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Answerman - Is It Intimidating For Japanese Guests To Visit American Conventions?

Tetsuya Kikihara (Natsu), ... speaks English

jr240483 wrote:

Octonian wrote: Minori Chihara was a guest at the NYC Anime Festival in 2010. She did a Q&A, a signing session (which sadly I didn't get to), introduced a screening of "The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya" and held a concert. So far as I could tell she seemed to be having a great time. true, though its mainly cause she is well known. i mean both Nana Mizuki as well as TM Revolution have done appearances in the US and they don't speak an ounce of English. i mean not every Japanese VA and singer can be extremely fluent to the language as with mari ijima who voiced both the Japanese and English dub for Lin Minmay for Super Dimension Macross. hell its possible she might be the only seriyuu that can speak English that well though i might be wrong about that (you can feel free to correct me if i am). the only other seriyu's and/or singers that i believe can also speak English very fluently is probably the lead singer for that band that sang database for the Log Horizon Opening theme. But that theory isn't guaranteed since i thought maximum the hormone (who did OP 2 for Death Note ) could speak English, but it turned in an FCI Morning Eye interview that out none of them can! so just because a Japanese song have a lot of English texts in it, doesn't necessarily mean they can speak the language themselves.

You be surprised at the number of Seiyuu that can speak English. Aya Hirano is very fluent in English. Sayaka Ohara (Erza), Tetsuya Kikihara (Natsu), and Ayahi Takagaki speaks English (Ayahi learned as part of her opera training). I recall at least one member of AKB being flutent in English. There are several others.

In fact, some Seiyuu expressed a desire to learn English. Nana Mizuki mentioned she wanted to learn English when she was doing Carol King's Broadway play.

BadNewsBlues wrote:

I know which was I mentioned that while they are outdated they're not wholly wrong either.

Yeah, well it shouldn't dissuade people anyway, unless authorities explicitly urge to avoid, like traveling to war-torn countries in the Middle East, or use caution every time there's a terrorist attack like clockwork in Western Europe.

For those wondering who the most freq. native Japanese guest at an Amer. anime con, it's probably Nabeshin.

There's plenty to be intimidated about. Justin has mentioned a few, such as fear of flying and such, but when it comes down to it, the guest is largely NOT in control of what goes on around them. Sure, they (should) have a translator or some kind of liaison to help them, but if that person is not competent then it would be as if they're not there at all. If, for example, they have a subpar staffer translating their panel, they will start to wonder if that person is correctly relaying their words to the audience. I've seen bad interpreters before and the stress they can cause Japanese guests. The guest will start using simpler Japanese so that the interpreter can more easily understand, but that also means that the guest cannot answer the question the way they'd actually like to, or as thoroughly as they'd like. Because they are a guest in a foreign country, the guest may not feel comfortable communicating their wants or needs. Unless they are someone who travels a lot, they are basically a fish out of water.

What is this in reference to? US conventions get tons of voice actors, but domestic and international. It's not rare or unusual. The rare or unusual thing is the convention that doesn't feature this.

Also Kana Ueda has made some efforts at it - she's been over to the US several times (her most recent visits I'm aware of were at Evo 2014 in Las Vegas and SakuraCon in Seattle in 2015, both in connection with BlazBlue), and there was a mention that she had enrolled in conversational English classes ahead of her trip to Evo. She also briefly switched to English a few times when she was answering questions at her SakuraCon panel.

WingKing wrote:

Also Kana Ueda has made some efforts at it - she's been over to the US several times (her most recent visits I'm aware of were at Evo 2014 in Las Vegas and SakuraCon in Seattle in 2015, both in connection with BlazBlue), and there was a mention that she had enrolled in conversational English classes ahead of her trip to Evo. She also briefly switched to English a few times when she was answering questions at her SakuraCon panel.

the problem is that not many people know about that. i mean I've been a diehard anime junkie since the days of guyver , mad bull 34 , akira , ninja scroll and urotsukidoji (i believed i have the name correct!) and not even i know that much and so doesnt a majority of the US fanbase.

for one thing most of them not named mari ijima and nana mizuki (who are well known to even newbies) haven't done interviews to sites like ANN while speaking english.

sure there are cons like those mentioned, but i have yet to hear any of them speak our language during the big named cons like Otakon , Anime Boston , Anime Expo , AnimeNext (who i was a staff member of back in 2005) and the New York Comic Con. and its due to that fact that many of us (myself included) who are massive hardcore otakus will probably wouldn't know that the numbers of japaneese singers and seriyus is very large than previously thought and isnt exclusively to well known seriyus like mari and nana.