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Answerman - Why Do Voice Actors Perform Multiple Roles In Dubs?

If they couldn't afford more voice actors, they never should have taken on the project to begin with.

The audience and the product shouldn't have to suffer for their lack of preparedness.

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At any rate, if that's true, then how is it that union actors are constantly unable to do work for Funimation unless the dub is recorded specifically in California?

Easy:
1. Funimation doesn't hire union. (Which is also a part of Right to Work)
2. Unless it's an established VA that's moved to LA, and is in SAG-AFTRA.

@peno

I think there is a bit of confusion here. All a "right to work" law provides is that you can't be required to be in a union as condition of employment. In some locals it also provides that the union must represent any employee with a grievance even if they are not members. This is a legislative attempt to gut unions since they are not allowed to prohibit them. It tends to work as intended.

Funimation is not prohibited from employing union actors. However, if a voice actor is in a union he or she is prohibited by the union from accepting less than the minimum scale required by the union. Since this is rather more than Funimation normally pays it acts as a disincentive for them to hire union actors. In addition to costing Funimation more it would tend to cause some hard feelings among the non union actors getting less for the same work. This has caused some union actors to work for Funimation or Sentai (also in Texas) to work under a pseudonym. I'm not sure how well this works as that is usually figured out by fans.

Bottom line is that Funimation is going to "officially" hire union actors only if it has some compelling need.

penguintruth wrote:

If they couldn't afford more voice actors, they never should have taken on the project to begin with.

They had enough actors to complete the job successfully.
DBZ is not a show that I watch but a lot of people seem to be satisfied with it, and if Funimation had not released it then maybe nobody would have.

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The audience and the product shouldn't have to suffer for their lack of preparedness.

I would not feel like I was suffering if I had to listen to an actor perform different parts.
It could possibly get confusing at times, but I have never heard a dub where I was bothered by that.

I feel like Aniplex's dubs (which I guess are really just Bang Zoom!'s dubs but they seem to be involved in producing them) have been getting increasingly better over the years while Funimation's have stagnated. They've seemed to have gotten a lot more picky over which shows they're going to bother producing a good dub for.

Monica Rial is essentially an expert at voicing multiple characters in a show. Just how many voices and titles does has she been in? Using her AnimeNewsNetwork Encyclopedia entry at random.org , I counted 439 roles in 445 titles.

These are only roles where her character has a name (be it "Mirajane" or a descriptive name like "Kid A"). For comparison, the ANN Encyclopedia's "Most Prolific Cast" section list Takehito Koyasu as the onlyVA who beats her as he has been in 543 titles.

Kadmos1 wrote:

Monica Rial is essentially an expert at voicing multiple characters in a show. Just how many voices and titles does has she been in? Using her AnimeNewsNetwork Encyclopedia entry at random.org , I counted 439 roles in 445 titles. These are only roles where her character has a name (be it "Mirajane" or a descriptive name like "Kid A"). For comparison, the ANN Encyclopedia's "Most Prolific Cast" section list Takehito Koyasu as the onlyVA who beats her as he has been in 543 titles.

In terms of multiple characters per show, that's really not Monica; she usually only does one. Of course, she still has plenty of range, going from her usual moe voice to a devilish baby voice (Tokyo Ghoul), regular adults (AYTTINAGOL), and even deep-voiced adults (Dimension W) - but she doesn't usually do multiple roles per series. I think Laura Bailey would probably be a better example, as her range is even larger.

I think the most egregious example of multi-casting I've ever watched was the Tagalog dub of the original Full Metal Alchemist anime. Grace Cornel (whose voice I adore) played every female character, except Pinako Rockbell and Izumi Curtis, plus Wrath.

A more recent example of this that I only learned of recently as I never watched the dub at all is Persona 4. Johnny Yong Bosch plays both Narukami Yu and Tohru Adachi, so it's not like he's only playing a minor, single-episode character on top of the main protagonist. It's like Ichigo from Bleach talking to Izaya from Durarara. There's a different cadence to the voices, but you can tell it's the same person.

Did you really need to answer that? I think anyone and their plant would figure this out on their own. But just like the theater business, it can be mirrored with voice acting. My director would cast me not only as a main but also a minor side character in plays. It fills out a disposable role and saves time and money. But VA work is a bit more flexible since scheduling and not having to deal with a huge audience. Most of the recycled actors I notice are for giant mobs to help them blend in so it would be harder to spot while saving some ben Frank's. Though there are some times reusing an actor actually made me think about the characters themselves and their roles Ala Children who chase lost voices with Brittany Karbowski being cast as 2 young girls, who were the only ones that closely interacted with the 2 leads.

Punch Drunk Marc wrote:

And they're all voiced by Tom Kenny.

Or Steve Blum

Why is everyone acting suprised to this and acting as if it's a sort coming/bad thing when one voice actor voices more then one role. Take Simpsons for example.

Harry Shearer he voices Mr. Burns, Mr. Smithers, Ned Flanders, Reverend Lovejoy, Kent Brockman, Dr. Hibbert, Lenny, Principal Skinner, Otto, Rainier Wolfcastle and others.

Hank Azaria he voices Moe, Chief Wiggum, Apu, Comic Book Guy, Carl, Cletus, Professor Frink, Dr. Nick and others.

All of these characters are vastly different (Apu and Moe for example) and you would be surprised to know that the same voice is responsible for all of them. Why are people acting as if it's automatically a bad thing when one voice actor does justice to multiple characters?

Gemnist wrote:

That's probably because labor unions are illegal in Texas...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5s4euach5U

Labor unions are not illegal in Texas. They simply have a law called Right to work preventing workers from being forced to join a union as a condition as employment. How hard is this for people to understand?

You should see american cartoons, one actor can play more than 10 characters at a time for a show.