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The Mike Toole Show - A Tale of Two Dubs


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StudioToledo



Joined: 16 Aug 2006
Posts: 847
Location: Toledo, U.S.A.
PostPosted: Fri Feb 17, 2012 9:16 pm Reply with quote
TitanXL wrote:
The thing is it fits more on Fox Kids than Adult Swim. Outside of his 'ass dance' I don't really see anything all that objectionable in the series. I should hunt it down some time to see for myself how they did.

They did show Shin's butt from an episode I recall involving the kindergarten going to a ski resort. I'll say at least the way they went about it, they made the show as equally funny to kids as it could be to their parents tuning in (much in the way the show was presented in Japan).

TurnerJ wrote:
Quote:
Pazu sounds more like a child and not a teenager in Streamline's dub, and as for Kiki, they left Jiji's cat sound effects intact, instead of the Disney dub, which had Phil Hartman saying "Meow!"


Correction: Pazu in the Streamline dub sounds like a woman PRETENDING to be a child, not an actual child. He was voiced by Barbara Goodson, who I thought was an even stranger casting choice.


I liked it. It sorta fit the character as I saw it anyway.
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TurnerJ



Joined: 05 Nov 2004
Posts: 481
Location: Highland Park, NJ
PostPosted: Fri Feb 17, 2012 9:31 pm Reply with quote
Barbara Goodson could have done a much better job IMO; she may be a good actress, but I think Pazu is one of her weakest performances ever. I've heard much more effective examples of women voicing boys' roles (Brianne Siddall's Kenichi from Metropolis, for instance, and Veronica Taylor is also good), and Goodson just wasn't it. She didn't sound very believeable, and most of the time she sounded like she wasn't giving any genuine emotion to the role at all. Plus, as I mentioned, there was an obvious feminine quality to her voice that ultimately killed it for me. I can't listen to her Pazu without cringing; it just sounds like stale reading, not actual acting. It isn't her fault; the voice direction in the older dub was quite poor, as if they were just doing the lines in one take and leaving it at that. Certainly not what I would call anything in the way of a better job.

The rest of the voices in the older dub are not much better. Sheeta sounded whiny, unconvincing, shrieky, and totally grating on my ears, Muska's hideously dull, boring VA ruined every second he was on the screen, and Dola and her boys sounded very shrill and completely idiotic, like they didn't know what they were doing. Uncle Pom's VA was also terrible; he sounded like one of the pirate brothers! Richard Dysart did a much better job with this role IMO. The General was the only halfway good voice, but he still sounded quite stiff and stale. Jim Cummings was much better IMO.

My other biggest problem with the older dub of Laputa is the writing. Oh sure, it keeps the last part of Sheeta's speech which Disney's dub omitted (probably its only false note), but there just wasn't a lot of thought put into the actual writing. There's plenty of lines which sound both clunky and laughable, especially "I'm as hard as a brick moppet! If moppets were made out of bricks!" That's one of the most groanworthy lines I've ever heard from a dub! Even worse is toward the end where Muska says "Now say bye-bye!" when he's aiming at Sheeta. The only thing it succeeded in doing was making me laugh. Which is absolutely NOT something that scene should do. It doesn't matter if the dialogue isn't as loose; simply put, the script of the JAL dub sounds like a badly translated, awkwardly written fansub script.

Now it's true that Disney's dub script DOES veer from the original text at times and maybe goes overboard in adding in extra lines at times, but the reason I say it works better is because it actually sounds like a fluent, believeable script. As such, the flow of the dialogue is more smooth and doesn't sound anywhere nearly as choppy. Even though I'm not against accuracy as a whole, I prefer for the dub to sound fluent above all things.

The older dub also strikes out in the walla department. In scenes like the crowd punch scene and the robot attacks, there's absolutely no sound from the background characters; all you see are just moving mouths with no audible sound. This gives the dub the feel of a bad Hong Kong flick. Hearing such scenes sound bare when there are obviously mouths moving only shows that the staff involved really weren't giving a lot of care of thought to the dub. As mentioned, Disney's dub does lay on the chatter a bit thick at times, but for these two scenes I felt the extra dialogue helped make the scene sound less bare and more like an actual movie.

The Disney dub of Laputa may not be as accurate as the JAL dub and casts its leads as teens, but I'd rather listen to it any day. I can't stand the '80s dub; there are so many problems with it that it doesn't even deserve to be called either a great dub or superior to Disney's, because it's not. By comparison, Carl Macek's dubs for Kiki and Totoro can hold their own because unlike Laputa's older dub, both were created with more care and affection, hence why both hold up fairly well. But Laputa's older dub? No way. It pales compared to both, and even Disney's dub. Note that I am not comparing either dub to the original Japanese version.
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Animegomaniac



Joined: 16 Feb 2012
Posts: 4070
PostPosted: Sat Feb 18, 2012 12:30 pm Reply with quote
I love multidubs, as long as they remain buying options, which is why I still don't own either Patlabor movie. For me, it's a bit odd sometimes as the usual notion is that the first one you hear is your favorite:

Patlabor movies: Old dub.

Akira: New dub.

Dragonball: I don't know. I first saw the show in syndication which I remembered when I played the Dragon Power NES game and I started watching the Ocean dubbed Dragon Ball Z because of my familarity of the original show. I have no idea when I saw it or which dub it was except that it was on UHF air waves rather than VHF because I had some static issues {Online fansubs, how unexpectedly modern. And too easy, way too easy}. Direct comparisons: First Ocean over third Funimation, Second Funimation over Kai, First Funimation over Second Ocean. Harmony Gold over Funimation for Dragon Ball. Two dubs? I wish this was that easy...

One Piece: Four kids. Am I still here or did divine lightning just strike me dead? Uh, nothing so I'll continue. For me, cartoonish voices far outstripped reused Dragon Ball Z voices for cartoonish pirates and everything else didn't matter. Besides, Sonny Strait never should have used his Krillin voice for Usopp. No nose voicing big nose?

Slayers: I tried watching unOrtiz dubbed Slayers but it never worked.

Robotech one: I haven't watched Macross yet but I didn't hear anything wrong with the younger Reba West. Tony Oliver, Cam Clark and a really young Wendee Lee in a small role all made for a fun experience. The idea of older, experienced ADV regulars in these roles of naive, young characters somewhat worries me. The other ones? Change for the better. It's a tie.

Sgt Frog {based on what I heard on the ADV trailer}: Funimation.
Gurren Lagaan {Based on the cast list}: Bang zoom.

And it's because of Tiffany Grant in both cases. Guess why?
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belvadeer





PostPosted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 1:30 pm Reply with quote
I assure you I've met an astonishing number of people who fall into the description I just gave. I'm not saying tens of thousands, but I've witnessed an infuriating number of them at past anime cons regardless, enough to fill several of those large auditoriums at convention centers. =/

Zin5ki wrote:
For the sake of clarification I must ask whether, by writing this, you only wish to characterise the small subset of fans who are identifiable by their exhibition of the specific traits you mention. As you know, it is possible to defend their allegiances without recourse to the contrived linguistic ideologies sketched.


I'm sure it took you all afternoon to come up with those big words.
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gatotsu911



Joined: 18 Jul 2006
Posts: 457
Location: US of East Coast
PostPosted: Wed Feb 29, 2012 4:19 pm Reply with quote
Animegomaniac wrote:
Gurren Lagaan {Based on the cast list}: Bang zoom.

I do not know and have never met you, but you will never be my friend.
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