Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - Stunt-Casting
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Beatdigga
 Posts: 5148 Location: New York |
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The eternal battle of attention vs. qualification. Tatum I admittedly didn't mind because it was a small role, and got more people's attention than it would have otherwise.
But it's important to remember the reason most of these actors earn an absolute pittance: The biggest dubber of anime is based in Texas because Texas is a right-to-work state, and these people all lack union protections. Netflix, in turn, and this is not to glaze Netflix, was rather early on forced to sign deals with the various acting, writing, and directing unions when they went into original programming, which in turn means any true Netflix original (and not something outsourced to a third party like the late Rooster Teeth) is required to use union talent and pay union wages. It's why Sakamoto Days has random Cobra Kai castmembers in it, or Emily Rudd can be in Delicious in Dungeon. I think the issue of payment and giving people what they're worth in anime dubbing starts with giving people protections and guarantees that right now, only a small portion of dub casts actually get to enjoy. |
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Triltaison
 Posts: 943 |
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Like mentioned, some of the Ghibli ones were quite surprisingly good. Princess Mononoke is probably my favorite of those English dubs because of Gillian Anderson, Billy Bob Thornton, and Keith David. I really loved the modulation for the voices of the gods making them sound a bit more otherworldly.
Another celebrity role that always amused me was Robert Loggia in the dub for The Dog of Flanders movie. |
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Wizardizar
 Posts: 210 |
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Yeah the bigger issue is worker's protection. It's not a 1 to 1 comparison and the market is much smaller, but the pay scale in Quebec dubbing is on par with any other actors working in the province. The actors dubbing the Simpsons are making similar money to the actors working in live action sitcoms. And that's because all of them are unionized. |
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FilthyCasual
Posts: 2720 |
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As a kid it blew my mind watching the dub of Castle in the Sky and hearing Dawson. Jame van der Beek did a great job.
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Silver Kirin
Posts: 1766 |
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Similarly to the Asnwerman article on British dubbing, I'd also like to give my perspective as a Native Spanish speaker in regards to celebrity voice acting/dubbing, or Startalents as they're called here.
First of all, in regards to anime, there's not a lot of examples of celebrity voice acting, however, Netflix has included some celebrities in a few anime dubs into Neutral Spanish, those titles being Baki and Knights of the Zodiac. With Baki, the title character is voiced by Alfonso Herrera, a Mexican actor who even has had some screen roles in English-speaking productions like Sense8, Ozark and Rebel Moon (he even dubbed himself in those movies), and he has also acted as celebrity voice in animated movies like The Lorax (as Ted), DC Super-Pets (as Krypto) and The Croods (as Guy), I'd say that I've enjoyed Alfonso's interpretation as Baki, however I was actually kind of amazed when he was casted as the gray heron in The Boy and the Heron's Neutral Spanish dub, he was the only celebrity in that movie's dub and the only celebrity in a Studio Ghibli Neutral Spanish dub, and he sounded very different from his usual performances in other dubs. Also in Baki, the character of Spec was voiced by Alex Montiel, who is actually a content creator/influencer (keep this in mind), he actually is friends with some Mexican dub VAs and even interviewed many of them, and he apparently took some acting classes, but as Spec he sounded very weird. In Knight of the Zodiac, on the other hand, Hyoga was voiced by Alfonse Herrera as well, but most controversially, Seiya was voiced by Darío Yazbek Bernal, who is the brother of famous Mexican actor Gael García Bernal, and his performance as Seiya was widely panned, it didn't help that it was the fist time Seiya got a new dub voice after his original dub VA, Jesús Barrero, passed away, when Crunchyroll got the rights to the second season, both Darío and Alfonso were replaced (though other non-celebrities VAs were also replaced due to the change of recording studios) to much better results. Secondly, remember when I talked about content creators/influencers? Well, in the last 10 or so years, the international divisions of movie studios have hired influencers to voice characters, mainly in animated films' dubs, but also in live-action movies, albeit primarily with CGI characters, the live-action Sonic movie is a great example, because in the Latin American Spanish dub Sonic is voiced by Luisito Comunica, a travel-log YouTuber with over 45 million subscribers, when it was first announced it wasn't well received, but I'd say he has done a decent job as Sonic, in fact when he couldn't reprise his role as Sonic in the live-action Knuckles tv show dub people complained, despite the fact that there Sonic was dubbed by Jorge Roig Jr. the first VA who voiced the character in Neutral Spanish in the AoStH show. Thankfully, Tails, Knuckles and Shadow are voiced by professional dub VAs. Honestly, I think think screen actors are better suited to voice characters in dubs as celebrities, and I know that screen/stage acting is not the same as voice acting, but is acting nonetheless, nonetheless in animated movies, some studios like Disney used to hire famous musicians, maybe the worse example being Ricky Martin as Hercules in the Disney animated film, even as a kid I felt his voice sounded odd compared to the rest of the cast. |
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Greed1914
 Posts: 5360 |
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Maybe something like the the Lupin dub from Discotek is its own version of stunt casting, but it doesn't feel the same, largely due to it being actors who have done it before as just regular voice acting gigs. Sure, it gets somebody like me to take notice, but at the same time, it also feels respectful to aim for some level of consistency.
That inconsistency is something that makes live-action Sonic odd. Having Colleen voice Tails is great, but then the cast around her are not the ones that that were around her in prior performances. On the one hand, you have voice acting being treated as "lesser than" because the audience doesn't see the actor, but on the other, you have celebrity casting when someone decides that the budget is big enough that the audience needs to care who is in the booth. |
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Silver Kirin
Posts: 1766 |
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I supposed that was a wasted opportunity, though I'm not a native English speaker, so I don't know if Canada still makes dubs or if they just voice their own series nowadays. Though the fact of having more authentic voices reminded me that Disney didn't dub both Coco and Encanto into European Spanish, since it wouldn't have made sense hearing Mexicans and Colombians speaking with an European accent, and in fact Disney actually dubbed Encanto in Colombia (though with a cast composed of celebrities) despite the fact that Disney has never dubbed anything in Colombia before. Also some of the English language cast that acted in both Coco and Encanto dubbed themselves in Spanish and that also reminds me of the few times were some seiyū dubbed themselves into English, like Mari Iijima as Minmei in Macross, or recently Sally Amaki as Carol Oston in Tomo-chan, does that count as stunt casting? Incidentally, I've recently saw an article about potentially using artificial intelligence to recreate the voices of seiyū to dub anime/video games into other languages, so in theory they dub would keep the same "spirit" by "hearing" seiyū in other languages. Obviously this is a completely AWFUL idea, not to mention that, I'd say that dub voices, especially in animated productions, do not necessarily had to match the same tone as the originally, since every language does have their particularly way of speaking and sounding, like I wouldn't imagine Goku having his same tone of voice as in Japanese in other languages.
In a bit of coincidence, Turbo Granny is voiced by Queen Machina's dub VA from PR Zeo in the Latin Ameican Spanish dub, Magda Giner, but only in the Crunchyroll dub that is, since Dan Da Dan has two separate dubs. However, Magda voices Turbo Granny using the same tone of voice as she used when he voiced Zim from Invader Zim, and considering both Dan Da Dan and Invader Zim deal with aliens and the paranormal, it feels very appropriate. |
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SaiyanHeretic
Posts: 108 |
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I almost exclusively watch anime subtitled and I don't know enough about Japanese celebrities to register stunt casting on that front, but when I see/hear it in English dubs, I'm usually underwhelmed. Voice acting is a particular skillset and very few big name Hollywood actors have those chops. Take away the famous face and they just become a guy with a boring voice. Often it seems the best at crossing over from in front of the camera to behind the microphone are those with extensive theater experience.
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Kicksville
 Posts: 1415 |
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The earliest stunt casting for anime-as-anime I'm aware of is Armitage III Poly-Matrix, the movie version of the OVA. If I'm reading things right, it came out in 1997.
Said OVA had its own dub, but the movie recasts Elizabeth Berkley and Kiefer Sutherland into the lead roles (and, funny enough, another before-he-was-famous performance by Bryan Cranston, also in the OVA). I seem to recall there were assumptions from fans this was an attempt to see if celebrity casting moved the needle for sales at all, but I don't know if anyone has the actual story on that. |
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Silver Kirin
Posts: 1766 |
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There's a lot stunt/celebrity casting in Japanese voice acting/foreign dubbing, I do know that all Studio Ghibli's films since Princess Mononoke casted screen and stage actors and even personalities to voice main characters (in My Neighbor Totoro, Earthbound's creator, Shigesato Itoi, only voiced Satsuki and Mei's father, a much minor role), I don't remember if the reason was due to Hayao Miyazaki not wanting to work with seiyū again, because he believed new seiyū didn't sound natural or that female seiyū's voices were too high-pitched, or if it was mainly due to schedules. Still, I do know that Haku from Spirited Away was voiced by Miyu Irino when he was just still a kid, I think there aren't a lot of child seiyū in Japan, but I guess Hayao wanted the character to be voiced by an actual kid, though Miyu kept working as a seiyu, similarly to Kensho Ono, he also began his career when he was young, in fact, his most famous famous role is voicing Harry Potter, and I think he was almost same age as Daniel Radcliffe when he started dubbing him. I'd say that, just like in the West, Japanese celebrity voice acting is mostly relegated to theatrical movies. |
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SinisterOracle
 SubscriberPosts: 865 |
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I was hastily scrolling by and read the title as “This Week In Anime: Slut-Casting”.
I’m now done scrolling for today, thank you. 
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Nekbone
Posts: 214 |
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I don't watch dubs so my experience with stunt casting is limited to Hollywood adaptions like Mario and Sonic. In that regard I guess I'm just used to celebrities voicing everything in movies so it doesn't phase me much. I do find it funny when the Japanese dub gets the original video game or anime VAs to dub over the characters though like One Piece's live-action did.
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mdo7
 Posts: 8229 Location: Katy, Texas, USA |
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For me, stunt casting can be good, or average. But seeing more recent anime titles with their English dub started to do stunt casting outside of Studio Ghibli/Hayao Miyazaki have become more frequent lately. I'll quote this from another user below:
Yeah, and I guess this will become more normalized because of how big anime has gotten compared to 15-20 years ago. Do I think some anime could benefit from stunt casting? Heh, it depends. I've already written what I said about Anne Shirley had a missed opportunity for an all-Canadian voice cast, and I wanted Anne Shirley to get a stunt cast. And I can say the same for the English dub of All you need is Kill anime film, that anime should've gotten Emily Blunt to reprise her role as Rita, and also maybe get some of the live-action actor/actresses from the film to sort of reprise or do a parallel casting for the anime film. This is the only situation where stunt casting for English dub can benefit an anime that is not Studio Ghibli/Hayao Miyazaki, or Makoto Shinkai, or Mamoru Hasoda. I can't speak for the Japanese side, because I'm not well-verse with Japanese A-list celebrities compared to my Korean and Hollywood counterparts. |
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Silver Kirin
Posts: 1766 |
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Speaking of Kiefer Sutherland, I think most people agree that his role as Snake in Metal Gear Solid V was a blatant case of stunt casting, especially considering the character doesn't speak as much as in other games in the series and most obviously, the whole replacing David Hayter thing. I mean, Metal Gear it's a Japanese game, so the English audio it's the dub version, but I think most people say that the games are meant to be played in English, which I can understand, though I believe the Japanese audio were always recorded first, but still, it's not like there Japanese cast had any celebrities, it seems Kojima respects the work done by the seiyū, don't know what he thinks of English voice acting, but Death Stranding, which technically was recorded first in English, was full of celebrities. |
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Southkaio
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To me, doing the dub of the Anne of the Green Gables anime in the United States is like doing a Wild West movie with the British actors. Do you agree with me?
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