Current Events > why are English dub anime womens voices always so fake and excruciating

(+) Yeah! (+)

Unless your animation is absolutely god tier, you can't really get away without exaggerating voices in animation. Without everything else that goes into a performance, it'll come across as flat if you just act "normal". This is the same reason a lot of streamers (especially Vtubers) exaggerate too. Sounding good isn't always the same as sounding normal.

For me they both can be good it's just how their handled in the end.

I do prefer subs since I've seen so many dubs that are just horrible.

DarthAragorn posted...

Fake

Love is War is one of the best dubs ever made

Fake ghost stories is the best dub

bump

Solar_Crimson posted...

It's not like the Japanese voices are authentic, either. They're overexaggerated to the point where people actually say that watching anime is actually a terrible way to learn Japanese.

Anime is actually fairly useful for learning Japanese and improving listening skills. Its still Japanese.

Itachi157 posted...

Anime is actually fairly useful for learning Japanese and improving listening skills. Its still Japanese.

Absolutely. If you find it entertaining then it's better than listening to something that bores you. You should watch it with Japanese subtitles to reinforce what you are hearing as English subtitles will just distract you.

They're not.

Silver_Ogre posted...

This is not a good dub. C.C. and Kallen are both pretty bad.

Wtf it's nearly perfect

The only dub CG voice that doesn't quite fit is Shirley (inconsistent) and Nunally in R2

Other than that it's perfectly cast

In the bad old days before the 90s, cheap fly-by-nights American companies like ADVision would own distribution rights and so handle dubbing on the cheap. They would do this by hiring scabs with no experience to voice act. Most often these were just friends of theirs or employees from other departments.

I heard one story about a distributor who would get laid by trawling Brucie-cons and offering fan girls voice acting jobs.

CompatibleGreet posted...

Fake ghost stories is the best dub

I said one of, learn to read

I would say it's natural to feel things are a bit more awkward in languages outside what the original writers, script, and directors had in mind if you didn't grow up with it but if you feel the same for lackadaisy and hazbin hotel which were written with English in mind this might just be a personal hangup on the sound level or style itself. It could be a combination of the two as well.

Because more often than not in those cases the original voices in japanese are also "fake and excruciating". The dub voice actresses are just working with what they're given.

GiftedACIII posted...

I would say it's natural to feel things are a bit more awkward in languages outside what the original writers, script, and directors had in mind if you didn't grow up with it but if you feel the same for lackadaisy and hazbin hotel which were written with English in mind this might just be a personal hangup on the sound level or style itself. It could be a combination of the two as well.

its definitely a me a thing, very rarely do i find people who get what i mean. my partner says im a savant for voice acting and attributes all my opinions to autism lol

i swear this shit sticks out so distinctly to me tho i swear

Itachi157 posted...

Anime is actually fairly useful for learning Japanese and improving listening skills. Its still Japanese.

This is still absolutely correct, provided you're not using english subtitles, using tools like yomitan and/or jisho to mine unknown vocabulary, and acknowledge that the characters often speak in ways or use language that you would rarely if ever encounter in real life modern japan.

Lobinde posted...

This is still absolutely correct, provided you're not using english subtitles, using tools like yomitan and/or jisho to mine unknown vocabulary, and acknowledge that the characters often speak in ways or use language that you would rarely if ever encounter in real life modern japan.

It's only useful in the sense that you're allowing yourself to hear the language. That's about it. It'd be about as useful as using something like rocket power to learn English. That is to say, no... You shouldn't.

i always find it really cool when i start understanding words and phrases thanks to games and anime

Itachi157 posted...

Anime is actually fairly useful for learning Japanese and improving listening skills. Its still Japanese.

It's not useful for Japanese you'd actually want to use. It's like trying to learn English by watching Avatar. Yeah you'll be able to converse, but you'll sound super weird to normal people.

I dont agree with this but Ive kind of notice whenever examples of great dubs are asked for its always older ones from the 90s like yu yu hakosho, FMA, cowboy bebob, or Naruto.

reincarnator07 posted...

It's not useful for Japanese you'd actually want to use. It's like trying to learn English by watching Avatar. Yeah you'll be able to converse, but you'll sound super weird to normal people.

I wouldn't even say you could converse. You'd just be able to understand some words that are actually said. And in that regard, it can be handy to hear different accents. If I was trying to learn, IMO the best thing would be to watch news channels.

pazzy posted...

It's only useful in the sense that you're allowing yourself to hear the language. That's about it. It'd be about as useful as using something like rocket power to learn English. That is to say, no... You shouldn't.

Wrong. The key is to immerse using a variety of sources of native japanese language material (including but of course not only anime). If you, like in your other example exclusively learned japanese from news channels, your speech and range of vocabulary would also be "unnatural" but in a different way (you'd sound super formal and specific all of the time which would be weird in more casual everyday conversations).

Most people have the common sense to understand that if they watch a shounen anime for instance, monologueing about obscure ninjutsu and shouting stuff like kisama probably isn't something your average japanese salaryman does on a daily basis, but you still get listening practice and can pick up other words that are more useful. And even if you did talk like a shounen protagonist, your speech would still be more capable and natural than someone who sticks to robotic-sounding-ass textbook sentences.

Lobinde posted...

Wrong. The key is to immerse using a variety of sources of native japanese language material (including but of course not only anime). If you, like in your other example exclusively learned japanese from news channels, your speech and range of vocabulary would also be "unnatural" but in a different way (you'd sound super formal and specific all of the time which would be weird in more casual everyday conversations).

Most people have the common sense to understand that if they watch a shounen anime for instance, monologueing about obscure ninjutsu and shouting stuff like kisama probably isn't something your average japanese salaryman does on a daily basis, but you still get listening practice and can pick up other words that are more useful. And even if you did talk like a shounen protagonist, your speech would still be more capable and natural than someone who sticks to robotic-sounding-ass textbook sentences.

News channels generally have people that come on and have conversations. So no, that's not wrong. People talking on the news to other people and doing interviews is going to sound a hell of a lot more like a normal ass conversation than a cartoon. And sounding overly formal is less of a problem than sounding like a non-human speaker. As a matter of fact, it's one of the comments that a lot of countries say about Americans when they speak in other languages, that they sound far too formal in the first place. Example, a lot of Brazilians say that Americans say "please" way too much. But it's better to be overly polite than rude.

You'd think that, but there are plenty of people that watch anime and think that is how the Japanese speak. If you spoke like a shonen character, people would think you were incredibly childish and you might not even have an accent that is anything but a verbal tick that characters are given in the show. To make it easier to get, it'd be far better to sound like News Anchor Craig Melvin than it would to sound like Dwight Schrute from the office. Because one is a person trying to sound professional and informative. The other is a character in a television show.

Anime is something that can be used to help you learn words, yes, but you should *not* speak like them.

As someone who speaks Japanese you are making a pointlessly weird distinction. Just learn using what's fun. You can work on ironing out any bad habits later. If you learn exclusively from anime and then move to Japan later you will get better naturally from talking to people here. I know people who learned exclusively from anime. They ended up fine. Better than the legion of foreigners who live here years and never bother to learn shit.

ssjevot posted...

As someone who speaks Japanese you are making a pointlessly weird distinction. Just learn using what's fun. You can work on ironing out any bad habits later. If you learn exclusively from anime and then move to Japan later you will get better naturally from talking to people here. I know people who learned exclusively from anime. They ended up fine. Better than the legion of foreigners who live here years and never bother to learn shit.

All I said was that it's probably better to learn from other sources. Did people just... Not read my post at all?
pazzy posted...

I wouldn't even say you could converse. You'd just be able to understand some words that are actually said. And in that regard, it can be handy to hear different accents. If I was trying to learn, IMO the best thing would be to watch news channels.

pazzy posted...

It's only useful in the sense that you're allowing yourself to hear the language. That's about it. It'd be about as useful as using something like rocket power to learn English. That is to say, no... You shouldn't.

You aren't learning how to speak from watching My Hero Academia. The same way you aren't learning English from watching stuff like Rocket Power. But it can be still useful to watch because you'd expose yourself to more accents and words because you're watching media.

NoxObscuras posted...

Yeah it sucks that licensing issues cause some anime to just disappear from streaming. A lot of the older ones go out of print and end up costing a fortune to get a dvd/bluray copy too.

I think it's going to get removed for being a product of like, 2008 offensive humor. It's definitely a product of it's time and couldn't really be made today, which is why I think that we'll be seeing it removed from availability in the next few years.

Prismsblade posted...

I dont agree with this but Ive kind of notice whenever examples of great dubs are asked for its always older ones from the 90s like yu yu hakosho, FMA, cowboy bebob, or Naruto.

My theory is that they aired in the US dubbed, so it was a mix of nostalgia, and the fact that it's the "default" experience for viewing these anime back when they were airing in the US that has them placed so high.

pretzelcoatl posted...

My theory is that they aired in the US dubbed, so it was a mix of nostalgia, and the fact that it's the "default" experience for viewing these anime back when they were airing in the US that has them placed so high.

Thats part of it, as most of the people praising DBZs dub just havent seen it any other way for example.

Some dubs from that era are legitimately excellent though, like Yu Yu Hakusho (just recently watched it all subbed, the dub is better despite taking liberties with the translation, which I normally hate), Black Lagoon, and Cowboy Bebop.

Ive recently started buying the Blu-Rays (and DVDs if there are no Blu-Ray release) of all the anime Ive acquired over the years and still had, so I can rip Blu-Ray quality for my media server. As a part of this process, Ive been noting down and organizing all the special features and stuff, and those often make it clear which ones are a labor of love and which ones arent.

Like someone said earlier, seiyu are treated and paid much better, so it shouldnt be a surprise their performances tend to be better. Whereas English VAs are treated like shit and paid worse, so it shouldnt be much of a surprise most dont care.

DarthAragorn posted...

I said one of, learn to read

Apparently you didn't get the joke

Most women in Japan don't have high pitched voices, I think you just notice that they are forced because they're speaking in English.

Gotten a lot better though, Vtubers have great dub voices

deoxxys posted...

Vtubers have great dub voices

this is credibility destroying im soz

then again i only know them from meme vids

Dungeater posted...

this is credibility destroying im soz

then again i only know them from meme vids

Huhhh naw. They have amazing talent.

https://youtu.be/eAeQSk0ubAo
https://youtu.be/N2_BrL2uuXE

deoxxys posted...

Huhhh naw. They have amazing talent.

https://youtu.be/eAeQSk0ubAo
https://youtu.be/N2_BrL2uuXE

oh no its this fake sounding shit

i mean oh nice