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Hey, Answerman! [2006-09-22]

Also, something tells me you've never heard American VAs talk about their work or spent any time around them in person because a few minutes in to any conversation it will become abundantly clear to you that those people absolutely love what they do and care deeply about their work.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the Japanese do the EXACT SAME THING, but I don't think all American voice actors have a deep caring of the material.

I'm sorry that you're incapable of hearing changes in tone and detecting speed-ups and slowdowns in word production. It must suck being an anime fan when you hear everything as if a computer were speaking it.

Making money is not an evil pursuit, and not everything they do is designed to irritate the fanbase

Even if the idea that the Japanese put forth more effort into voicing than their English counterparts is flawed (and I imagine this would be rather hard to prove one way or the other), it is certainly a perfectly acceptable to form the opinion that the Japanese do a better job. As someone who loosely follows seiyuu, I direct you to the various roles of Miyuki Sawashiro. Compare her work as Puchiko from Di Gi Charat (a role she did when she was 14) to that of Mint Blancmanche of Galaxy Angel to that of Kotarou Higuchi of Pita-Ten to that of Khi from DearS to that of Akane Serizawa of Pani Poni Dash! to that of Sara Gallagher from Mai Otome. If you listened to all of them without knowing beforehand, you would be astounded to learn that they're all the same person (outside of PPD! episode 1 where Serizawa has a very Mint-ish feel). Not only does she make every one of these characters sound different, but the voice she chooses seems to hit all of her characters dead-on, and the wave of emotions her voice rides is stellar (this is particularly notable with Mint, Kotarou and Serizawa). Combine that with her good singing and you have someone who's really hard to compete with no matter what language you speak.

2. This is an anime Q&A column on an anime website called "Anime News Network". Power Rangers is not anime. I'm waiting for someone to ask me when they're going to release Hee Haw DVDs.

I think people need to stop addressing the original as canon. The original production is not canon, the screenplay and script are. What you seen on the television is the presentation of the series to the Japanese viewer and truthfully nothing more. It still tells a story, once translated you can communicate that story to the world, and that story comes out of the script, even when spoken in Japanese, English, Spanish, Greek, or Chinese, it is still that exact same script.

I find that a show's setting also affects my enjoyment of it.
I won't be able to watch Inuyasha, Bleach(during SS arc) or Saiunkoku Monogatari in english dub, because I find it weird and awkward for people in eastern feudal clothes and settings to be speaking english. I much prefer these shows in the original Japanese or dubbed in Mandarin Chinese.

On the other hand, I would watch english dub if the anime had a slight futuristic/western setting like Gundam or Cowboy Bebop. I prefer english dub for these shows due to the technical terms and all the engrish words which pop up occasionally. The chinese dub of Gundam Seed sounded really awkward when I watched my vcds.

I realize some people will disagree, but I honestly don't really "get" why they even bother translating something like "Shinigami". We all learned what "samurai" and "ninja" and (to an extent) "shinobi" mean, I think people could learn to deal with "shinigami", or just think it's some made up word like "evangelion".