| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
|
|
|
Aresef
Joined: 22 Jun 2005
Posts: 929
Location: MD
|
 Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2025 1:28 pm |
 |
|
|
This change has all felt quite unceremonious.
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
Kusakabe
Joined: 22 Jan 2018
Posts: 136
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2025 3:45 pm |
|
|
|
It feels like the voice acting industry has more or less come to the conclusion that everyone is replaceable. I'm seeing less and less interest in bringing back previous actors.
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
Heishi
Joined: 06 Mar 2016
Posts: 1430
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2025 4:03 pm |
|
|
|
I see, so they are gonna hire more anime dub based actors going forward. Hey, that's cool. I really like Kate Higgins as Pauline, so I could see this work well.
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
FishLion
 Crazy Fangirl
Joined: 24 Jan 2024
Posts: 857
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2025 5:21 pm |
|
|
| Heishi wrote: | | I see, so they are gonna hire more anime dub based actors going forward. Hey, that's cool. I really like Kate Higgins as Pauline, so I could see this work well. |
I did too, she did a great job. For too long the voice performances in Nintendo games felt really cartoonish. It works in some games, but in some like Odyssey you could tell they would have appreciated some voice work outside of the usual short responses and noises in Mario. The finale cutscene where Bowser and Mario both shove flowers at Peach after the fight in particular felt weirdly silent, I really felt like that part could have benefited from voice work that was more than a short phrase.
Don't get me wrong, I will always love and appreciate the old voice work as well as Samantha Kelly, but if DKB's voiced lines of dialogue is any indication for Nintendo EPD's general direction for other series, Mario and crew clearly has more personality to show than they have been and hiring anime voice actors makes sense for that.
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
Somer-_-
Joined: 14 May 2014
Posts: 1072
Location: Canada
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2025 6:43 pm |
|
|
| Kusakabe wrote: | | It feels like the voice acting industry has more or less come to the conclusion that everyone is replaceable. I'm seeing less and less interest in bringing back previous actors. |
I've always felt that way. At least in this case it's after almost 2 decades.
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
BadNewsBlues
Joined: 21 Sep 2014
Posts: 7196
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2025 6:46 pm |
|
|
| Kusakabe wrote: | | It feels like the voice acting industry has more or less come to the conclusion that everyone is replaceable. I'm seeing less and less interest in bringing back previous actors. |
While the practice may be different elsewhere this has always more or less been a thing with voice acting in America. Unless you’re a Mel Blanc or Fred Welker who can (or wants) to stick around in the industry for 40 plus years playing the same character(s) your role is going to get recasted at some point even if you’re still capable of doing the role.
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
Silver Kirin
Joined: 09 Aug 2018
Posts: 1762
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2025 8:16 pm |
|
|
| Heishi wrote: | | I see, so they are gonna hire more anime dub based actors going forward. Hey, that's cool. I really like Kate Higgins as Pauline, so I could see this work well. |
Perhaps only when referring to English voice artists, as a non-English speaker I've noticed that many English-speaking dub VAs who mostly work in video games tend to also work in anime and nothing else, maybe some cartoons here and there, which is very different from the rest of the world where dub VAs tend to work in all different kinds of media.
Taking Pauline as an example, in DK Bananza's Neutral Spanish dub, the character is voiced by Elizabeth Infante, who is known for voicing various pink-haired anime characters like Chika in Kaguya-sama, Anya in Spy⨯Family, Aira Shiratori in Dan Da Dan and Pop☆Step in MHA: Vigilantes, but she also voiced Emma in the animated series Unicorn Warriors Eternal and Player 222 in Squid Game S2.
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
MFrontier
Joined: 13 Apr 2014
Posts: 20003
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2025 10:10 pm |
|
|
|
Congrats to the new VA's, sad as it is to lose people who've been with these characters for so long.
Also, I guess Laura Stahl has recovered from her health issues? I hope so.
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
JRPictures
Joined: 03 Aug 2016
Posts: 156
Location: Australia
|
| Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2025 12:14 am |
|
|
|
Can't hold this against Courtney cause she can't really control how all this works but man is it not very great timing over the past month for her to be taking over two fairly high profile roles in Japanese properties (Peach in Mario Kart World and Panty in New Panty & Stocking) where it was clear early on that the previous VAs weren't contacted/given a choice in getting to come back.
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
Cardcaptor Takato
Joined: 27 Jan 2018
Posts: 5965
|
| Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2025 12:32 am |
|
|
| Silver Kirin wrote: | |
Perhaps only when referring to English voice artists, as a non-English speaker I've noticed that many English-speaking dub VAs who mostly work in video games tend to also work in anime and nothing else, maybe some cartoons here and there, which is very different from the rest of the world where dub VAs tend to work in all different kinds of media.
Taking Pauline as an example, in DK Bananza's Neutral Spanish dub, the character is voiced by Elizabeth Infante, who is known for voicing various pink-haired anime characters like Chika in Kaguya-sama, Anya in Spy⨯Family, Aira Shiratori in Dan Da Dan and Pop☆Step in MHA: Vigilantes, but she also voiced Emma in the animated series Unicorn Warriors Eternal and Player 222 in Squid Game S2. |
I think it's more the other way around that a lot of English dub VAs get into anime first and then get into video games because it pays better than anime. This happened with Laura Bailey who was one of the most famous dub VAs for years but she quit doing any anime and exclusively does video game work now because of the better pay. A lot of union dubs with both anime and video games tends to be done in LA nowadays so it's probably also the case of everybody knows everybody in the voice acting dubbing industry and has the right connections.
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
TokimekiCrisis
Joined: 01 Nov 2022
Posts: 131
|
| Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2025 8:07 am |
|
|
| Heishi wrote: | | I see, so they are gonna hire more anime dub based actors going forward. . |
I think anime voice actors are just cheaper compared to others these days. FF14 did the same thing with the latest expansion pack. For 10 years the game hired British actors for it's English voice cast many of whom had background in professional theater or acting but the latest expansion last year cast a bunch of English anime dub VAs for the new character. Fans noticed the severe drop in voice acting quality between the newer and older cast and have been asking for them to go back to using theater VAs.
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
enurtsol
Joined: 01 May 2007
Posts: 15207
|
| Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2025 9:49 am |
|
|
| Silver Kirin wrote: | |
Perhaps only when referring to English voice artists, as a non-English speaker I've noticed that many English-speaking dub VAs who mostly work in video games tend to also work in anime and nothing else, maybe some cartoons here and there, which is very different from the rest of the world where dub VAs tend to work in all different kinds of media.
Taking Pauline as an example, in DK Bananza's Neutral Spanish dub, the character is voiced by Elizabeth Infante, who is known for voicing various pink-haired anime characters like Chika in Kaguya-sama, Anya in Spy⨯Family, Aira Shiratori in Dan Da Dan and Pop☆Step in MHA: Vigilantes, but she also voiced Emma in the animated series Unicorn Warriors Eternal and Player 222 in Squid Game S2. |
Those all still fall under "dubbing" work though
In order for English-speaking dub VAs to get in other Western animation work, they have to do "pre-lay" work, which is a different industry
And many nowadays eventually do some pre-lay work too since it's not uncommon for Western animation now to use the same dubbing studios to record their pre-lay voices - so of course those dubbing studios would use some of the same actors and actresses they're already familiar with
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
Chakmon
Joined: 27 May 2025
Posts: 26
|
| Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2025 10:37 am |
|
|
| Kusakabe wrote: | | It feels like the voice acting industry has more or less come to the conclusion that everyone is replaceable. I'm seeing less and less interest in bringing back previous actors. |
I feel like that always been the case? Voice actor consistency has never been a widespread thing on the English side. And I don't think most fans of English dubbing care as long as the game isn't in Japanese it's good enough for them. A lot of video game characters I grew up with since the 90s have gone through tons of voice actors between games and adaptions. Mario and the gang are no different. Honestly Mario characters are probably less important than characters who get a lot more dialog than just "woohoos' and "yays!" even if we can nitpick them and say the new voices don't do it as well. Stuff like the Persona 3 and 4 cast being replaced is probably a bigger deal since those are such story heavy games.
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
Stelman257
Joined: 26 Jul 2013
Posts: 370
|
| Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2025 1:21 pm |
|
|
| Cardcaptor Takato wrote: | | I think it's more the other way around that a lot of English dub VAs get into anime first and then get into video games because it pays better than anime. This happened with Laura Bailey who was one of the most famous dub VAs for years but she quit doing any anime and exclusively does video game work now because of the better pay. |
While true, it's interesting in that as time has gone on, it feels like Laura Bailey, Troy Baker and to a lesser extent Travis Willingham, kind of ended up being the exception rather than the rule here. Plenty of other VA's have made it big in the western animation and video game sphere, but still reprise all of their anime and video game dubbing roles. VA's like Robbie Daymond, Matthew Mercer and Ray Chase for example. I think it was largely time and place and circumstance that led to those particular VA's leaving the anime and game dub scene.
| TokimekiCrisis wrote: | | I think anime voice actors are just cheaper compared to others these days. FF14 did the same thing with the latest expansion pack. For 10 years the game hired British actors for it's English voice cast many of whom had background in professional theater or acting but the latest expansion last year cast a bunch of English anime dub VAs for the new character. Fans noticed the severe drop in voice acting quality between the newer and older cast and have been asking for them to go back to using theater VAs. |
There are no "anime voice actors", they are simply voice actors who also have experience doing anime. And they are paid the exact same amount for working on FF14 that the British voice actors are paid, as pay is given on a per-project basis. Also many voice actors who have also done anime in the US, also have significant theatre backgrounds, so the strange myth people seem to have that only British VA's have any theatre training needs to be put to bed already.
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
groovysunbeam
Joined: 21 Jun 2023
Posts: 82
Location: Belgium
|
| Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2025 7:45 am |
|
|
| Aresef wrote: | | This change has all felt quite unceremonious. |
They could have given her a meaningless title like they did Charles Martinet when they replaced him but wouldn't that also just be patronizing? I guess it depends. Not being told you were replaced until a game came out isn't any better either I guess.
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
