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Old 10-01-2010, 03:48 PM   #1
Talon87
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UPN Answerman Session #5: Good Dub, Bad Dub?

And another thread! OH! [/Ushio]

Today's question: What in your opinion constitutes a "good dub" versus a "bad dub"? Be specific!

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Previous threads:
UPN Answerman Session #1: Most Deserved Sequel?
UPN Answerman Session #2: Most Disappointing Ending?
UPN Answerman Session #3: When Do You Drop?
UPN Answerman Session #4: Your Dream Job in the Anime Industry?

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Old 10-02-2010, 02:40 AM   #2
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I thought I posted here... gr... did I not hit send?

Ultimately for me, it comes down to two things- 1) Does the voice fit the character? 2) Does the VA capture the their character's emotion?

Sometimes voices just don't fit. You can't expect a big guy to sound like a midget and you can't expect a child to sound like a woman who smokes a pack a day. Typically this is done decently. VAs know their character's on sight. Where many VAs lose their appeal is in the emotion. Many can't get the right emotional state for their scenes and lose a lot of points.

A good example of a good dub is GitS-SAC series. The English voice actress Mary Elizabeth McGlynn to play Motoko Kusanagi is a prime example. Her voice is spot on for the character. It sounds tough because she is tough. She is able to sound authoritative and strong because that is her job. At the same time she was still able to capture her softer side without compromising the other parts of her character.

Another strong example is Steve Blum in The Big O. Not only does he fit the role, but he adds to the performance. The original Japanese VA felt like he didn't have enough character for the somewhat larger than life Roger Smith- always sounding cold and calculated. The English dub gave him a voice that gives him more character. Better wit and adding some warmth.

Bad dubs are hard to remember for me. Series with poor dubs I tend to... well... forget! I watch their subtitled version and forget why they are bad. Many are simply due to the voice not matching up.

I suppose Kakashi from Naruto bugs me (along with about all the other characters). Kakashi was generally a cool and mysterious but sometimes aloof character. His original Japanese VA captured him with a tough guy voice that could still be soft and nurturing. Meanwhile, in the English dub, when he is trying to sound aloof, he ends up sounding boring. When trying to be tough, he doesn't sound forceful enough. It just ends up being an awful dub.
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Old 10-02-2010, 08:49 PM   #3
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I look more at the direction now than the VA performances, because good coaching can entice a fantastic performance out of a good actor, while piss poor coaching can yield a poor performance from even a great actor. Haruhi's dub, IMV, suffers from poor coaching, despite having what amounts to an all-star cast.

I agree with Loki's two examples. Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! likewise had good direction combined with good acting. Uniqueness and generic voices need to be balanced in a dub - characters that are meant to stand out should stand out, while those who don't deserve unneeded attention shouldn't be given an instantly recognizable actor. Blum for example makes a bad background actor, because he's so distinctive his voice attracts attention. Johnny Yong Bosch by contrast is horrible in lead roles, but he's perfect for Ichigo, since Ichigo is the blandest big-name shounen hero of the past decade.

I think Bang! Zoom Entertainment has some of the most mediocre to horrible directors working on anime now. But because of their connections and locations, they can farm out cheap, economical dubs and so have become the dominant PP studio. FUNimation's Texas affiliate, formerly of ADV, is second-tier, with the people operating in NYC (TAJ Productions) the best of the anime actors available.
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Old 10-02-2010, 09:54 PM   #4
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Cowboy Bebop.


That is all.
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Old 10-03-2010, 01:00 AM   #5
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I was about to use Steve Blum for Cowboy Bebop also, but he used an alias to dodge the fact he was working on a non-union job when he did it. Also, there was something that always bugged me about the Japanese voices on Bebop that it felt like the comparison wasn't too fair.

Faye's Japanese voice was too immature, while Wendee Lee's was great. Spike's Japanese voice was okay, but didn't sound as tough or strong of a character as Steve Blum's and also lacked some subtle joking tone he had throughout the series.

But the other problem is, I am not Japanese, so I don't know if it was correct for those voices in Japan, but to me, they felt weaker than the English dub.

Also, Cowboy Bebop became my favorite anime series when I first got into it. Trumping all that Shonen Jump stuff quite quickly.
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Old 12-13-2010, 06:22 PM   #6
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The difference between a good dub and a bad dub for me is the same thing as the difference between a good voice acting job and a bad voice acting job. I don't care if this is the original audio or if it's the dub: the voice acting performance is what's being graded here, nothing else.

Loki kept it short and simple with his two points. I agree with him that these are key to any good voice acting performance.

(1) How well do you fit the character?
If the character's a boy, then cast somebody who can sound just like a boy. If the character's a girl, cast someone who can sound like a girl. The most common mistake in dubbing that I've noticed is girl characters voiced by adult women sounding like adult women. For example, from 2:50 to 3:05 here, you can hear Winry's voice actress from Fullmetal Alchemist: the Conqueror of Shambala's English dub. She sounds terrible! Why does she sound terrible? Because she sounds like she's 30 and yet she's supposed to be voicing a character who's only 15 or 16 years old.

A good example of voice acting roles of small children is Kugimiya Rie's performance as Alphonse Elric in Fullmetal Alchemist. I didn't even know it was a woman, much less that it was Shana / Louise / Taiga, until I was halfway through the remake, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood! This is an example of good voice acting. (You can hear a sample by listening from 10:26 here on forward.)


(2) How well do you capture the correct emotion of the character?
If your character is a seductress who speaks like a well-bred lady in heat, then you need to sound well-bred (i.e. you need to speak eloquently and aristocratically) and you need to sound like you're in heat (e.g. you need to laugh seductively). This is well done by the original voice actress but is poorly done by the English voice actress. The English voice actress acts out a woman who sounds like an ordinary woman from the middle class. Halfway through this sample there are hints of what sounds like a poorly-faked Southern aristocratic accent. And worse than anything else: she sounds bored. Lust never sounded bored. But the English Lust sounds like she's an emo ready to slit her wrists from boredom. This is a bad performance.


But there's one thing I want to add to Loki's list because I think it's equally important, maybe more important, and that's ...

(3) How well can you act!?
When I was a kid, I didn't understand how some people could be considered great actors, others only good, and still others bad. As I got older, I could tell apart bad acting from the other two, but I still couldn't tell how the grown-ups knew that Jack Nicholson was a "great" actor but Sam Neill was only a "good" actor. It wasn't until I was an older teen that I realized what for me, and what for many others, makes an actor truly great: he loses himself in the character so well that you no longer see the actor on stage or onscreen. For some actors, it depends on the role. Harrison Ford is a good actor, but he's hit or miss. When you see him in any of the Indiana Jones films, you see him as Indiana Jones and not as Harrison Ford; but when you see him films like Air Force One, you see him as Harrison Ford playing the President of the United States. Likewise, you see Heath Ledger in some of his earlier works and you see this dreamy Australian surfer dude with the beach bum untidy blonde hairdo playing an aspiring knight in Medieval England (A Knight's Tale); but you watch The Dark Knight and you literally never see Heath Ledger unless you know where to look for him. He's that convincing of a Joker. You see the Joker onscreen and you're like, "I am looking at the Joker. This is the Joker. Somebody caught the Joker on camera and the footage went into making this film." Not once do you think, unless you deliberately stop yourself to think like a rational adult, that this is an actor who is merely portraying a character for your entertainment.

Why do people rave about Heath Ledger's performance in that film and not anybody else's? For exactly the reasons I've stated: whereas Ledger makes the line between actor and character completely vanish, Harvey Dent's actor is still "Harvey Dent's actor pretending to be Harvey Dent". Rachel Dawes' actress is still "Rachel Dawes' actress pretending to be Rachel Dawes." They act well, but they don't act greatly.

I think the exact same thing applies to voice acting, both in Japan and in America.

Great: Tom Hanks. When he voices Woody in Toy Story, I never think, "Hey, it's Tom Hanks!" Even though he has such a distinct voice that no one else has. I always think, "Hey, it's Woody!" Blammo: great job.

Good: John Cleese in the live-action The Jungle Book. For the most part, I see him as the doctor he's playing. But (perhaps because Cleese is simply too famous), every time he's in comic scene -- and he's in quite a few -- I think, "Ah, John Cleese's character." Instead of thinking that I'm seeing a real doctor on camera, I think "I'm seeing what's supposed to be a doctor but is really just John Cleese." (Sorry I couldn't come up with a good English voice acting job for cartoons. Seems we only get Great or Poor. ^^; )

Bad: Some of the ones you've heard already in this post. These performers are so amateurish that they completely rip you out of the illusion that you're really watching the characters do their things and they force you back into reality where you realize, "Oh. I'm merely watching a show where somebody is reading lines which are then lip synched to the lip movements of this animated doll. Great. "


I think #3 might be the biggest problem specific to the American voice acting industry. Too many voice actors and voice actresses are bad at acting. And it's kind of a no-brainer why this would be the case ...
  • because if you're great at acting, then you're going to go become a Hollywood star and make millions
  • because if you're okay at acting, you're going to go act in local theater gigs
  • because it's only if you SUCK at acting that you're going to do the anime voice acting gigs which have long hours and shitty pay

So while all the good actors go on to act in motion pictures produced by Warner Bros. and Paramount and the like, it's the bad ones who look for work with Bandai and Funimation. That's just the reality of the situation. Every once in a rare while, we get lucky with some Joe Schmo who is cast as a character whose voice perfectly matches his own. But this is damn rare. It's sort of like the B-actor who provided the voice (and non-body stunt acting) for Rorschach in Watchmen. That guy's voice was fucking spot on. But it's rare that we're treated to such things in this country. (And even that was still a high-budget Hollywood affair. It wasn't like that was an anime.)

Kuno says "Cowboy Bebop. 'Nuff said." I agree, but I'm a wordy fucker and I have to explain myself.
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Old 12-13-2010, 08:18 PM   #7
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I also like when dubs decide to add random accents. Joey Wheeler is a guy from Japan, but he has a Brooklyn accent. Everyone else on the show has pretty much no accent. So let's give Joey one for ABSOLUTELY NO REASON!

It just bugs me when things don't translate over. One can argue that kansai accent can be translated as a southern belle accent in America, but that's about the same as comparing a northern Chinese accent to a Scottish accent in the UK. It doesn't really work out. Being lost in translation is where some things must be.
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Old 12-14-2010, 04:25 AM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
A good example of voice acting roles of small children is Kugimiya Rie's performance as Alphonse Elric in Fullmetal Alchemist. I didn't even know it was a woman, much less that it was Shana / Louise / Taiga, until I was halfway through the remake, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood! This is an example of good voice acting. (You can hear a sample by listening from 10:26 here on forward.)
Rie can do full-bodied adult, as seen at 8:39. It's just, Shana is the most famous loli-tsundere EVER, and Rie has sort of been type-cast into that role. It's a role she performs better than everyone else (unlike Tomokazu Seki, who doesn't have a monopoly over hot-blood) but one that's restricted her talents.

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So while all the good actors go on to act in motion pictures produced by Warner Bros. and Paramount and the like, it's the bad ones who look for work with Bandai and Funimation. That's just the reality of the situation. Every once in a rare while, we get lucky with some Joe Schmo who is cast as a character whose voice perfectly matches his own. But this is damn rare. It's sort of like the B-actor who provided the voice (and non-body stunt acting) for Rorschach in Watchmen. That guy's voice was fucking spot on. But it's rare that we're treated to such things in this country. (And even that was still a high-budget Hollywood affair. It wasn't like that was an anime.)
Canada's Ocean Group was usually staffed by voice actors from the top class acting school of the region, Studio 58. During the late 1990's and early 2000's, a lot of dubs went through Vancouver, and the dub quality was higher than it is now, but worse than typical American cartoon talent. But what Canada didn't have in outright talent it made up for in versatility - there were tons of distinctive, good actors and actresses, not a small pool of repeats who are featured in the same roles in econo-dubs.

Dubs today are horrible. And in your example, you picked FMA, widely considered one of the best FUNimation dubs.

I'm terrified of watching Baccano! in English.
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Old 12-14-2010, 09:33 AM   #9
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Canada's Ocean Group was usually staffed by voice actors from the top class acting school of the region, Studio 58.
I don't know much about Studio 58, but I do know that graduating from a top-notch acting school doesn't guarantee that you're a great actor. To graduate, you have to pass all your required courses. That's it. But the bar for passing is much lower than the bar for excellence. For every n graduates an acting school produces each year, only a small fraction of those n graduates are truly talented actors. The remainder range from B+ to C-- in quality.

And my point is that the A+ to A- students end up taking high-paying jobs with successful television and cinema companies; and that the B+ to B- students end up taking theater gigs or low-paying television work; and that it's the C+ to C-- students who we end up stuck with in voice acting.

The other thing you have to consider is that next to nobody who's fresh out of college is going to be an amazing actor. Like most any trade, acting requires natural talent but it also requires a shitton of experience to hone the craft.

And many American voice actors aren't getting that experience, either because they're denied opportunities due to their poor acting skills (which is something of a vicious cycle that's tough to break -- "can't get a job unless I'm talented, can't get talented unless I can get a job!") or else because they choose not to. Good example: Mark Dailey, a former voice actor for 4Kids who recently passed away, was primarily a news anchor for a TV station in Toronto, Canada and only did voice acting as a part-time "sometimes" gig. Now, while I'm not crying that Mark lent his underhoned talents to programs like Beyblade or Medabots, I am pointing out that many of the more popular animes with young adults as their target audience likely suffer from similar voice acting setbacks.

And lest somebody point out to me just how much experience so-and-so has, I'll repeat the need for talent in addition to experience. I don't care if so-and-so has been a full-time voice actor for 15 years: if he sucks, he sucks.

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Dubs today are horrible. And in your example, you picked FMA, widely considered one of the best FUNimation dubs.
Really? Because I didn't even know that when I picked it. I was looking for a sample of Kugimiya Rie's Alphonse Elric and I got the Shambala movie in English and realized, "Hey, score. I needed a dub reference for the post. Let's have it be this one." If this is really supposed to be Funimation's best, then I don't even want to know what their worst sounds like. To be perfectly honest, the film sounded like a fandub in places. ¬_¬;

And doesn't that tell you something? Doesn't that tell you just how bad English dubs are: when the best a company can produce sounds no better than a fan effort done by amateur teenagers? >_<
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Old 12-14-2010, 10:49 AM   #10
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Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
And many American voice actors aren't getting that experience, either because they're denied opportunities due to their poor acting skills (which is something of a vicious cycle that's tough to break -- "can't get a job unless I'm talented, can't get talented unless I can get a job!") or else because they choose not to.
I think #1 causes #2, or at least there's correlation. You only have to look at location to see why.

Burbank, New York City, and Fort Worth are currently the three major talent pools for 90% of anime produced now, with Vancouver's share of the action on a steady decline. NYC and Burbank have a built up theatre industrial complex, while Fort Worth has nothing. Burbank is considered the "highest tier" because of its proximity to Hollywood, so people who operate in that area get more opportunities. Great examples are Steven J. Blum doing commercial voice overs for Dairy Queen and Dave Wittenberg for Ninja Warrior. NYC has Broadway and theatre schools, and so can take advantage of Broadway actors and fresh local talent (as in the case of Crispin Freeman and Veronica Taylor, respectively). It's also the home of KittyMedia, Media Blaster's hentai division and arguably a great sandbox for people who want to get started in voice acting (or find out if it's not for them), as we've seen in Bible Black's dub.

Fort Worth is the odd one out. No schools that I know of, no theatre culture. Texas itself is most famous for low taxes, which was why ADV headquartered in the adjacent Houston. FUNimation started out there because it was too tough to break into the business in NYC and Burbank (many Japanese company USA divisions in Burbank, 4Kids in NYC) and basically had to cultivate its own fleet of actors. Very few of the original FUNimation actors had much experience prior to their work with FUNimation, they were either people who wanted to get into theatre work but had no experience, or those who wanted to be part of anime and couldn't afford either California or New York.

Now, they have the experience, but most of them are finding out they don't have the talent necessary to land big gigs like Blum or Wittenberg. But since FUNimation is so huge now, its actors enjoy minor celebrity status at anime conventions, so I'd imagine that rather than take the effort to earn a bigger payroll most of the actors resign to work with FUNimation. They're continuously employed and are treated like kings.

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Really? Because I didn't even know that when I picked it. I was looking for a sample of Kugimiya Rie's Alphonse Elric and I got the Shambala movie in English and realized, "Hey, score. I needed a dub reference for the post. Let's have it be this one." If this is really supposed to be Funimation's best, then I don't even want to know what their worst sounds like. To be perfectly honest, the film sounded like a fandub in places. ¬_¬;
It's surprising you didn't know about FMA's dub, that dub is the sole reason for FUNimation's current success. People are still riding the high they got after seeing it the first time when they buy modern, lower quality FUNimation titles.

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And doesn't that tell you something? Doesn't that tell you just how bad English dubs are: when the best a company can produce sounds no better than a fan effort done by amateur teenagers? >_<
At the time, I felt FMA's dub was very good. Compared with dubs now, I feel the quality has increased relative to the average because mean quality has decreased.

I couldn't watch more than 5 seconds of the Haruhi dub, and watching pretty much anything else these days makes me cringe. But I can still go back to the FMA dub and not bleed out of my ears.
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Old 12-14-2010, 12:11 PM   #11
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It just bugs me when things don't translate over. One can argue that kansai accent can be translated as a southern belle accent in America, but that's about the same as comparing a northern Chinese accent to a Scottish accent in the UK. It doesn't really work out. Being lost in translation is where some things must be.
I know what you mean. In America, the country accent is the Southern accent. In Japan, the country accent is the one found in the Touhoku region. Just like with our stereotypes of Southern rednecks, the Japanese stereotype about people from Touhoku is that they're simple-minded hillbillies. Meanwhile, Osaka-ben is associated with the banking / financial capital of Japan, Osaka, and the Brooklyn accent is associated with our financial capital, New York City.

But the problem is, New York City is also the largest city in America, and that matches with Tokyo, not Osaka. Most Americans see the Brooklyn accent as a unique accent that is different from the fictitious "true American accent" that no one really has (unless we want to agree that it's the monotone Midwestern accent ), but in Japan it's quite different: the Tokyo "accent" isn't seen as an accent at all by 25% of the population and Kantou Japanese is the national standard.

Like you said, things don't match up 1:1, and so if they try to (for example) place a Southern accent on a character from Osaka, it's going to raise questions. "Why didn't you use a Brooklyn accent?" asks one guy. "New York is what's like Osaka, not the South!" Another guy objects, saying, "No, they shouldn't use a Brooklyn accent. That belongs to the nation's biggest city, and Japan's biggest city is Tokyo. So Brooklyn accents should be on all people from Tokyo." A third guy chimes in with, "No, that's crazy talk! Tokyo people aren't perceived by Japanese the way Brooklyn-accented people are by most Americans!" And it just de-evolves into a fight over whose opinion is right and which accent is best suited for the dubbing.

One solution would be to drop the matter, which you seemed to like a lot. I don't know if they should drop it, but I do think that this is a fundamental limitation to dubbing. It's kind of the same logic behind the old advice that you should always read something in the original rather than reading a translation of it. Some things get lost in translation either because the translator drops them (like you're suggesting for accents) or else because the translator tries his best to keep them but insodoing he completely changes the meaning (like what happens when the gruff, "outta my way! " Osaka-ben is changed to the genteel Southern belle).
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