Forum - View topicREVIEW: Vampire Hunter D Blu-Ray
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TurnerJ
Posts: 481 Location: Highland Park, NJ |
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For me, Carl Macek's work has been hit and miss. While I don't have anything against the man and he has indeed produced a few dubs I did like, Totoro, for instance (although I also liked the Disney redub), he also had his share of misfires. Vampire Hunter D, unfortunately, is one of them. The reasons: the acting is all over the place and stilted, the accents are distractingly cheesy and poorly executed, and the flow of the dialogue sounds very choppy and bordering on hokey. Even with the argument that it might add a camp factor to a low budget production, I still find it very hard to listen to even today. To my ears it hasn't aged well.
I'm not the only one who found Macek's VHD dub underwhelming. Critics at the time slammed it and even Anime fans back then staked it through the heart. Proof: here's one review that really napalmed the dub. http://www.michaeldvd.com/Reviews/Reviews.asp?ID=6665 and another: (http://www.theanimereview.com/reviews/vamphunter.html) The author in the latter said this about the dub:
Considering how scathing the critics were back then, one would think the newer dub would receive generally better reviews as it DOES attempt to rectify the wrongs of the Streamline version. Totoro and Kiki were the only Macek dubs I've heard pieces of that I can attest to compare favorably to their Disney counterparts (even though I prefer the Disney version for the latter), but other works of his I've seen redubbed I prefer the newer ones. Nadia, for instance, wasn't as good as it should have been, what with the leads badly miscast, despite a few solid performances (ADV/Mosnter Island did a far better job with it). Cagliostro, although soundly acted, is also aggressively chattier than the Animaze dub and not better or worse. Macek's company also distributed the early 80s dubs for Akira and Laputa, both of which he had nothing to do with, but nonetheless were absolutely horrible. It's impossible to take Akira seriously with the badly acted and laughably written dreck of the 80s dub, and Laputa's older dub, despite being more "accurate" than the Disney version, suffers from both atrociously dull acting (even the two leads are unconvincing; mature as Disney's VAs for the leads were, both gave far better performances IMO) and even hokier, poorly phrased writing. It sounds like a bad Hong Kong dub. I easily prefer the Animaze and Disney dubs to them. Again, though, Macek wasn't to blame for those two travesties. The only Macek dub I've heard which I genuinely prefer over any other dub made is Wicked City, but that's mainly because the alternate Manga UK dub is just bloody terrible. |
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14790 |
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The Rose (the newsletter of Anime Hasshin fan club) seemed to like it way back when (October 1992)
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18222 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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YMMV on the Macek dubs, TurnerJ. The Streamline dub of Akira is far from universally-despised; in fact, I think the only advantage that the newer dub has over it is that it's script is more accurate.
And as for the reviews you cite about VHD's original dub? Would point out that dub-hating was more vitriolic back at the time those were written than it is now. I would only give those comments much credibility if they were written by people who normally either favored dubs or could be acknowledged to be at least fair towards them. |
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TurnerJ
Posts: 481 Location: Highland Park, NJ |
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Well I personally can't stand the older dub of Akira at all. I understand some people may have been raised on it, but to me it's one of the absolute worst dubs of all time. Everybody involved with it turning in embarrassingly laughable performances that are totally inappropriate for their characters and confusing scriptwriting guilty of turning a super complicated movie into a very incomprehensible one. Cam Clarke and Jan Rabson may be good voice actors, but both were absolutely miscast as Kaneda and Tetsuo and had absolutely NO chemistry between them. There's no spark to their performances, no life. Every single moment of their performances in the older dub had me either cringing or laughing. Not a good sign of a good dub at all. With Johnny Yong Bosch and Joshua Seth, I found both to be more age appropriate for their parts and both, IMO, did far superior turns, because to me they both made their characters more believable and three-dimensional. And sorry, but experienced as Bob Bergen may be, he was distractingly nasally and miscast as one of the kids in the older dub. Seriously, I put my foot down and say that the newer version trounces the older one, no questions asked. Now keep in mind that I am willing to overlook a somewhat mature casting choice for a younger character if the performer in question gives a lot of heart for it. Vic Mignogna, despite sounding more mature than Romi Paku, was otherwise absolutely superb as Edward Elric. While the leads in Castle in the Sky were admittingly eccentric casting choices on Disney's part, I found both to give solid performances overall; their pre-Disney counterparts were just lame and unconvincing. It's when it strikes me as distractingly obvious and devoid of genuine life that I find it grating. Lara Cody's Dan in the first dub of Vampire Hunter D was one of the worst offenders of that version, sounding not only distractingly feminine but by not having any soul to her performance. I still am not fond of Shannon Emerick's replacement, but at the very least her acting isn't so lifeless, so I let it pass. Likewise, Corrinne Orr was totally wrong as Setsuko in the older dub of Grave of the Fireflies. Emily Neves was still not quite convincing, but she wasn't as nasally and distractingly unnatural as before. Also, I prefer the voices of the leads in Nadia from the ADV/Monster Island version; their Streamline counterparts were miscast and, sadly, not very good at all, despite the credentials of both. All of this is just my opinion, though. You do have a point that dub hating was much more vicious and commonplace back in the 1990's then today. I didn't agree with every single criticism then, and there were some dubs from that era I'm still fond of today. Vampire Hunter D by Streamline, on the other hand, while I may have liked at one time, nowadays it grates on me. Which is why I'm glad to have the Sentai version. |
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Desslok
Posts: 178 |
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I have no issue with folks wanting a new dub. I just wish that we got the perfect solution: both! That way the folks that want a more modern version get what they want and old fogies like me can bask in the nostalgia. |
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18222 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Oh, off the top of my head I can point to dubs ten times worse than that one by any reasonable standard - Fantastic Children, for instance. |
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PurpleWarrior13
 Posts: 2027 |
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Turner, I know you don't like the 90s Vampire Hunter D dub, but come on. In the end, it's just an anime dub from 25 years ago, and one for a film that's not exactly all that relevant anymore. I also dislike the old Akira dub, and I would even say it's one of my least favorite, but I would never feel the need to put in the effort to criticize it everywhere I go on the internet, and type long essays about it. It's kinda fun to laugh at now, but I fail to see the need to "prove a point" on why I dislike something so old and irrelevant. If someone prefers that old version, so what? Why spend so much time writing about it? Especially now with the new dub. It's like still obsessively hating the old dubs for Dragon Ball, One Piece, and Sailor Moon. What's the point anymore?
And there's nothing wrong with something being a little cheesy and campy, especially for a cheesy and campy film as VHD! But I'm a big camp fan, so I'm biased as hell. 
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