Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Do Dubs Cast Men As Boy Characters, while Japan Casts Women?
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penguintruth
 Posts: 8461 Location: Penguinopolis |
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I don't mind if they cast actual male VAs to play young boys, but they have to be able to actually act with some emotional dimension (leaving out Mignogna's Ed) without seeming like a caricature (leaving out Spencer's Shinji). Eh, maybe I'm just so much the more fond of Romi Paku and Megumi Ogata. I don't see anyone complaining about Mayumi Tanaka as Kuririn or Luffy. Even Funimation uses Colleen Clinkenbeard as Luffy.
It's really just a case-by-case thing. |
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Coolio33
Posts: 2 |
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Isn’t it also just about who the director thinks is best for the role? It’s not like it hasn’t happened the other way around. The main character in El Dlive was Ayumu Murase in Japanese but Morgan Berry in English.
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Just Passing Through
Posts: 277 |
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Maile Flanagan has been playing Naruto for years, so there's at least one prominent male role that has had a female dub actor.
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John Thacker
Posts: 1006 |
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Hmm, yet published research suggests the opposite:
Similar data obtained through informal testing a decade ago continued to confirm that, but since it's largely social that could have changed. A variety of other research and books indicate that female bilingual Japanese and English speakers speak in a higher pitch in Japanese than in English, and that the reverse is true of male bilingual speakers, speaking in a lower pitch in Japanese. (Also, there are more significant effects when trans bilingual speakers change their gender representation.) One possibility that occurs to me is that men and women's vocabulary choices and pitch are significantly different enough in Japanese (and, particularly, in a way that is noted in terms in common use like 女言葉, not to say that a strong form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis applies, but it's interesting) that it's easier to convincing portray a male voice by changing vocabulary as well as pitch, since those things mark differences more. Most people's pitch when speaking a language is not purely "natural" as seen by the differences in bilinguals mentioned above. |
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Jonny Mendes
 Posts: 997 Location: Europe |
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Son Goku is the most famous example that come to mind.
His seiyū always been the same since the beginning, Nozawa Masako is been perfect for the role and her voice make Son Goku credible as a boy that never grow-up trapped in a adult body. But for western dub audience that doesn't sound alright, because of the image of muscle brain man Son Goko have. Have been grow with TV dub, it was a surprise when i first listen to the original voice, and i think is better for the childish personality of Son Goko even when adult. But that's me. Most western friends of mine think a male voice is better. But if remember correctly kid Son Goku is voiced by female VA in US Dubs. Last edited by Jonny Mendes on Wed Aug 22, 2018 11:40 am; edited 2 times in total |
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Chester McCool
 Posts: 322 |
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Cartoons are even worse at this I find. I saw a bit of the Ducktales reboot and Huey, Dewey, and Louie sounded like 40 year old men. Totally jarring.
Americans who grew up watching the dub no doubt got used to him being voiced by a man. That's why you never saw anyone complain about Naruto or Luffy being voiced by women, the dubs cast women in those roles from the start. It's not really a coincidence people praise dubs from their childhood more than dubs they see now. Last edited by Chester McCool on Wed Aug 22, 2018 11:30 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Chiibi
 Posts: 4829 |
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THIS. SO MUCH. THIS, RIGHT HERE. @Chester McCool: HAH THAT BUGS ME SO MUCH  I think it works fine for Dipper but no....not those three....it's just so odd.....for someone who grew up with original Duck Tales and they sounded like kid versions of Donald.
On the topic of GROWN men being voiced by women, I actually hate this. Because Japanese men don't sound like that; it takes me straight out of the show as "That voice does not fit with that appearance." Same with when a man voices a female character; that's just WTF...yes, I'm talking about YOU, Bob's Burgers. 
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corinthian
Posts: 264 |
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Dubs can't into emotions? Argument over, y'all, nobody can counter that point.
Maxey Whitehead did some dang good boy voice in Baccano and Romeo X Juliet. I don't think she's done much in recent years, though. Dimension W was the last thing I heard her in |
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Kadmos1
 Posts: 13558 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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Removed response to a troll post. --willag
This is a common voice acting practice I don't like. Some examples of my takes on this: Unless a 13+ year-old guy is effeminate or cross-dresses or you can get an androgynous-voiced boy (Junko Takeuchi's Naruto comes to mind), a guy character should be voiced by a man in both Japanese and English. Just because Son Goku has the mentality and behavior of a young boy, that doesn't mean he should be continually played by the same woman for over 30 years. I totally think it is possible for both the manga-ka and anime director to make a mistake in picking a woman to voice a 13+ guy character. Even non-human characters can have these mistakes: In Digimon Adventure 01-02, Angemon and Greymon are both voiced by Japanese ladies. An angel that is clearly a male gender and dinosaur should authoritative and booming male voices. |
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Silver Kirin
Posts: 1122 |
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Very interesting, I always thought that the reason was that Japan didn't have many child voice actors, I never imagined that there were diferent cultural perceptions about how a man or boy should sound. Although I more interested when a character is voiced by an actual child, I think VV in Code Geass was voiced by a 10 year old boy, also some actors like Miyu Irino and Kensho Ono started their careers when they were 12.
Funny they mentioned Dexter's Lab, because in the the latin-american dub he is voiced by a man who also voiced Kero from Cardcaptor Sakura who is voiced by a woman in Japan. Speaking of which, mexican dubs tend to avoid this problem. Characters like Shinji, Ash, Tai Yagami, Li Syaoran, and even Astolfo were voiced by male actors. This isn't always the case, kid Goku, Naruto and Bart Simpson are voiced by women. |
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4428 |
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She did come back for Tokyo Ghoul :re, but I think she has moved on to a full-time teaching job and just reprises prior roles now. |
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Darkabomination
Posts: 89 |
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I think it's largely a case by case basis. I don't buy into the narrative that dub actors don't have many women that can convincingly portray male characters, but it's the social standards of voice pitch that change how we perceive it. I can buy a lot of Japanese women that play boys because they can nail not just the pitch, but the specific nuances of a male's voice, same for overseas actors.
But for me personally, when Japanese actresses slip on a male performance, it slips hard. In the remakes of Trails in the Sky for instance, I have a hard time taking Joshua seriously because he so obviously sounds like a girl trying to do her best male impression, and there's a grit to his character in the writing that just doesn't quite reach, vocally speaking. |
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Lemonchest
Posts: 1771 |
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Plenty of teenage boy characters are voiced by Japanese men, so I dunno.
In my anecdotal experience (& maybe I've just watched too many things with Shouta Aoi in), Japanese male VAs who do the higher pitch voices tend to come with so much queer coding that if you want your main character to have a higher pitched voice to denote their youth but not come off as "effeminate," it can be "safer" to go with a woman talking in the lower registers of her voice than a man using the higher registers of his. |
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Crisha
Moderator
 Posts: 4290 |
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Did some thread clean-up to remove the Dub vs. Sub argument in the thread. Such posts will continue to be deleted.
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Angel M Cazares
 Posts: 5424 Location: Iscandar |
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I am not sure where this question is coming from because in my experience of watching English dubs in anime it is more common for women to voice boys. I look at the case of Spike Spencer voicing Shinji as an isolated case.
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