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Crunchyroll's Move Back to In-Person Dub Recording Sparks Union Discussion

ZeetherKID77 wrote:

LightningComet wrote: Stephanie Sheh was spot-on with her remark as there is indeed power to be found in numbers, but the sad truth is that workers going on strike cannot overhaul a multi-million-dollar industry. Funding on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars would need to be available for this corner of the industry to be overhauled, and unless someone with the money of Elon Musk and the heart of a disadvantaged worker wants to get in on the dubbing scene, I don't see it happening with all the ambitions reached and every employee and consumer satisfied. C'est la capitalism, the ultimate maintainer of the exploitative status quo. They may as well try anyway. Apathy about this isn't really the best way to go.

Not only that, but what's really stopping CR from just doing away with dubs all together and just sub everything after a certain point? Dubbing, even using these underhanded tactics isn't all that cheap given you have to pay for the actors who do not only leads, but guest and background bit parts as well.

The thing that frustrates me most is CR is sitting on a mountain of dubbable content that could easily sustain training a generation of actors, as well as adaptation and engineering crews, in remote recording pockets while also cultivating the Dallas pool and they just don't.

Philmister978 wrote:

ZeetherKID77 wrote: LightningComet wrote: Stephanie Sheh was spot-on with her remark as there is indeed power to be found in numbers, but the sad truth is that workers going on strike cannot overhaul a multi-million-dollar industry. Funding on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars would need to be available for this corner of the industry to be overhauled, and unless someone with the money of Elon Musk and the heart of a disadvantaged worker wants to get in on the dubbing scene, I don't see it happening with all the ambitions reached and every employee and consumer satisfied. C'est la capitalism, the ultimate maintainer of the exploitative status quo. They may as well try anyway. Apathy about this isn't really the best way to go. Not only that, but what's really stopping CR from just doing away with dubs all together and just sub everything after a certain point? Dubbing, even using these underhanded tactics isn't all that cheap given you have to pay for the actors who do not only leads, but guest and background bit parts as well.

I've been worried about that, but the amount of fallout that would happen from that kind of decision would be HUGE. It wouldn't just upset fans, it would upset voice actors and directors. They'd have to be insane to do that.

Also, someone on Twitter made a good point: https://twitter.com/rootsofjustice/status/1527051800343355392

Rootsofjustice wrote:

The thing that frustrates me most is CR is sitting on a mountain of dubbable content that could easily sustain training a generation of actors, as well as adaptation and engineering crews, in remote recording pockets while also cultivating the Dallas pool and they just don't.

Planet With, Heybot, Uma Musume, A Place Farther Than The Universe, Laid-Back Camp (for god's sake it has a dub airing in LATIN AMERICA ON CARTOON NETWORK), Heaven's Design Team, Polar Bear Cafe...they ALL could be done with some amazing remote talent and they're just gonna sit on them.

Not only that, but what's really stopping CR from just doing away with dubs all together and just sub everything after a certain point? Dubbing, even using these underhanded tactics isn't all that cheap given you have to pay for the actors who do not only leads, but guest and background bit parts as well.

got into an argument with someone over this subject

with them concluding with

"This is all controlled by market forces. There's no incentive for the dubbing company to do things which would allow them to bring in potentially better voice actors, or more varied voice actors, if everyone is still watching everything with the same dozen mediocre voices. If the customer doesn't tell them to change by stopping watching or stopping paying then they will see no reason to improve."

pretty much saying that unless everyone unsubscribes from CR then nothing's gonna change and that the majority don't care about news like this

because and i quote

"anyone who watches simuldubs doesn't care about the voices or the quality this literally doesn't matter to anyone except the voice actors"

It seems like a fairly transparent response to the LA voice actors demanding unionisation.

Mirko The Bunny Gamer wrote:

got into an argument with someone over this subject with them concluding with "This is all controlled by market forces. There's no incentive for the dubbing company to do things which would allow them to bring in potentially better voice actors, or more varied voice actors, if everyone is still watching everything with the same dozen mediocre voices. If the customer doesn't tell them to change by stopping watching or stopping paying then they will see no reason to improve." pretty much saying that unless everyone unsubscribes from CR then nothing's gonna change and that the majority don't care about news like this because and i quote "anyone who watches simuldubs doesn't care about the voices or the quality this literally doesn't matter to anyone except the voice actors"

In a way, that person is right. The general fandom don't give a crap who makes their anime or who voices in them. Just whether it's good or not (and not even that much given they usually devolve into character worship or shipping wars a lot of the time). And most of them probably don't watch them dubbed anyway.

The main difference is that the anime industry proved that remote performances are not only plausible for 2+ years, but is actually literally doable, and offers opportunities to people who never had the chance before, and is literally something you can't do with on-camera acting, since on-camera requires you to actually be wherever the filming is.

You say you can relate as an actor, so put yourself into the shoes of the people who never had a chance at VO until this happened. You finally get a chance to audition, and you actually wind up getting a role, despite you not living in the LA/TX/NY regions. You finally prove that you have the talent & can actually deliver, only to now be told "Thanks, but even though we could totally continue consider using you for any potential future roles, we're going to never want to hear from you again, unless you arbitrarily move over to us".

Sure, they can always get other VO jobs in their region for stuff like local TV or radio. But they want to work on anime, and they literally are unable to move their lives over to one of those three specific regions to continue doing that job. Unlike on-camera acting, which is open enough to be able to get work just about anywhere (because you actually have to go to locations to film over there), VO acting (i.e. stuff with actual "roles") has always been super restrictive (because it doesn't require going anywhere other than a studio to do), but for 2+ years it was made much more open & welcoming; literally the entire country was an open field for auditions. People took that opportunity to show what they can do & show that there's more out there than just LA, TX, & NY, but now they've been told "Too bad" by the very people who gave them that opportunity.

Imagine being told that you no longer are allowed to professionally act, AT ALL in anime, simply because of where you live, despite the fact that it's been shown that it doesn't actually matter anymore.

Quote:

Funding on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars would need to be available for this corner of the industry to be overhauled, and unless someone with the money of Elon Musk and the heart of a disadvantaged worker wants to get in on the dubbing scene, I don't see it happening with all the ambitions reached and every employee and consumer satisfied.

It will certainly be interesting to see what happens if Disney+ starts getting more heavily into licensing simulcast anime and if they start recruiting LA dub actors and Disney definitely has a lot more money and streaming numbers than Crunchyroll.

It's shitty that they've decided to shut out talent that isn't able to record locally, and doubly shitty that they're already recasting rolls from actors they've been satisfied with. I can understand prioritizing in-house actors, but I doubt it would break the bank or require an unreasonable amount of effort/time to allow home dubbing as an option. They already proved they were able to adapt and record entire series with dozens of actors from home, would it really be such a huge problem if like three people on a show wanted to keep working separately while everyone else returned to the professional studio?

Philmister978 wrote:

Mirko The Bunny Gamer wrote: got into an argument with someone over this subject with them concluding with "This is all controlled by market forces. There's no incentive for the dubbing company to do things which would allow them to bring in potentially better voice actors, or more varied voice actors, if everyone is still watching everything with the same dozen mediocre voices. If the customer doesn't tell them to change by stopping watching or stopping paying then they will see no reason to improve." pretty much saying that unless everyone unsubscribes from CR then nothing's gonna change and that the majority don't care about news like this because and i quote "anyone who watches simuldubs doesn't care about the voices or the quality this literally doesn't matter to anyone except the voice actors" In a way, that person is right. The general fandom don't give a crap who makes their anime or who voices in them. Just whether it's good or not (and not even that much given they usually devolve into character worship or shipping wars a lot of the time). And most of them probably don't watch them dubbed anyway.

do you think they are right by saying discussing this kind of news is pointless and that we shouldn't care about this stuff whatsoever because it only affects the voice actors?

Risa Mei & Marin Miller need to tree lightly if they're trying to shake up the dubbing industry. Risa is still band spanking new to the anime dub industry and Marin hasn't had a main character role since playing Yuuno in Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha back in '04 so if neither one of them never got a job in dub anime again, nobody would notice.