Forum - View topicINTEREST: Megumi Hayashibara Shares Her Thoughts on Modern Voice Acting
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Beltane
Posts: 31 |
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The thing is that lots of people are watching those remakes and sequels and so on. Just look at the movies that top the box office. The industry sees how much money they are making from a certain formula, assumes this is what many of their audience want to see, and makes more of the same because it'll guarantee good return (and throws lots of money into marketing them everywhere, which means the not-as mainstream movies get much less exposure). It's a vicious cycle. Following the trend isn't anything new. It's been happening in the music industry for a long time. |
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Alabaster Spectrum
Posts: 528 |
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Yeah this industry being all about the money lately is a topic I'm glad is getting a lot more coverage cause for me at least it's been really taking away from the enthusiasm I used to have for anime and I've just been watching less and less because it feels like they've stopped making shows or movies with the intention of making a show or movie so much as part of a marketing scheme package where it's a secondary product. It might be a bit hard to explain to people that are less familiar with the goings on in the industry and how it tries to continue to make profits but it has just become incredibly blatant to me in the past couple years especially with how every other show feels like it has the same voice actors, same music artists, same kind of writing and directing staff if not the flat out same writers and directors and same unwillingness to just commit to a theme or premise and develop those ideas in a coherent direction that is more than the sum of their parts cause under the current industry business model those are the only people whose branding makes any money for projects.
It's indeed a very sort of Hollywood approach, but IMO it also takes from the worst marketing aspects of the video game and Japanese music industry as well. It might help if the biggest producers in the business that call most of the shots weren't for all intents and purposes music companies that have little business controlling as much of what goes on in an animation market as they do. Voice actors and using them as marketing tools is really just a small part of what's making anime kind of a soulless industry I can no longer expect great or even good things from anymore and it's good that it's someone like Megumi Hayashibara critiquing it a bit now too since people are more likely to listen to what she has to say as opposed to stigmatized older male directors like Tomino, Miyazaki, Anno who have argued similar sentiments for years now |
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falcon.punch
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Definitively agree with Mrs. Hayashibara, the (every) industry definitively is no longer original and innovative anymore, they don't like taking risks anymore.
And every industry is a very shady one, not only the seiyuu and acting ones. |
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MarshalBanana
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I don't know what rosy tinted view you've got of the past, but the real one certainly was not brimming with originality, whether it was the big boom in battle Shonens in the 90s or the mass of Mecha shows from the 70s, originality has always been the exception, not the norm. And after playing Star Fox Zero, fudge innovation, a quality product is far more important then "innovating". |
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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I dind't say anything about its quality, just its originality. Pervy voyeurs in anime is incredibly common, and the only thing really different about this was that the protagonist is a robot and wold have things like off switches. For an inverse example, "Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen" is very different than the norm for anime, but it falls completely flat as a stand-alone story because it is so focused on style over substance that it becomes incomprehensible and directionless.
What I mean is that a voice actor, should they commit a crime, should be punished as they are without relation to their profile as an actor, and that career should be set aside at least until the punishment has been resolved. For instance, should one go to prison for a drunk driving accident, they should serve their sentence, and then they can resume once they finish it. If the crime is something so big that the voice actor becomes associated with that though (such as murder or embezzlement), and it becomes bad press to say that you have such a person on their cast, that's where the line should be drawn, or at least a tighter leash.
I'd say that the trend in Hollywood nowadays is towards greater spectacle and less waiting. Even action movies of older decades like the original Indiana Jones trilogy and the early James Bond movies had a lot of talking and exposition for a long while, and the action doesn't really happen until every piece of information has been laid down. Psycho, THE horror film, had no horror elements in it whatsoever until the shower scene. The entire first half of Ghostbusters (the original movie) was about the main characters trying to prove the existence of ghosts and is incredibly mundane. Now, you have the action right from the start, with dialogue and exposition happening during it. That there are fewer works of literature getting adapted now than before, in my opinion, is not because people don't want to read so much, but because there are fewer works of literature suited to a hit-the-ground-running approach nowadays. After all, you have the Harry Potter books, the Twilight books, the works of JRR Tolkien, and the Hunger Games books all becoming huge in the mainstream. Those are books that don't take too long to get started, and they all have plenty of spectacle in them. |
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belvadeer
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Good thing voicing Hakumen no Mono is certainly different from her usual stuff, right? I was surprised to hear that she's voicing that repugnant fox freak thing. I imagine they did that on purpose to keep its gender ambiguous. |
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MarshalBanana
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And the saddest part is this doesn't seem like something that will go go away, or at least tone down. I wouldn't be surprised if in 10 years we are still talking about the same thing. It might be somewhat tolerable, maybe even worthwhile, if it was a discussion about right directions or examples of improvements. But no, someone starts a discussion about how the industry is dying(which always seems to be a copy and paste of what someone else has said), someone else agrees with them, there is a scapegoat and then it just goes on and on until it burns out. The only solution that ever seems to be given, is the industry must be what it once was in someone's memory, but that persons memory of the industry is nearly always completely different from reality. |
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MarshalBanana
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MarshalBanana
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Stuart Smith
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I do find it ironic giving one of her most famous roles is Musashi, and Team Rocket are "like the Dorongo Gang" For me personally I'd rather have too much talent than not enough, so a high turnover rate doesn't seem that bad to me. -Stuart Smith |
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JDude042
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I think Megumi Hayashibara is probably one of the first seiyuu that I actually became aware of. I don't remember it too well, but I got into anime around the early 2000s with Dragon Ball Z on Toonami. I started buying the DVDs and noticed the Japanese audio option with English subtitles, and since I got my first computer around that time and internet, I became aware that these cartoons were actually animated shows from Japan. My interest in anime began to peak thanks to the use of the internet, and one of my first anime other than the former was ironically Slayers. That's definitely where I first heard her voice acting and really got into her singing, then I started to pay a bit more attention to some of the voices behind the characters when I started watching more and more stuff over time.
I think her complaints are certainly justified. It's more about making money, and there's more money to be made by marketing seiyuu for more than just their voice. I have also noticed over the past several years more new talent constantly being brought in and more of the veterans being pushed aside in favor of such. Her complaining about being made to feel indispensable, and then being pushed aside in favor of someone else that they can get to do the job for less money, I can totally relate to. I've worked a grocery store job since I was in high school, started off part-time, went full-time, then the company started making major cut backs and I was forcibly dropped to part-time, and it has slowly gotten worse and worse to the point where I'm actively looking for a 2nd job. It's sad too, because I pride myself in going above and beyond with my work, but then the managers at my job don't seem to care and rather schedule you the least amount of hours they possibly can to cut costs, and thus greatly sacrifice the quality of work that their employees put out. It's a good thing that I'm smart with my money and have several thousand dollars saved up in my bank account, so at least it would take a very long time before I really need to start worrying. That and a loving and supporting family that I can fall back on. And while voice actors and actresses are generally supposed to be in that position for their voice, there's certainly nothing wrong with them marketing them on their looks if it's gonna bring in money, especially if they are good looking. Although she certainly isn't a favorite of mine voice acting wise, I always kinda had a thing for her looks wise to be honest. |
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Alabaster Spectrum
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All I really see with a lot of anime forums and fans online nowadays is just people bickering endlessly with each other about the perceived quality of x vs y and just posturing about things that frankly shouldn't matter so I can't say there's a whole lot fondness there. As for how shows get made strictly for pure profit potential and getting around having to make actually entertaining worthwhile television to turn said profit I don't know just look around you and all the shows that seem to be designed around considerations for what's going to go into the Blu-Ray packaging first to make it sell and what's going to go into making the show interesting/entertaining to watch second or possibly not even. That's the biggest thing that's changed in recent years with how the industry approaches things, particularly how it decides on casts for it's shows. If you can't see this than really I just don't know but it's blatant and has a negative effect on the planning, focus and execution of enough recent high profile anime to the point where I can barely enjoy 95% of what comes out now and I'm pretty sure it's not just a result of my tastes or a decline in interest for the medium either, I just truly think it's producers have chosen to follow a business model that doesn't necessarily result in it putting it's best foot forward in terms of making memorable and entertaining franchises in their own right so much as infamous marketing campaigns. Most shows lately that I'd normally expect to like in years past just kind of made me feel bad and stupid for having watched them when they end up going nowhere or having terrible characters and premises until I kind of just stopped watching anything around last December and only recently decided to give it a slow go with some stuff again. One other thing I've also noticed is that the quality of music in anime seems to have really dropped off and become more about promoting production committee artists that often times just don't fit the show or are overused to the point of redundancy. I don't think it's any one genre either, I just think period the industry dances around the things that should matter in running a show either because they're too challenging too execute for the talent pool that the industry current employs, they know they don't really have to worry about those things anymore because they have x, y, z popular elements involved or both. |
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ponyclone
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and animenewsnetwork.com is also going in wrong direction with their constant spam of news about seiyū personal life, i don't care who they marry or when they go to a toilet.
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belvadeer
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What are you talking about? This isn't a personal life article, it's just Hayashibara sharing her opinion on the state of the Japanese voice acting industry. |
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enurtsol
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People realize what's happened in Hollywood also happening in anime industry
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