Forum - View topicIs There Bad Acting in Japanese?
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Hitokiri Kenshin
Posts: 291 |
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Know folks talk about it in dubs all the time, but was wondering to guys who speak Japanese, is there ever bad voice acting in the Japanese originals of anime series? Not familiar enough with Japanese to be able to tell, but wondered is there bad acting in Japanese, or is all Japanese acting great?
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar  Posts: 16935 |
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Of course there is bad Japanese acting. There's bad acting from movies and tv from any country. It's all subjective to what you personally like or dislike though. Is there some deeper point to this question? Are you trying to start a discussion on Japanese VA acting and who people think are better than others? Simply asking is there bad Japanese acting is not much material for discussion. It's akin to asking if grass is green.
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louis6578
 Posts: 1861 |
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Of course there is.
 It may be a little more difficult for people who are newer to anime to hear due to the language barrier, but a lot of Japanese dubs are horrendous. In fact, quite a few shows where people say the dub is the only way to watch it tend to have mediocre Japanese versions anyway. I'm personally not too fond of Elfen Lied or Yu Yu Hakusho's Japanese tracks.
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15462 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Not knowing Japanese myself, the best I can often do is say a character was miscast, which I have felt before. A particular example that comes to mind was Ultimate Otaku Teacher (Denpa Kyoushi), which had some pretty horrible acting in the Japanese dub, that I think across the language barrier could pick up. A specific seiyuu's performance in that reminds me of something that came up in Shirobako (which is a great show), where it gave the example of three producers trying to work with the casting of an anime, where one wanted a veteran seiyuu with a long history, one I think wanted a seiyuu that really looked the part and could work in events, and the last producer wanted an idol/singer that could do well in the anime soundtrack and brings fans along. Not much of a surprise, but an especially miscast character from Denpa Kyoushi happened to be the third. But really any one of the three could be a problematic choice.
Or there could even be a time that they work, such with an anime I found really charming despite having a number of young novice seiyuu that were from a music group, GJ-bu. Chances are we don't even remember most performances. |
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Spastic Minnow
 Bargain HunterExempt from Grammar Rules  Posts: 4609 Location: Gainesville, FL |
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Have you watched any of the somewhat recent shows about seiyus? They often get into the quality of VA's
Girlish Number is not exactly a fantastic show on its own, but it does have its strong points and especially emphasizes why and how the main character is a bad voice actress. |
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zawa113
 Posts: 7357 |
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While I'm sure a lot of the subtlety of bad voice acting is lost if it's not a language you can speak, I also firmly believe you can still spot the REALLY bad voice acting a mile away. For example, the infamous Finnish dub of digimon (though later clips seems to show that they either turned everyone over or they got their voice act together).
Of course, when Japan put this little number together, they probably thought the dub was perfectly fine if not amazing. |
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Jose Cruz
 Posts: 1773 Location: South America |
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Overall though when I hear English, Portuguese and Japanese voice acting the degree of difference in the quality and sophistication between Japanese and English/Portuguese is enormous. Japanese voice acting has developed into an artform in itself. The types of voices developed for Japanese voice acting only exist in Japanese voice acting. For instance, the voice acting for those slice of life moe shows like Slow Start are unique to the genre and by watching series of that genre dubbed one is losing a lot of what makes it a unique experience. Hence, by watching anime dubbed in another language besides Japanese one is losing a lot of the artistic content of the anime. The original voice acting represents the artistic input of the original creators of that work of art. By watching anime dubbed in another language one is not consuming the original artwork but a watered down version of it, usually characterized by very mediocre voice acting without any artistic substance in the sense that voice acting in english for instance is pretty much only the normal voices of the voice actors and don't involve any kind of sophisticated techniques, besides being often very badly performed. |
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Chiibi
 Posts: 4829 |
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I don't know if the franchise's seiyuu improved but I cannot stand most of Tenchi Muyo's first OVAs in Japanese, actually. While two characters are very cute and doing their job, the rest of the cast sounds bored. Feels very much like under-acting.
Either that or the dub REALLY puts feeling into their roles so much better. xD |
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louis6578
Posts: 1861 |
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https://youtu.be/f73A0f1qgXc
There's a bad example of acting in Japanese. That little blond girl doesn't even sound like she's trying to match the expressions of the actual character. Notice how she's making exaggerated facial expressions but the voice sounds very subdued. Almost like she's trying not to interrupt the studying going on in the next room. |
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Kruszer
 Posts: 7983 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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Yes, I don't have to speak Japanese to note instances of sub-par acting or hammy performances I don't like.
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louis6578
Posts: 1861 |
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Yeah. If anyone's watched Castle of Cagliostro, there's a scene where Zenigata VERY POORLY pretends to be surprised by the criminal activity that he's exposing. It's intentionally bad, since the character truly is putting on a thin guise of ignorance, but when you take into account how he sounded there and look for similarly acted scenes in anime that AREN'T to enhance in-universe feelings, you'll notice that there are plenty of badly voice acted scenes in Japanese. Though apparently some people have trouble picking up on certain things. Allegedly, Elfen Lied has a terrible Japanese track, but I never noticed any huge flaws.
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KyuuA4
 Posts: 1361 Location: America, where anime and manga can be made |
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Of course. FYI, the Japanese are humans too.
 As noted in almost every post, we just cannot tell due to the language barrier.
However, this makes me wonder. As a follow-up question, do some people out there view Japanese voicing as perfection due to the inability to hear the flaws? After 20+ too long years of the whole retarded "Sub vs Dub" thing, did this view play a factor into it? |
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louis6578
Posts: 1861 |
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Pretty sure my video was a clear example of bad acting in Japanese. |
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mdo7
 Posts: 6253 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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I'm going to say this: yes, Japanese voice acting is not immune to bad and low-quality voice acting. There is no such thing as a superior dub.
I'm going to cite this early 2000's article from ANN. and I'm going to quote this:
I have watched a lot of anime in Japanese voice. I not only go beyond anime, but I've also watched American cartoon, American video game dubbed in Japanese too. These Japanese dub I heard can range from good, and on par with English to the character was miscast, and the voice can sound bad. For example, I listened to Bioshock: Infinite in Japanese dub on Youtube. I liked Miyuki Sawashiro as Elizabeth, but Booker's Japanese VA, Keiji Fujiwara really ruin the game for me when I heard his Japanese voice. He didn't sound even close to how Troy Baker portray the character, Booker in the Japanese version sounded more like a 55 year old Yakuza thug more then a traumatized battle ready detective. Bioshock: Infinite wasn't the only American stuff I thought had a half-good, half-bad Japanese dub. There was an old Batman cartoon from the 70's (with an intro made for the Japanese market) that I watched an episode on Youtube before it was taken down. The Japanese VA for Joker, I didn't like the way how Joker sounded in the Japanese dub. I mean let me describe it: the Japanese voice for that Batman villain, he just doesn't fit and everytime he speak one word in Japanese, there's the annoying unnecessary laugh that wasn't needed for Joker. If the video wasn't taken down on YT, you would know what I'm talking about. But yes there are Japanese dub that sound not good, and I'm sure anime has it's fair share of mediocre Japanese voice acting or voices that don't sound right for the character. To anyone that claim that Japanese voice is superior, go watch these video of Japanese dub of American video game and animation: Batman: Mask of the Phantasm - Japanese Dub Batman: Arkham Knight Japanese dub trailer Rick & Morty Japanese dub Skullgirls: 2nd encore Japanese dub Call of Duty: WWII Japanese dub My question to these "Japanese are superior" apologist/defender: Do you think these voices in the video I linked above sound superior over the English voice? If you say yes, please explain why you defend these Japanese voices in the link above. When I say explain, tell me in full detail what made the Japanese voice so much better then the original English audio.
KyuuA4, you'll be surprised by the hypocrisy in the dub vs sub debate. There are people who bash on English dub, but somehow defend Japanese dub of American stuff and the reason is just make me facepalm. |
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Modakawa
 Posts: 8 |
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Yes, there is.
I have always been watching animes in their original languages (I know Japanese), it's easy to notice the level difference between the actors. For example, in Japan they call a specific performance problem in dubs as "棒読み"（Bouyomi）, which refers to lack of emotional fluctuations in acting or animation dubbing, resulting in lack of expressive power and a mismatch with the character image. Also, it leads to a greater sense of violation of sound painting. They also discuss those actors who have Bouyomi problem in net, like this post:http://magsoku.blomaga.jp/articles/16848.html |
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