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Stratum wrote:

I do however, expect the ADR Director to at least check the Japanese and then instruct the voice actors on how to pronounce them. ... Also frequently changing how they say other names is incredibly sloppy.

This is something that has always baffled and annoyed me, and I agree that the fault lies with the director. I have heard anime in which a single character's name was pronounced four different ways in succession by various characters in the same scene. There's just no excuse for that.

When I hear things like "She does improve quite a bit by the later episodes, though," it makes even less sense to me. Why is there no "bible" regarding the pronunciation of character names before recording even begins? If they decide to change the pronunciation early on, they should rerecord some lines to make it consistent. If they decide they've made a mistake after too much dialog has been laid down, then they should just live with it. But when characters in the same scene pronounce someone's name differently, I just don't get it. If the first person to record got it wrong, then the next person should follow suit, at least in that scene so it's not so glaringly obvious.

In addition to the director not being on top of this, what about the actors? A lot of these folks have been pronouncing Japanese names for a decade or more. They should have the hang of it by now (but it seems like Greg Ayers is the only one who insists on doing it right. Smile

). Especially with names that end in -suke. There's no justification for any VA in 2013 to pronounce a name like Shinsuke as Shin-SOO-key or any of the variations I've cringed over. And when listening to Dave Wittenburg color commentating for Ninja Warrior, I just facepalm to hear him pronounce Shunsuke and Daisuke wrong, after how many years of dubbing Kakashi in Naruto? Oy.

The english dub of Kids on the Slope is the finest dub that Foster has directed this year. People love to complain about the incompetency of Foster's dubs but rarely do these people ever genuinely give his dubs a fair chance they are far to busy assuming that everything the man touches is of inferior quality which couldn't be further from the actual truth. A great amount of care was put into this dub from the casting choices to the lip laps being matched more accurately this is a high quality dub that should be given the respect that it rightfully deserves.I really enjoyed the performances from Chris Patton, Andrew Love and Rebekah Stevens.(who did remarkably well for this only being her forth voice acting credit outside of Genevieve Simmons(another notable rookie Sentai voice talent who shows real promise as well) she is one voice talent to keep your eyes on we will be seeing plenty more of her in future Foster dubs guaranteed.) Shelley Calene-Black was quite notable as well in the guest role as Kaoru's Mother. I've noticed that Shelley has a tendency to shine in smaller roles more so then in bigger roles another example of this would be her performances in Kamisama Dolls & Un-Go: Episode 0 as Yuko Kurata & Chihaya Seno. I have a few issues with Kids on the Slope but they didn't ruin the overall watching experience its not a perfect series but its still a pretty damn solid anime at the end of the day.

CG-LOVER wrote:

This is funny, Zac Bertschy said on ANNCast that the dub for this was awful. But this review paints a very different picture. I'll have to judge for myself whether it really holds up or not I guess.

This is why I really appreciate that ANN allows multiple opportunities for a review. Getting some opinions from those that have similar tastes and those that have different tastes tends to let me make purchases with a decent amount of confidence. In this instance, I've heard Zac's opinion, I've read Theron's here, and I've read Bamboo's for Shelf Life, so I feel like I can go ahead and get this once the corrected version is out there.

I just started watching the english dub yesterday, and I can't believe how bad this dub is. I was incredibly disappointed with this. I'm not as avid an anime viewer as I was about ten years but tend to pick up a few releases a year.

This has to be the worst modern U.S. anime dub I've ever heard. Sentaro sounds like he's a cartoony 30-40 year old "bad ass" - except he's literally 15 years old (at least for the first few episodes). Almost every character comes across like it's a generic "anime voice," and that's a real bummer.

I was really hoping that this would be a dub that they would have taken a lot of time and care with, but that definitely didn't happen. I feel like Funimation's BECK: Mongolian Chop Squad dub did a much better job with taking young characters seriously in

In summary, a 15 year old Japanese kid from 1966 that loves jazz wouldn't repeatedly say "bro." Yet he does, and so do many others in this. Ridiculous.

ddojo wrote:

This has to be the worst modern U.S. anime dub I've ever heard.

Then you've clearly heard very few "modern" dubs or are engaging in hyperbole. I've heard all or part of the vast majority of English dubs that have come out in the past five years and could easily name dozens that are vastly worse.

As I said earlier in the thread, I find it incomprehensible that you and a few others were listening to the same dub that I did and found it so bad when it sounded (for the most part) perfectly fine to me. And once again I'm left wondering what I'm missing that others are hearing as flaws.

I don't feel like writing anything long, right now. I just wanted to say I've seen more than 50-100 anime series (>3000 episodes; including all of the top 50 series on this site). This is my favourite series. I think it's phenomenal.