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Answerman - Can English-Speaking Fans Critique Japanese Voice Acting?

Agreed. Most English speakers care too much about range. When you strip "range" out of Tara Strong, she is one of the worst voice actors ever. JYB is 10000X times better, despite being the anti-Strong, because his acting is on point.

And, let's consider for a moment the possibility that these stories they tell are taken in one cut, that would be even more impressive. Of course, clever sound engineering and editing makes it impossible to notice when one recording stops and a new cut begins, but even so, listening to one voice actor telling this story, and doing it with emotion, is truly a treat to my ear.

I hope everybody can understand my English. What I will say here is purely an opinion and no real research is done to support my points so I could be wrong.

I would assume that emotions in voice are expressed through pitches and intonations. I would name it "intonational language". I would also assume that every non-tonal language has its own intonational language.

1. I think English and Japanese have major differences in intonational language. In this sense, we cannot compare and/or judge English and Japanese voice actors if we don't know either or both of their intonational languages. I think many would prefer English dubs over Japanese originals because they think Japanese originals have poor emotional expression because they fail to understand the Japanese intonational language and instead erroneously interpret those intonations and pitches using familiar English intonational language system which is not that compatible in understanding Japanese intonations.

Since I am more familiar with English than Japanese and French, it seems to me that English is better at expressing emotions. I also think the American and Filipino dialects is better than the British, Indian, or whatever dialects of English because, again, of the familiarity.

2. I think the Japanese intonational language itself is really much flatter than English. So I think the Japanese language would sound to be more emotionless. It could be because the Japanese intonational language seems to be very strict on changing the voice pitch and intonation. It hampers the growth of the intonational language. So, its strictness affects in developing the language to have more emotional nuances. So, we seem to hear the same intonations in different emotional situations, because nuances sound seemingly lacking, especially those who are not familiar with Japanese intonations. Whereas on American English, it seems to have more intonational freedom and therefore, has richer and more colorful intonational language. This could be the reason why Eldar said that "there's no genuine emotion in the performances of (Japanese) voice actors" We often tend to judge the emotion put by voice actors by measuring the strength and variation of the intonation, in which Japanese language seems to limit. It also seems to be true on French and Spanish.

3. Maybe the number of vowels in a language could affect the our judgment on "expressing emotion".

4. In the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPz3_hoG0lU, samples of Filipino dub on One Piece are "judged" by Japanese speakers. Luffy: 2:08-2:34, Nami: 2:41-2:56, Zoro: 2:58-3:15. Feel free to comment on the Filipino dub. Maybe we cannot really critique the voice acting of a non-tonal language dub because every va has . Maybe we can really critique the voice acting of a non-tonal language dub but only if the actor himself is obviously very bad.

My opinions could be wrong, so feel free to correct me.

]That very well may be, but this is hardly a pinnacle of voice acting by any stretch of imagination. My take is that fans wanted an authenticity which simply couldn't be delivered through dub, I mean, British accents alone are impossible to replicate in Japanese. The same way Japanese period pieces will be authentical only in Japanese, regardless of how good dub actually is.

For starters, what we hear in anime, for the most part, is mainland, formal Japanese, and spoken in a way it's easy to hear and tell apart which words are being said, so they always speak a little louder. In the US, it is similarly done in cartoons, it is very uncommon for characters to talk super fast, or with a very soft tone, as opposed to movies or series aimed for older audiences.

There is one advantage for English language: everybody knows the accents. A language spoken on so many places allows for it to have plenty of different forms, especially within the United States themselves, all 50 states have a special speech of English, but all of them are easy to accept for the audience.

...There is one advantage for English language: everybody knows the accents. A language spoken on so many places allows for it to have plenty of different forms, especially within the United States themselves, all 50 states have a special speech of English, but all of them are easy to accept for the audience...

Valhern wrote:

For starters, what we hear in anime, for the most part, is mainland, formal Japanese, and spoken in a way it's easy to hear and tell apart which words are being said, so they always speak a little louder. In the US, it is similarly done in cartoons, it is very uncommon for characters to talk super fast, or with a very soft tone, as opposed to movies or series aimed for older audiences. There is one advantage for English language: everybody knows the accents. A language spoken on so many places allows for it to have plenty of different forms, especially within the United States themselves, all 50 states have a special speech of English, but all of them are easy to accept for the audience.

I remember one of my foreign language teachers said when I was in high school that some languages can appear to sound fast when spoken because they don't have a brief pause between words the way languages like English, French, and German do. Spanish is one of those languages, and for someone like me, who doesn't know the language well, conversational Spanish sounds breakneck.

As for different versions of English, some states have multiple accents and dialects. New York City alone has several, each of the largest boroughs having its own (hence the specificity when talking about a "Brooklyn accent" or a "Harlem accent").

2. I think the Japanese intonational language itself is really much flatter than English. So I think the Japanese language would sound to be more emotionless. It could be because the Japanese intonational language seems to be very strict on changing the voice pitch and intonation. It hampers the growth of the intonational language.

When I have to watch a show subbed, I don't pay attention to the actor's performance. I'm more interested in following the story. The actor or actress speaking just becomes a background noise to indicate who is talking and when.

@crosswithyou, I prefer the term "naturalistic" acting to "realistic" acting. In the majority of anime shows, a voice actor is playing a role of character, and by nature, I think the acting has to be unrealistic or unnatural because they're portraying someone other than themselves. For me, a realistic or natural performance would be someone acting in their natural or speaking voice. It's funny that you bring up a monogatari show. I've only seen Bakemonogatari, so I obviously can't comment on Kizumonogatari, but I personally find the voice acting in Bakemonogatari to be very stilted. Every conversation in that show felt like two characters reading off long monologues at each other as opposed to having an acutal conversation. But maybe that's just me.

I was just repeating the language that was used in the article. I would think a "natural" performance would mean that the acting does not seem out of place and flows within the world it is set though, so I'm not sure I agree with your definition.