Forum - View topicAnswerman - Who Dominated Dubs Before Funimation?
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 9875 Location: Virginia |
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@invalidname
Viz didn't have the license for Urusei Yatsura, AnimEigo did. You are probably thinking of one of the other long running Takahashi series. |
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MarshalBanana
 Posts: 5396 |
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This is a little sad to read, it is so strange to read someone having to explain who the likes of; Bandai, Geneon and ADV were. I really miss the dub scene of the 00s, especially the LA crowd, most of them have since been forced to move on, so even dubs produced there now have few of them left, mostly; Wendee Lee, Doug Stone and Kirk Thornton.
So much now is from Funimation, and while I don't have anything against them per say the lack of vanity makes the whole thing really dull. Though maybe with Netflix getting into the game we will see a bigger increases in LA and New York dubs. It would be nice if Ocean was given a few shows a year, the only recent one I know of was Gintama, which would give them a fair bit of work if they went back to the beginning. |
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mrakai
Posts: 40 |
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Another thing about Ocean which was more of a big deal in the 90s and 00s than today was that you could get good union talent in Vancouver since so many shows were being shot up there.
The Canadian actor's union used to (and might still) have a buy-out clause, so for something like 3x scale you don't have to pay residuals. Many of the old Ocean dub actors like Sarah Strange and Venus Terzo show up in live action shows still shot up there like Supernatural. |
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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(reads headline)
Right now, the jaws of an entire generation who ever owned an ADV title--Azumanga Daioh, Dragon Half, Eva, Slayers OVA--have just dropped through the floor en masse. 
...Do we really now have an entire generation born since the 00's Bubble, who don't remember Geneon either?
And Coastal Carolina--The two groups that literally invented US anime dubbing, back when it was either the cheap afternoon commercial dubbing of 4Kids and DiC's Sailor Moon, Carl Macek's Streamline, or a lot of struggling thrown-together work. When fans went out to say that Coastal's US dub of "Shinesman" was actually a FUNNIER text-accurate dub than the original subbed version, those were fighting words in the late 90's.
Streamline "dominated" dubs in the late-80's/early-90's by being the only one to DO them, apart from the various quickies of Nausicaa, Angel's Egg and Galaxy Express that were distributed through Roger Corman's New World. Macek and Jerry Beck basically had a monopoly on being the only go-to guys who could organize translations of Japanese material, contributing to Harmony Gold's Robotech dub, even if fans loudly complained about what the Streamline features went through by the time they hit the screen. As for "Viz's Urusei Yatsura", er, huh? 
AnimEigo owned UY and only dubbed it twice, once in their infamous "fandub" Those Obnoxious Aliens version of the first few episodes voiced by office staff, and then in a more respectable and established industry dub of the features/OVA's (the first dub was so bad, most fans still aren't even aware the "good" dubs ever existed)--Apart from the separate good dub Central Park Media made for UY2: Beautiful Dreamer without ever having watched the series. Who were the respective studios on those? |
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Merxamers
 Posts: 720 |
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Interesting to hear just who did the dubs on some of those classic series, like Trigun. As a whole though, i think dubs as a whole are better now than they've ever been. Pretty much every set I've picked up in the last 5 years has had, at worst, a "decent" english dub, and none that i can think of as "bad."
I was reminded of that when i saw the Heaven's Feel english dub in theaters; the dub performance was so natural and well acted, that i honestly forgot it was an english dub 
While they're improving, in my opinion, Sentai's dubs lag a bit behind the others in quality. I hope that when the time comes to (finally) release Konosuba, they put their absolute best on it. |
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SpacemanHardy
Posts: 2509 |
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Sentai doesn't have the rights to Konosuba. 
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Nyren
Posts: 705 |
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dragonrider_cody
Posts: 2541 |
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Neither of those shows are “highly popular”. One did okay sales numbers, but nothing stellar. The latter was a major sales flop for at least two companies, and possibly three. Sentai only licensed follow up seasons due to frequent fan requests, and the fact they acquired the fourth season during a simulcast season. The first few Zero sets from Sentai, including the bilingual season 1, went quickly to clearance prices and are still floating around at low prices despite being out of print. Only the complete collection is currently in print, and it too has been frequently marked down. I’ve seen it often in the sub-$30 range on Bluray. A vocal fan base online doesn’t always guarantee that a show is highly popular, or will sell well. If Zero was truly popular, Funimation wouldn’t have let the license lapse and allowed Sentai to grab the rest of it. Anyway, I really do miss the mid-2000’s dub era as well. There was a noticeable initial drop off in quality when the industry switched in mass or box sets and tighter recording schedules. Actors and directors just didn’t have the time that they had before to really get everything just right. Not to mention, writers and translators don’t have as much time to research projects, like using period specific slang for shows like Chrono Crusade and Baccano. ADV, Bang Zoom, Funimation, and others really turned out some stellar material at the time. FMP, FMA, Welcome to the NHK, and others were truly amazing. I’m also not very impressed with the current slate of “simuldubs” and “DubCasts”. There haven’t been any recent English dubs from anyone that are really bad, but there haven’t really been many that truly shined. So many seem to be good, but really miss that little extra bit that really put them over the top. I’ve recently been watching the dub of the Ancient Magus Bride, for instance. It’s definitely competent. It’s not bad, by any stretch of the imagination. But it’s just missing something. The whole cast is underwhelming, and the dub just feels lifeless and drab. I was hoping that with all the promotion that CR our behind the show that Funimation would have really brought their A game, and it didn’t appear to be the case. It’s more than watchable, but it’s definitelt not what it could have been. |
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Primus
 Posts: 2778 Location: Toronto |
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ACTRA still offers buyouts, though IIRC the fee varies depending on where you're located. The anime industry doesn't care about using union talent, so that's not really relevant anymore. British Columbia's film industry has rebounded since the late 2000s/early 2010s. Last year was its biggest year ever. The majority of The CW's shows shoot in the region and because they're lower budgeted productions, they're not afraid to hire locals. Scott McNeil had a prominent recurring role on Riverdale.
Who are you specifically talking about? I know David Kaye and Trevor Devall moved to Los Angeles during the Vancouver entertainment industry's bust years. But a lot of those favourites are still around, like Scott McNeil, Tabitha St. Germain, Brad Swaile, Andrew Francis, Cathy Weseluck, Matt Hill, Brian Drummond, the Dobsons, etc. |
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An Average Aspie
 Posts: 23 |
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I still cringe over people thinking most shows are from/dubbed by Funi Especially on older(heh) shows like Air or Kanon (though they might expire sooner or later). Or they ask when a show is gonna get licensed till someone mentions sentai, aniplex or viz got it and their like "what?". Anecdotal as it may be its hard for me to not chuckle when it happens since I was in the same boat until I watched NGE at around 2011(?) after HOTD. So I got to experience 2 companies that were related somewhat that had a different slew of titles and dubbing processes compared to funi.
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GeorgeC
Posts: 795 |
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The dubs for Laputa/Castle in the Sky and Akira were NOT handled by Streamline Pictures. They distributed those films as some point along with Robot Carnival (which they DID dub for one small act) but they did not dub Laputa or Akira (the original 1988 dub). Streamline DID do the original English dub for My Neighbor Totoro (out of print in the States now but widely available on used DVD, VHS, and laserdisc) which was distributed in American theaters by Troma of all companies! World Events I imagined used whoever was available and whatever studio was operating in the 1980s. Among the bigger original Voltron voice talent were BJ Ward (very well-known, worked in voiceover for at least 20 years; best known as the voice of Wonder Woman in the last few seasons of SuperFriends and as the original Princess Allura/Witch Haggar in the original Voltron) and Neil Ross (the voice of Keith, the Voltron Force leader; he later played Norman Osborn/Green Goblin in the Fox 1990s Spider-Man animated series). Urusei Yatsura, the anime, was NOT handled by Viz. Viz only licensed the original manga and they had little success with it and never finished translating the entire series after two attempts to market it in the States. The bulk of the Urusei Yatsura anime (TV, OVAs, most of the movies) was handled by AnimEigo based in North Carolina. For a while, AnimEigo contracted to a local studio to do dubs for their most popular anime licenses. Virtually all of those dubs were handled locally. That dub studio as far as I know went out of business after AnimEigo largely ceased being a major anime licensing entity. AnimEigo did a pilot for the Urusei Yatsura TV series (Those Obnoxious Aliens, you can catch it on YouTube) but it was awful and received poorly by fans so they never dubbed any more TV episodes. (There was a special limited televising of UY in the UK where they dubbed an episode or two AnimEigo hadn't done but that was a special one-time thing; there are plenty of movies which have had English dubs done in the US AND the UK.) AnimEigo only bothered to dub the 5 UY movies it had the licenses to since they figured those would be easier to market and sell than nearly 200 TV episodes OR 12-13 OVAs (produced at that time; another OVA was released as late as 2008). The second UY feature film was NOT licensed by AnimEigo. It belonged to another licensing company separate from the rest of the UY anime franchise. It was immediately snatched up by another US company since this second UY feature was directed by the same man who directed the original Ghost in the Shell anime feature and Jin-Roh, Mamoru Oshii. He was considered a very marketable name in the US at the time because of the connection with GiTS. The second UY was licensed by CPM and they did a dub for that movie with their own voice cast (I would imagine sourced out to one of the usual "suspects"/dub studios or a NY-based studio). Let me emphasize, it's NOT the same voice cast as the AnimEigo UY cast but AnimEigo did provide subtitle support for CPM's UY release so that it would be consistent with the films and rest of the series licensed by AnimEigo. Right now, the second UY feature film is the only in-print UY anime in the United States. Discotek picked up the rights to the film well over over a year ago and only recently released a restored released on DVD and Blu ray. Speaking of UY DVDs, I recently saw a batch of AnimEigo DVDs from the TV series show up at a used bookstore in my metro-area. It was around 30-40 episodes from somebody's traded-in DVD collection I think. Probably an OSU student/anime fan since that bookstore is on the western edge of the main campus in Columbus, Ohio. You really had to be on the ball and basically buy that series in the boxed set releases as it was released by AnimEigo back in the day. They didn't print a lot of copies for that series beyond the pre-orders of a VERY dedicated fanbase (which included yours truly; there wasn't much AnimEigo released on DVD after the LD industry collapsed that I didn't get on DVD; only a very few things I didn't care for -- Baoh -- or shows I was utterly clueless about -- Lupin III, although I still got their Fuma Conspiracy DVD). I think the final sets of their UY DVD release came only a few years before the US anime industry had a bubble burst in 2007. The show's release was a labor of love for AnimEigo... It was never a huge seller for them and nobody's licensed it since their own license expired well over a decade ago. It was probably the biggest success Rumiko Takahashi had in anime in Japan (the anime was in constant production across TV, OVA, and movies for at least 10 years!) but Ranma 1/2 and Inu Yasha were far more popular in the West. Takahashi's popularity peaked long ago in the West and it speaks volumes when Viz, the main licensor for her works, didn't pick up the option to translate and distribute the Rin Ne anime in the West. Sentai Pictures has Rin Ne but they haven't bothered to dub the anime. It just isn't that popular here... |
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Nyren
Posts: 705 |
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Ggultra2764
 Subscriber Posts: 3903 Location: New York state. |
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I'm not too saavy on the anime fan scene during the late 80s to early 90s. But I am aware Harmony Gold/ Streamline Pictures was a major anime distributor during the time period, alongside Animeigo and Central Park Media. Did they do their work in-house or did they contract voice acting studios to do English dubs?
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dragonrider_cody
Posts: 2541 |
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They contracted studios. CPM often used NYAV Post. Animeigo used primarily Coastal Carolina, now Coastal Studios, which hasn’t done any dubs since. |
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emory
Posts: 615 |
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A lot of LA dubbing work is starting to come back thanks to Netflix, who dubs all their anime in Los Angeles (except for AICO which was dubbed in...Brazil? uhhh). Even non-Japanese foreign animation like Wakfu, which they took over the license for season 3, they re-cast the British English cast with an LA based cast.
Most of Netflix's licensed anime they dub through Bob Buchholz's company, Spliced Bread Productions, who in recent years has dubbed Devilman Crybaby, Knights of Sidonia, Violet Evergarden, Ajin, GANTZ:O, Cyborg 009 vs. Devilman, ID-0, In This Corner of the World, Kuromukuro, the new season of YoKai Watch, Fate/Apocrypha, and a bunch more. They primarily use the recording studio SDI Media. Netflix seems to avoid using Bang Zoom! if they can, only hiring them for The Seven Deadly Sins, B: The Beginning, and Sword Gai. |
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