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Answerman - Why Is Anime Dialogue Recorded After Animation Is Done?

I actually imagine a LOT of it has to do with trying to keep up with reading subtitles. You simply can't watch the mouths closely if you're tracking subs.

I always find it funny when the purists claim that Japanese audio tracks are superior because the animation was "made for" Japanese voicing. Clearly they're not aware that the Japanese VAs undergo essentially the same "talking over pre-existing animation" process that dub VAs do.

Sub purists generally don't have much working intelligence beyond seeing Japan as a magical holy land of perfection. I could tell you stories of the amusing weeb ignorance I've seen on GameFAQs and YouTube. Many really don't understand the voice acting process whatsoever, but delude themselves into thinking they do just because they watch anime and play JRPGs in the so-called "superior language".

You might want to scale back the nastiness of the comments you make about people who prefer subtitles; there are some equally nasty things one might say about those who prefer dubs, if one weren't interested in keeping things peaceful.

Not really. It's perfectly fine if someone prefers subs and states that's their preference in a calm and civilized way; I don't have a problem with them. It's not fine when they preach their ignorance about the language or claim it's superior to all languages, and then think everything, including U.S. and European animation and games, should be in Japanese too (I'm referring to purists like these).

I haven't seen many folks who love dubs and act like jerks about it, saying English is superior to everything or something. They're far more sensible, as far as I've witnessed.

HeeroTX wrote:

I actually imagine a LOT of it has to do with trying to keep up with reading subtitles. You simply can't watch the mouths closely if you're tracking subs.

Just because you can't, doesn't mean no-one can. Sure I can't watch mouth movements as closely as if subtitles weren't in the picture, but it's not the only vague awareness you seem to be suggesting.

ptj_tsubasa wrote:

Sure, voice actors can be creative people too, and at times we can get funny improvised lines like the impromptu opera singing in Monsters, Inc. But giving voice actors TOO much creative freedom sounds like a potential disaster.

The director can always tell an actor to knock off the ad libbing in the booth if it isn't working. Some ad libbing is brilliant, of course, like Robin Williams in Aladdin. They certainly didn't start by a committee deciding that they would animate William F. Buckley Jr.

As others have indicated, not all anime has voice overs done with "finished" animation. An "AfuReco" version of an episode, as it's called for the purposes of voice recording, can have all degrees on completion when it comes to animation, depending on the specific scene. A pivotal moment might be fully animated, for example, while a simple conversation scene might just be key frames or even just pencil tests, and other scenes might just be the storyboards because they are likely going to be properly animated last.

Also… it's the animation staff that ultimately creates the show. Would we really want them to give away their creative freedom and the flexibility of the script and directing just so that the voice actors could finish their work early?

Sure, voice actors can be creative people too, and at times we can get funny improvised lines like the impromptu opera singing in Monsters, Inc. But giving voice actors TOO much creative freedom sounds like a potential disaster.

You can also look at this the other way. Why do fans of Western cartoons place so much emphasis on animating all the syllables one at a time, to the point where it's a common joke that anime "has bad lip sync"? For me something like Family Guy looks actually a bit creepy.

Overall, I don't mind that anime is done in the order that it is. After all, dubbing into other languages works in large part due to the fact that most lip flaps are simple open and close animations that don't appear to form distinct words on screen. From the commentaries I've listened to, it does present an added challenge to adapting the script when a character's mouth makes a distinct movement since now the word choice also has to incorporate something that fits.

This makes me wonder if shows involving the use of pre-animation dialogue is really as common in the West as it seems...

I think that it would be easier for animators to make most of the animation first, allow voice actors to dub along with the animation, and then make adjustments as needed.

Seems like it would be simpler that way, but I am not an animator so I don't know.

It would be nice if there was a bit more of a frequency that English-speaking anime fans were as critical of the Japanese voices as the English-dubbed voices.

I always find it a bit amusing when I see someone complain about lip flaps in an English dub, but they completely ignore when the Japanese track has the same issue. I've seen a number of Funimation and Sentai dubs where the audio was synced better to the animation than the Japanese version.

But you get that in anime all the time, probably western animation (like Adventure Time or Rick and Morty) too, but I don't watch a lot of US animation anymore. South Park does this, which is one reason they can turn episodes around REALLY fast.

2) Even when english voice acting was done before the animation, when it is dubbed to other languages any mouth movements are lost since i.e. "Good morning" and "Buenos dias" require different movements of the mouth.

That said, it's simple science, your focus is either in one place or it is in another. I'm not saying you can't follow the action on screen at ALL and are near to reading a book. But I AM saying that your attention is at best split between characters and lines of text. In that sense, if some of the dialog is milliseconds off on timing you're less likely to either notice OR take issue with it then if your entire focus is on the character talking.

I watch mostly subtitled anime and I can't say I've ever noticed a disparity between lip flaps and speech. I'm not suggesting it isn't there, just that it has never been so egregious that it attracted my attention. Of course, I don't spend time looking for things to complain about. Your mileage may vary.

Even bottom-budget stuff like the early episodes of South Park, still gets a much higher budget than your average anime. The viewership is much higher.

Some of the stuff from Disney is incredible with matching lip-flaps. I saw the Mexican dub of Recess: School's Out in which Mikey sings "My Green Tambourine" (by The Lemon Pipers), and it matches up much better than I expected.

Remember that a series budget does not mean animation budget, in the west afaik writers get a big chunk of the the pie and from what I read after the recent union negotiations they will even more.

So I bet even today they are paying peanuts for south park animation and I doubt other studios pay asian animation studios above average.

@leafy sea dragon

I've likely seen a fair amount of the same Western animation. I suspect the difference is that I don't think it ever occurred to me to pay attention to mouth movements. You may be looking at the shows from a technical basis.

I think the only time I noticed lip movements in anime is in the odd opening or closing where the character on screen is actually singing the opening or closing song. Of course, they often provide more detailed animation for the openings and closings.

I dunno... even with splitting my focus between the subtitles and everything else on the screen, I can see well enough how well-timed the mouth movements are to the voice work.

You might be right, considering when I read your second paragraph, it got me thinking about why they don't just rotoscope if they need to have characters dancing and singing at the same time, though I'm guessing that's an even more expensive process than normal.

If this is so, you're really in VERY small company. Otherwise there wouldn't be so many issues with texting-&-driving.