Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Do Voice Actors Perform Multiple Roles In Dubs?
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fuuma_monou
 Posts: 1817 Location: Quezon City, Philippines |
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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.
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John Thacker
Posts: 1006 |
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It's not uncommon for this to happen in an anime with a particularly large cast. A pretty quick look at the seiyuu list for Shirobako, for example, will show a lot of people credited with multiple bit parts, including in the same episode. It's a little rarer for someone to do both a main role and a bit part, but I've seen that as well. It's a matter of degree, though it does make sense that it would happen more often in anime dubs than in the Japanese originals.
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Barbobot
 Posts: 460 |
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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.
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MarshalBanana
 Posts: 5313 |
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Great Teacher Onizuka is a great example of this, Wendee Lee played 8 main characters, and I think even some extras. And most of the rest of the cast did as well, there is even a scene where Steve Blum pulls over Steve Blum for speeding.
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peno
Posts: 349 |
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It's funny how this article actually came when I am in a process of watching Seiyuu's Life. In first episode, there is a scene, where the main character is asked to voice one line of a little boy, on top of her main role, which she fails miserably, so another Seiyuu, who is with her on the recording, is asked to do the line. I dunno how exact representation of the industry the anime is, but it seems like this practice is presented in Japan too, though probably not to a degree it is in English dubs.
At least they were consistent. I couldn't count how many times my country's dub of FMA changed the VAs for side characters. Actually, the only ones I think were consistent (and even that I consider a small miracle) were the two Elric brothers  Though at least they had enough VAs for side characters, not like this other cable channel, who only uses four voices, two males and two females, to voice all the roles, which is epic fail.
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4422 |
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I can at least see where the idea to use him for both came from since Yu was essentially silent in Persona 4/Golden. Considering that the English cast went uncredited, I'm sure they wanted to save money on recording some reactions. I wasn't sure which way they would go with the later games and anime since Yu and Adachi were fully voiced for those, since there is a preference for keeping the same actors, but there would also be scenes with Bosch talking to himself. |
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bs3311
 Posts: 416 Location: Cincinnati, Ohio |
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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.
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CaptainAvatar
 Posts: 381 Location: Saint Louis, MO |
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To this day I say one of the greatest multi-character performances was Veronica Taylor as Nana Suzuki (All 7) in NaNa 7 of 7. I thought she did a magnificent job of making each of the Nana's unique in their own way. Japan used different Seiyuu for each of the Nana's.
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KutovoiAnton
 Posts: 941 Location: Vladimir, Russia |
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Actually, in Japanese dub one voice actor playing a plenty of characters isn't uncommon as well. There's a reason why Masaya Takatsuka is called "Mr. One Piece" by fans, for example:
person#7968 Naruto and Fairy Tail also have such voice actors in their ranks. Or look at Masako Nozawa voicing the entire Son family in Dragon Ball. And I'm not even talking about no-name characters. Some seiyuus are casted in the series specifically for doing a lot of minor roles (it was higlighted in one of the episodes of Sore ga Seiyuu, IRC). |
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Punch Drunk Marc
Posts: 1742 |
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Funimation's dub of the "Raildex" series did that as well. Brittney Karbowski played Misaka as well as all of her clones. I think the Japanese also used different seiyuus for each one. I think she did a good job since all of the Misaka's have widely different personalities for the most part. |
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Gemnist
Posts: 1757 |
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In terms of dubs, I see this as more of California's problem than Texas'. That's probably because labor unions are illegal in Texas, so they are able to gain a far wider talent group, and even got fresh actors like Brandon McInnis and Daman Mills for this season. California, on the other hand, constantly did this back in the previous decade (and still do, to a lesser extent). While long-running shows like Naruto and Bleach are more understandable due to the gigantic plethora of characters, even shorter shows suffer; dubs of Code Geass and Eureka Seven are the first to come to mind for me.
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Kb24lol
 Posts: 144 |
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You should see american cartoons, one actor can play more than 10 characters at a time for a show.
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Punch Drunk Marc
Posts: 1742 |
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And they're all voiced by Tom Kenny. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 5914 |
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Or Steve Blum 
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falcon.punch
 Posts: 693 |
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Chris Sabat in Funi's dub of DB series dubbed Piccolo, The dragons, Kami, Korin, Vegeta, Yamcha, The Ginyu Force and Frieza's goons (Barring Ginyu and Dodoria) and others in the original DBZ.
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