Forum - View topic

Answerman - Why Do Some Voice Actors Like Not Knowing About Their Roles?

If an English dub is poorly done, it is more likely the director's fault than that of the actor.

...an awesome message.

Voice acting has never seemed like a fun job to me. Every time I play a sports game like Madden or NBA Live and they have the announcers calling the games for you, I always wonder how many hours those announcers had to spend in the booths recording each individual player's name, in probably three or four different inflections per player to match up with when they make good/bad/great plays, plus all the various calls about passing/shooting/scoring that need to have enough variety so the gamer doesn't get bored hearing the exact same "he shoots, he scores!" dialogue fifty times every playing session. I mean, that's got to be a pretty tedious process, and they don't even have the diversion of matching a story to their dialogue like an anime VA would.

Depending on the role, the director may also need to be considerate of actor's voice (depending on the character role) and not have certain line deliveries be too straining on the voice, especially if the actor also does singing work on the side.

Hypeathon wrote:

Depending on the role, the director may also need to be considerate of actor's voice (depending on the character role) and not have certain line deliveries be too straining on the voice, especially if the actor also does singing work on the side.

This is particularly important for male seiyuu. There have been many instances where, in English versions of anime shows, mature male seiyuu have been used to voice male child characters, both in the past and present, resulting in strained performances and the characters sounding sharply older than their age. There are instances of this sort of practice occurring with Japanese male seiyuu as well, but they're rare cases.

I too believe that "American" Anime voice acting is a work of passion and not just another pay check they could make more money working at McDonald's but instead dedicate their own time voice acting because they are fans it's the reason why they got into business and they work their butts off doing it.

I never got the logic behind the idea that it helps them provide their own take on a character. Dubbing is not a writing job that allows for interpretation, dubbing is dubbing. You're supposed to provide English voice-over for an established character in an established story. Your interpretation of a character doesn't matter because unlike domestic animation or live-action movies, an actors improv can't be implemented into the script and change the product mid-production. You're dubbing over animation that was made years ago and is most likely already finished in Japan in the case of your usual 1-2 cour shows. If you try to make a character out to be one thing then later on the show does the opposite, then you wrote yourself into a corner.

-Stuart Smith

I also remember reading about how Sonny Strait often reads ahead for the stuff he's working on if it has an accompanying manga, like for One Piece.

I really like how you answer shitty questions like these but ignore more interesting questions like "Why aren't more Japanese anime featuring college students as the protagonists?" or "Could long-running anime continue to profit off low DVD sales?"

When it comes to voice acting american dubs of anime it really is the low of the low when it comes to acting in american. Well, that's just how it is viewed within the industry and they truly get no respect within the industry either. They get paid like crap too. No joke.

I went to a voice acting panel at a convention here in Boise, Idaho last May. The panel consisted of Ian Sinclair who voiced Space Dandy and Monica Rial who voices Bulma in Dragonball series now. They put in this way. Ian Sinclair is the voice over guy for a Big Car Dealership in Chicago with several locations and he makes more money doing one session for those guys then he does for dubbing anime for a whole year.

A lot of American anime voice actors do it because they enjoy it and not because of the money. If it was only because of the money then no one would be voice dubbing anime. This is the truth. It's how it is and how it will alway be. I respect the hell out of the voice actors who dub anime and so should you. Even if you don't like dubs yourself. At least Seiyu in Japan get respect in their industry unlike their American counterparts.

If you want to trash the English dubbing industry at least understand how it works and what they have to do in relation to their pay before you do it. Rant over!

On the other hand, American voice actors (including Canadian ones) who don't do anime dubbing get almost no publicity or notability at all, though they are paid a lot more. I can no longer find the source, but I remember reading about how Billy West (Fry in Futurama, present voice of Bugs Bunny, and a thousand other things) feels jealous of how guys like Vic Mignogna can travel to many conventions a year doing autograph sessions at all of them but even fans of shows he stars in mostly don't know who he is, even though West is currently one of the top-paid voice actors in America.

Something that I do know for sure, though, is that Frank Welker gets a killing of an income by being the premier animal voice person in North America. (Voicing Fred in Scooby-Doo for the past fifty years and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit helps too.)

Actors like Crispen Freeman, Wendee Lee, Luci Christian, and Chris Patton have many roles that rival if are not unanimously praised as having preformed a part better then their Japanese counterparts .

Nearly all natively English speaking people I know vastly prefers the original and outside a few older nostalgic shows like Pokemon most don't really watch dubs.