Forum - View topicThe Mike Toole Show - Canada's Anime Legacy
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ChibiGoku
Posts: 676 |
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One thing I am a little bit surprised you didn't cover was anime that was adapted into French for the Canadian market. Although I think information is a bit particularly difficult to find on French localizations done in Canada, I know of at least Uchuusen Sagittarius (adapted as Les Aventuriers de l'Espace) and aired in both France and Canada, from what I can find. The recording studio, Cinelume, produced the dub, a studio known for their French dubs:
Winx Club, on an odd note, was recorded in English there, curiously enough (to my understanding wasn't common to produce in English there), and remained that way for at least the first 4 seasons (used officially on the Italian DVDs and Asian markets). |
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CandisWhite
Posts: 282 |
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Thank you, sir! Whether or not this was inspired by my comments, thank you for bringing attention to Canadian dubs (especially when we are denied them by argle bargle licensing, as with Winx.. I mean Black Jack.). Here's a nice cold plate of Nanaimo bars.
It truly is amazing how much dubbing has been done in Canada, especially when it comes to anime and European imports. And, yes, it really would be a shame to see them disappear unnoticed into the ether.
Canada is basically the US: Most people talk with what both countries would call unaccented English but there are distinct regional accents. I saw an interview with Letterkenny's Jared Keeso the other day and he's got the thick stereotypical (rural?) Ontario accent; He lays it on real hard for the show but I was surprised to not hear an unaccented voice when he was talking normally; That was literally the first time I've heard an unironic "a-boot". Roland Parliament talks in his book about having to work with (assumedly Ontario-accented) actors who slightly but continuously slipped Canadian-isms, like "oo", into the dubbing track and the reps from DiC constantly getting pissy, including one infamous meltdown where one of them said "We're not making this for f***ing Canadians!" This elicits both a laugh and an angry punch in the wall from me. I can just see those poor actors trying hard not to regress into their Letterkenny-esque childhood voices when they get excited (and Sailor Moon is a bombastic show), all the while the playback has " No doot aboot it!". The hole in the wall comes from Canada being slammed as a market (But history lets me give a big fat  , as Canada was where the show had its most success in that initial run.)
The biggest difference comes in slang, though it's not as big of a gap as between English North America and the UK. Pop, toque, sofa, washroom, etc. We say both 'bathroom' & 'washroom' but 'soda' conjures up pictures of men in boater hats & women in puffed sleeves and almost sounds like a slight euphemism (saying "Oh my gosh", instead of "Oh my God".)
For quantity, they probably do more French than English stuff but they've done English dubbing since the 80's. |
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MarshalBanana
 Posts: 5314 |
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The only dub of theirs, at least the of the ones I've seen, that I disliked, was Ranma 1/2. I remember taking an instant dislike to it and switching to the sub, this was 10 years ago, maybe I would feel different now.
I take it the reason for a definitive English version, is because of the deleted scenes? I do not know, I saw them long before the Kickstarter on YouTube, and I didn't feel like they added anything even in a small way, which is possibly way they could cut them back when they first made it. I suppose having them included is better than not having them, or in this case only having them in JP. |
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Primus
 Posts: 2759 Location: Toronto |
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Montreal, which is where Cinelume is located, was actually a decent spot for early anime dubs, even in English. A lot of the "I can't believe this is anime!" cartoons distributed by the Saban and Cinars of the world were dubbed there. Notably, this includes things like Maya the Bee, The Jungle Book, The Wizard of Oz, and of course, Samurai Pizza Cats. I think the latest English anime dub recorded there was for Supernatural: The Animation, if you want to count Gon as a Korean show. Cinelume is still around (they did Gon), though the vast majority of their work now consists of French dubs of live-action feature films. Astro Boy 1980 was a project where they not only did a French dub for Radio-Canada, they also did an English dub which aired on Global/indie stations in Canada. They still do English shows and even work with Rainbow (the Winx Club people) on Maggie & Bianca. French Canada had its own dub of Pokemon. The TV series was a weird thing, where they would take the European version and re-dub lines featuring character/monster names to match the English terminology for better synergy with the product on Canadian store shelves. That lasted until 2004. The first six movies had fully Canadian dubs. That died immediately when Viz took over home video distribution from Warner. Now, Pokemon in Quebec is a direct import of the European dub, which is produced in Belgium. Like the rest of Canada's voice hubs, Montreal has been hit hard, possibly the hardest. With the rare exception, English-language productions are now typically shows otherwise fully produced in Montreal (think shows like Arthur). French-language productions have been badly hurt, too. Their unions have had to slash wages in an effort to compete with Belgium, ultra-low end Moroccan dubs and obviously what's done in France in a world where home video, as well as linear television is dying and what's replacing them couldn't care less about Quebec. Though, maybe that last part will start to change.
Amusingly, Cinelume's Winx dub has never been more accessible. Because 4Kids was 4Kids, their dub featured a bunch of alterations to the script and enough visual edits that make it incompatible with the other versions of the show, as well as the later non-4Kids material. As a result of that meddling, the Montreal dub, which was produced directly for Rainbow from the Italian materials, is now the default English language versions of those first four seasons everywhere. When the show was on Netflix, it was their dub. When Cinedigm released the first season on DVD in North America, it was their dub. When Winx Club started airing on KidsClick in the US last year, it was the Cinelume dub. Winx Club has a hilariously convoluted history of English dubs. The show's third season has been dubbed three separate times in North America. First was Cinelume's Montreal production, then the 4Kids NYC dub, and lastly, Nickelodeon had it re-dubbed in LA with some of their live-action channel stars.
For some bizarre reason Bandai Entertainment was sent Escaflowne's trimmed down Japanese broadcast masters, which is what Ocean worked from. The Japanese home video release has apparently always included those scenes. This was all in the late '90s. It wouldn't have been easy for Bandai to know there was another cut of the show back then. Funimation got the BD masters and overreacted to the dub not matching. There were a number of ways to tackle that issue and they decided to go with the sketchiest. As you said, the added material is largely superfluous. Only a small handful would've been mad at them if they edited the Japanese version back to its broadcast state so that both versions matched. No one would care if they did a separate dub and sub-only disc for that first handful of episodes. They kind of wound up doing the latter anyway, though only after raising $300k on Kickstarter. So much for their initial threat about releasing the show sub-only if the crowdfunding campaign wasn't successful. 
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11340 |
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Heh, I think half the cast of Inuyasha turned up on Stargate SG-1, including Teryl Rothery (Dr. Fraiser), who played Princess Abi, as well as A-ko in the OAVs.  Inuyasha was also where I fell in love with David Kaye's voice. So disappointed he didn't do Sesshoumaru in the Final Act.
And this is my cue for my obligatory Kingdom dub post. Funimation dub via Canada, per Azur Studios in Vancouver. Mike seems to rarely if ever comment in the forum about his articles, but if he reads this, I'd be interested if he'd ask around to find out more about this studio (and this odd duck of a dub, should that info come his way). The name suggests a possible relationship to Ocean or Blue Water, but I can't turn up much info on the studio. Are they new? Have they done any other dub work other than commercials and instructional videos? Inquiring minds and all that...
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Mosaic
 Posts: 75 |
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The English dub for The Little Mermaid was also a Canadian production. The lead actress, Kirsten Bishop, would later go on to voice a lot of Sailor Moon villains.
The thing I liked about the Sailor Moon dub is that most of actors didn't do a lot of anime voicework. Most of them were stage actors. It's made it hard to track down or identity some of the actors from the later seasons. Also, you can always identify a Canadian dub by how they say "sorry".
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belvadeer
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For what it's worth, I always enjoyed Canada's dub work. They rank pretty high up there with Funi and Viz's productions (I don't think I could watch Monster Rancher in Japanese ever). It's thank to them we have the classic "over 9000" quote that Viz ended up going with in the new Sailor Moon dub. And Mark Gatha is still the true Mega Man X to many a gamer, despite he's long since moved on from voice acting.
Speaking of Sailor Moon, it never really mattered to me that the first dub was edited to cater to non-Japanese viewers. I think the voices were great for their time, and still are in certain cases. The rewritten lines were still comedic (come on, "meatball moonbrain" has to be the most original insult based on a hairstyle ever plus who could forget "Don't have a coronary") and the story still stayed on track. Canada truly deserves more credit than they get for their legacy in anime and game dubs.
Kirsten was amazing, long live her memory. The first dub VA to master and perfect the ohohoho cackling laughter in English dubs. We lost a truly talented soul with her. |
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Klonoa1545
Posts: 13 |
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Okay, but really... the Ocean Water G Gundam dub is one of my all-time favorite things ever. So is Mega Man. Honestly, that scene in Day of Sigma where X (Domon) totally goes all "Shining Finger" on Sigma (Master Asia) is almost as if it were crafted specifically for just me. Mark Gatha is an orthopedic surgeon now. Bless his heart.
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6867 Location: Kazune City |
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I think you underestimate this viewerbase's capacity for anti-industry backlash. I can see the reactions now: "Funimation ruined Escaflowne just so they could re-use the old dub. They're a bunch of cheapskates who butcher anime -- never buy anything from them again!" The actual importance or non-importance of the additional scenes isn't relevant; the fact that the edits took place would play into the pro-piracy, "R1 companies don't give us the true experience" narrative, and the story of the incident would be taken as gospel both by Escaflowne fans and those who never cared about Escaflowne in the first place. And since rips of the Japanese DVDs had been circulating for years (so viewers had been able to experience the extra scenes as part of the whole, not just as isolated clips on streaming sites), Funi couldn't have taken them out completely without a PR disaster. |
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NJ_
 Posts: 3009 Location: Wallington, NJ |
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Honestly, if a X9 does happen, Ted Sroka (X), Johnny Yong Bosch (Zero) & Chris Tergliafera (Sigma) will have big shoes to fill if they're brought in for it. They did pretty well in Marvel Vs. Capcom Infinite (and 3 for Johnny) but it would still take a lot of getting used to if they were to be brought back again for a full X game. |
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KabaKabaFruit
 Posts: 1871 Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba |
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But they don't. Canada was, is and may always will be seen as being second fiddle to the anime industry in terms of its success over here. |
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Primus
Posts: 2759 Location: Toronto |
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Azur isn't a directly related to Ocean like Blue Water is, nor do they appear to be a company that Ocean currently does business with (like Westwood used to be). There is a connection to Ocean, though. Paul Baldwin is Azur's owner and Ocean used to employ him as a script translator. Hennie Britton is their audio director and he has a few engineering credits on older Ocean shows. Azur was founded 10 years ago, but opened their recording studio in 2013. Outside of Kingdom, the only other anime I know they've done is Little Astro Boy. Like Digital Sound Magic (the studio behind Black Jack), Azur's dubbed a lot of Japanese dramas for The Japan Foundation. This includes Hanako & Anne, the show about the Japanese translator of Anne of Green Gables.
Okay, then just include another disc. Anime Limited in the UK announced their Escaflowne BD release before Funimation did and despite the missing footage, they always intended on including the original dub. Funimation's originally said that if their Kickstarter wasn't successful, they would only release the show sub-only. They vastly overstated the importance of a few minutes of extra footage in the first half dozen episodes. |
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Levonr
 Posts: 808 |
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Gotta love it when Ocean Studios dubs the first season of Saber Marionette J & MS Gundam and then the sequels are dubbed by Blue Waters with a completely different cast.
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belvadeer
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I have no doubt in Bosch and Tergliafera's performances, but Sroka may take a bit of getting used to for some people. Not ripping on the guy since he was great as Jamil in Romancing SaGa on PS2, but his performance as X in Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite left a lot of folks wanting Gatha back. Then again, Jamil and X are two very different characters, plus it was Ted's first time voicing such an iconic Capcom character, so I can't completely fault him. He got the basic idea of X down pretty well in most of the cutscenes and his battle shouts weren't terrible either; I think it was just a case of voice direction not going more all out.
I know, hence why I said they truly deserve more credit than they actually get. |
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Primus
Posts: 2759 Location: Toronto |
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Blame lower budgets. Blue Water was started specifically to offer a cheaper alternative to the Vancouver actors, who are signed to ACTRA (Canada's acting union) and get high wages. The Alberta actors are part of a separate "union" that pays significantly less. I'm not entirely sure those total recasts would happen with today's Ocean. The company started producing dubs featuring actors from both Vancouver and Calgary/Edmonton with the Gundam 00 movie and haven't stopped. There are still a handful of ongoing Alberta-only productions (mainly the Bushiroad TCG shows), but even Kiznaiver has a few Vancouver actors in it. |
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