work as possible, not an aggressive business model motivated to grow their market and increase their profits. Consumers don't often know they want a product that's not an option to them until it's there.
Original voice actors are better simply by the virtue of being personally directed by the creative staff to make the performance match their vision.
Dubs are in almost every case, simple interpretations.
I don't speak Japanese but think of it this way. Do voices in animated movies made in America usually sound as bad as Dubbed anime? No. Not really, and thats because it's produced here and the voice work is considered part of the production, thus its taken seriously and given a proper budget. Dubbing is done by a licensing company who's only part in production of the product is localization. They have less money to shell out for voice work than an actual production company, thus the "talent" that does anime dubbing isn't as good. It doesn't help that the people who dub anime, and are actually talented tend to "move up" to other industries over time.
So yes, Japanese anime voice actors are better because they're actually mainstream skilled voice actors, while in America you get voice actors known for doing dub work, rather than on domestic production.
Lol I should've read the thread before I bothered posting this
>Troy Baker is a shockingly good voice actor doing dub work
>Gets promoted to AAA video games after a few years
>Matt Mercer becomes the new Troy Baker for dubs
>Quickly goes on to AAA video games
FUCK
Where do you think Steve Blum has been recently? Its either vidya or Warner Bros DC animated movies.
Dubs were actually getting into a pretty good spot for a few years before VAs figured out you could move up to video games. Its gotten back to laughably bad recently.
THAT'S what happened to him? Shit, now that I think about it, same with Crispy Freeman.
Now, I haven't seen the clip myself, but I don't think your text is showing me exactly what's wrong with the pronunciation. Kah-moo-ee should be correct, did they say kaa (like cat) moo ee? Or did they emphasize the wrong syllable?
I mean, he also does Tom on revived Toonami.
t. Gamergate creep
>be good actor
>do shitty, low-paid work
>get job offers for better paid and better respected roles
>take them and leave the low paid shit behind
Why does this surprise you?
I can't speak Spanish so it's all hearsay, but I heard that in the 80s and 90s Mexico had really good (Disney) cartoon dubs because due to some economic crisis the (good) live action actors couldn't find a job.
I guess dubbing really is at the bottom of the ladder.
So when Hollywood inevitably crashes we'll enter a golden age of anime dubbing. Interesting.
You'd think with the endless Marvel movies, sequels and reboots, that would have happened years ago.
Hopefully the next couple of Star Wars movies will at least damage Hollywood or kill of Star Wars for good.
Theatrical Disney dubs have always been an exception, since it's extremely important to Disney that their movies are taken seriously world wide, and that's not going to happen if the dubs are shit, since a lot of adults are going to watch those dubs with their kids.
Disney's TV shows, on the other hand, get shitty dubs because kids watch them alone, so shitty acting won't harm the company's reputation there.
There is more skill, professionalism and history and everything else that describes what the VA (and idol) industry in japan is.
It basically automatically sounds better because there's more effort.
kys
Native Russian speaker with hot opinions:
I've listened to both English and Japanese on anime back when I had a shaky grasp of English. Long story short, English dubs suck balls most of the time. This isn't because it's in English mind you. It's because in the vast bulk of cases, the voices are flat out wrong:
>child voices (loli, a kid, whatever) are usually some old woman trying to sound high pitched
>dub voices never seem to carry the emotions the original JP voices convey
>dub voices often completely miss the mark on a character's traits (JP voice sounds a specific way that defines the character, dub voice doesn't do this at all)
Are you kidding me? That kind of stuff happens during bad economic times for a reason: it shits money with minimal investment. Everyone loves bashing Michael Bay, but there's a reason why everyone loves to hate him: he keeps making movies. And unlike someone like Uwe Boll (who has some kind of weird German tax trick where he actually earns money when his movies flop), Michael Bay makes truckloads of cash. That means there are a lot of people who go see his movies purely because of brand power.
Simoun also has some super terrible voice acting
Star Wars is already dead bruh. We've been watching a lovecraftian death spiral happen since the prequels with only tartakovsky's clone wars breathing life into it's rotting corpse for a short fleeting moment.
The problem with English voice actors isn't their voice, it's because they sound like Weeaboos.
90's Disney television stuff was actually top notch stuff.
It's really really good.
I also have a certain fondness for the over the top hammy anime performances and writing.
It's exactly what people would expect from anime back then.
Now it's all talented measured stuff and a deep attempt at being mature and failed english majors and word nazi's desperately trying to be taken serial while FAILING to be entertaining in a way that would make people enjoy the medium.
The isolated voice actor thing still happens pretty frequently today. There was a decent interview some gaming news site ran a couple months ago with Robbie Daymond/Prompto from FF15 that I couldn't find again where he echos your sentiment. You can definitely hear the effect it has in parts but I think they did a decent job considering the conditions.
Talking about international dubs of Disney stuff, user, not the English-language originals.
Fist of the North Star series dub was fantastically bad.
For example, there's one generic villager that looks vaguely like captain Kirk so the guy voicing him just did a Shatner impression.
I think even ABRIDGED dubs on YouTube are better than the official English-language dubs.
I wouldn't say better but mostly at the same tier
Youtubers have the advantage of being able to edit their material. Look at for example DailyTubeShow. He takes a single scene (or series of shots) that lasts maybe 15 seconds and stretches it out for two minutes to make his own sketch.
On the other hand, a professional dub needs to both match all the visuals of the original (including the mouth movements) and at the same time convey the same message in a different language. That's incredibly different, especially with certain cliché's that are difficult to translate (things like ORAORAORAORA or MUDAMUDAMUDAMUDA, or certain puns).
Is Abridging still a thing besides DBZA? That survived because it was the only one that had quality control going on. By season 2 they stopped using all the bad voice actors and stopped taking writing suggestions from every single contributor involved. It was originally the mega crossover of all the abridgers but they realized most of them aren't that funny, so now a smaller group of them handle the writing. They had like 10,000 subscribers by the end of season 1 and now they have over two million.
I think what makes so many people like DBZA, besides the brand recognition, is that it really does feel like DBZ with a more comedic twist rather than outright parody. Only one character per season is radically reinterpreted, everyone else has characterization just as strong as the original.
You're probably right there. That's the strength of TFS. Yu-Gi-Oh is sort of peetering along, but I think it fell to a very distant second place because it only updates once ever century. TFS updates irregularly, but they usually float somewhere around once a month, once every two months at worst. This not only rewards the patience of the fanbase earlier, but youtube algorithms also optimalizes your videos being recommended if you upload regularly and get a lot of views per video. Keep a tight schedule and you'll snowball into success usually. This is why Let's Plays do so well on youtube: they're increadibly low-budget and easy to make so the Let's Players can usually update on a daily basis at fixed times.
Abridging was just one of those Youtube fads where a bunch of people see that something (YGOA) is popular and do their own variant of it instead of coming up with some original concept themselves.
Same reason all these angry NES game reviewers popped up after AVGN got big. They've all disappeared now too.
It's almost as if "charming, original and passionate people" and "people that start doing something because it's already popular and comes with a built-in audience" aren't groups with a whole lot of overlap.
you wanna see bad jap voice acting watch hentai. better than the dub but still shit
Hentai anime has the best acting in the entire worldwide porn industry.
There's still plenty of gems if you bother looking:
youtube.com
unlike in america being an anime voice actor is actually something to be sought after in japan. in america only delusional weaboos who are usually shit anyway actually aim to become anime dubbers. all modern dubs are done by budget shitters
Mercer ain't above doing "anime" games, yet. He was in Cold Steel and Fire Emblem not long ago.
Some are terrible, many are very good, though.
>No, normal japaness is nothing like what you see in anime, its horrible, i had to mute the volume when i watched japanese porn
This. The constant nervous laughter and spoken hesitation noises are so fucking annoying. Scripted anime Japanese is the superior language.
>Koyasu Takehito
His voice is perfect for villains, fuck you.
>Lately, the worst offender has been Koyasu Takehito
What has he done? Anyway, give the man a break. Everybody can have a bad day.
Translating something will never really convey the 100% original meaning ,especially when there's stuff like play on words and such that only make sense in JP. Dubs always take liberties with translations too, which is in its own way fine cause you simply can't translate some shit unless you speak moon or watch shitloads of shows, which regular dub viewers don't
Kek
>reading old European translations of American comics that tried to localize shit like Halloween and the 4th of July into something that made sense for kids that had never heard of either
Good times.
>It's litterally impossible to find someone who teaches japanimation dialect
>Japanese teachers look at you like a retard if you do it but not even japanese people speak in the overly proper manner they speak in.
>Japanese people act litterally insulted if you speak "like a cartoon character" while they randomly use english words just because they sound cool.
>but not even japanese people speak in the overly proper manner they speak in
Teaching Japanese reminds me of those old and busted English language textbooks. Japanese conservatism at work yet again.
Making full blown abridged series requires lots of work to actually draw attention. If you look at the animation breakdowns, you get to see all the redrawn and added lip flaps, recreations, visual edits, animation error corrections, and generally way more effort than they used to require.
All languages are like that. You'll be looked at like a retard if you go to Germany and talk the way you learned in German class too. Nobody talks the textbook version of their language anywhere.
>old and busted
That's not a nice thing to say about everyone's favorite English teacher!
You have that in every language to varying degrees, though. It's not very noticeable when you're used to a language, but once you read an unaltered transcript of a conversation you often end up wondering how a person can fit so many ellipses, filler sounds and slang words into so few sentences
This is what bugs me when taking foreign language classes. They almost never teach how the average person would speak, mainly due to time constraints. Doesn't mean that the teachers don't put in any effort. My German and Japanese teachers were pretty based.
Best part? The kind of fucking losers who teach japanese and spent most of their lives in english courses are the ones who're strangling the fucking life out of subs and now dubs.
Remember the war over "nakama" being translated? Here's what happened. Those people went on a full on fagtastic bitchfest over nakama being accepted in common language/it being untranslated.
They honestly did not want this japanese loan word besmirching the english language or some shit.
Want to know what they did? They strangled OP's potential as an IP in the fucking crib.
Nakama is it's thing.
It's like trying to translate Kamehawave into Laser.
But that's okay!
Nakama is now translated to..what was it? Friend? Crewmate? REALLY REALLY FUCKING AWESOME!!
Not true, in my experience.
Should be
>comrade
It's true. I'm Norwegian and went to college at the University of North Dakota, which offers Norwegian classes. The language taught in the textbooks they used was some hilariously awkward shit you'd never be taken seriously if you used.
No, they are pretty good. However, the kind of voice acting they do is closer to how people would pronounce things in theatre rather than in film (or real life for that matter).
Japanese people use English when they talk literally all the time. Everything from professional jargon to just a casual conversation is littered with English loan words.
To answer OPs question, Japanese seiyuu are much better for a variety of reasons.
What are you on about? You can appreciate most of voice acting without knowing the language.
I don't really feel like my reception of Anglo movies changed after I learned English.
It's some meme EOPs like pushing.
You have to keep in mind that Jap VA industry is extremely cutthroat, and you have to be at the top to get into any anime role with any significance.
While the English anime dub industry all employ b-tier VAs, while also dealing with issues such as filling screen time with unnecessary words to match the characters mouth flaps or vice versa.
>I tried watching K-On! with somebody whose English skills weren't good enough for just subs, and so we turned on the English dub and it was horrifying.
It's actually harder to understand spoken language.
t. ESL