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NEWS: Funimation Announces Dub Cast, Streams Trailer for B Gata H Kei

Yeah, not really feeling her or Chika's VAs (though Chika had one line). In general, I find teenage girls/lolis the hardest to play in a dub, and ones I usually dislike the most. Adult women like Riza Hawkeye and Lust are good, but it sounds really forced to hear adult women acting like little girls a lot of the time. I think it's just something Japan is much better at.
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You know that very few REAL Japanese TEENAGE GIRLs sound like the anime girls we see in all these shows.

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You know that very few REAL Japanese TEENAGE GIRLs sound like the anime girls we see in all these shows.

There a difference between sounding like a real teen girl and putting on a performance that not only sounds good but also captures the feel of being a teen. Anime performance fall into the latter. The performances don't sound like REAL teens but do sound good and reflect the enough nuances present in teen-like speech to sound like an animated teen. Tara Strong can put out a good performance and sound like a cartoon teen, most of the females in Funi's stable cannot.

Yeah, not really feeling her or Chika's VAs (though Chika had one line). In general, I find teenage girls/lolis the hardest to play in a dub, and ones I usually dislike the most. Adult women like Riza Hawkeye and Lust are good, but it sounds really forced to hear adult women acting like little girls a lot of the time. I think it's just something Japan is much better at.

There a difference between sounding like a real teen girl and putting on a performance that not only sounds good but also captures the feel of being a teen. Anime performance fall into the latter. The performances don't sound like REAL teens but do sound good and reflect the enough nuances present in teen-like speech to sound like an animated teen.

First of all, I was speaking purely in aural terms. Most people by and large do not have high voices, even at a young age. As for nuances and "teen-like" speech, that's a harder curve to grade since every teen is different and each person has different speech patterns. Some are very articulate, some are not, some really do fall into valley girl mannerisms, some do not.

And I don't think anyone here can disagree with the theory that many Japanese anime studios very likely encourage their actresses to "cute it up" for the sake of marketability over realism.

Here's the thing--Funi has actually hired voice actresses barely out of high school in the past. Certainly many of them did start very young, and there are a few here and there who ARE kids. And I've heard fans complain that these actors don't sound like teens or kids when in fact they ARE kids. I can see complaining about their emoting/range/etc., but sometimes I think fans are so used to hearing anime voices in Japanese that they actually forget what real kids actually sound like.

Aural terms? You said Japanese actresses need to inhale helium in order to sound like Japanese teens. They do not need to do so because sounding like a teen is not limited to the pitch of their voice, if that is the mentality of dubbers then no wonder their attempts to sound like teen fails so hard to my ears. Oh yeah every sound different that is why we are discussing this as "sounding like a teen" rather than "sounding exactly like a specific person in their teens."

This is part of the inherent difference between doing an acceptable teen performance versus being a REAL teen. When I turn on the TV I don't expect to hear performances that sound like REAL people in most of my shows, what I want is a good performances that sounds believable enough for whatever show it is.

Well I'm complaining and the example I used to base my complaint from was Tara Strong. The last time I checked she is not a Japanese voice that I've gotten used to hearing in some. I'm sure you could bring up tons of random, oddball examples to the absurd but it is possible to not like this performance in and of itself without being tied to the Japanese voices.

GATSU wrote:

Doesn't matter what we think, 'cus it'll make money, even though IRL, a girl like that probably has herpes.

You spit in her coffee or something?

I find it rather bizarre that there exists a double standard about sexual experience between genders. If a guy has had lots of partners, he's amazing, but if a girl does? She's obviously a disease-carrying whore. Seriously? That's just stupid.

Just a note: Kristi Bingham is Kristi Kang and that is now the name she is using for credits.

Sound and speech patterns are different things, your reply to me talked more about speech patterns, while I was criticizing sound pitch of voice, etc,. and how "believeable" they are. There are too many Japanese voice actresses who "cute it up" by sounding like they've sucked on helium for an hour, which is a very un-natural sounding sound for a teenager.

Good, believable voices should not be limited to 1 or 2 types of voice pitches. Yes, there ARE some people with high voices, but when a show has 3/4 of the girls who sound like the chipmunks, that is bad voice direction, something that I feel happens in more anime than people are willing to admit.

Fair enough! But I think you would agree that variety would help. Anime DOESN'T have to have "cute" voices for every young female character in a cast. One of my main complaints is that this happens far too often in anime. And lest you think I'm criticizing only Japan, many American dubbing companies fall prey to this too, by trying to adhere too closely to the "cute is everything" mentality of Japan.

But I was commenting specifically on the opinion, QUOTED in my original post, that "Japanese actors are better at doing kids than Americans" and I just don't think that's empirically true.