dear ocean: you suck. no, really.

[kaigou]

Gee, there appear to be credits for the company that did the dubbing. So why does the actual production value make it seem like THE ENTIRE STAFF WAS ASLEEP for the entirety of the recording?

First! You! With the SCRIPT! Look, just step AWAY from the KEYBOARD. You do not DESERVE this job. Go back to working as an ACCOUNTANT where your tone-deafness for language will not HURT people who have no CHOICE but to read your PATHETIC EXCUSE for a SCRIPT.

Failing that, a small hint: when a character speaks precisely and formally, you can indicate this by NOT having the character answer "yeah" -- HELLO, INAPPROPRIATE COLLOQUIAL -- or by using contractions. "It'll be dangerous" does not have the same weight or cadence as "It will be dangerous." Your script is half the basis for characterization, maybe even more for viewers with no exposure to the language at all. Don't freaking mess with someone else's work. Just freaking translate it -- properly -- and then get the HELL out of the way AND take your LAZY-ASS inappropriate colloquialisms WITH YOU.

Second! You! With the DUB SCRIPT! You REALLY need to get away from the keyboard, before I BREAK YOUR FINGERS WITH IT. I know you're totally obsessed with counting precise number of lip-flaps and matching syllable and beat exactly. I know you stay up ALL NIGHT pondering how to get that last little bit to match. You seem to forget that most people are willing to forgive some fudging -- and I get that sometimes you gotta do what you can. But come ON, when I run across instances like this:

fansub version: Don't get in my way.
subtitle version: Stay out of my way.
script version: Don't interrupt me.

Me: Uhhhhh.

NOT THE SAME YOU TWIT. The connotations are subtle but the real question is: WHY bother changing it? When the fansub and the official-sub match nearly that perfectly, it's probably a damn unambiguous line. The real kicker? SAME NUMBER OF SYLLABLES.

So don't freaking go telling me it's for the lip-flaps. Yeah, I got your freaking lipflaps right here. Cut it out. Go back to McDonalds where it won't matter about your lip-flap OCD and tone-deafness so complete the scriptwriter looks good in comparison. And that's SAYING something.

Third! You! At the SOUNDBOARD! Those whole bunch of little knobs and buttons and cool flashy lights? I got news for you: that stuff DOES things to the sound. LEARN TO USE THE SYSTEM. Work those knobs! PLEASE. Because all I can think after listening is that you must've set it all at a base value and taken a NAP on the floor of the PRODUCTION BOOTH. Moron.

It has been a long LONG time since I've run into examples this egregious. For instance, in this scene, #A is handed a heavy pot by #B, and isn't expecting the weight. #A then complains to himself, which #B says he can hear, even as #B moves away. The camera stays fixed on #A, holding the pot. On the last line ("I told you..."), the camera jumps to #B, and it's clear he's moved all the way across a very large room, AWAY from #A. The original production sound underscores the camera/POV shift to give an implication of DEPTH in the SOUND. Wow! I know! Amazing, isn't it!

ONLY TO YOU, you SOUNDBOARD SLACKER.

THIS IS NOT HARD, so listen CAREFULLY Mister asleep-at-the-freaking-knobs Soundman. English first, then Japanese. COMPARE. Take NOTES. You WILL be TESTED.

clip #1

When a character is off-screen AND moving away from the POV/camera, that character's voice is going to get QUIETER. It's not rocket science. REALLY. There are buttons and knobs that control this. LEARN THEM. The production values will not suffer for it, and we are capable of hearing the off-screen characters voice even when it's softer AND we can tell who is close and who's moving away. NOT HARD TO PRODUCE. And very much part of the experience for viewers.

Fourth! You! The director! YOU SUCK.

You suck with the burning epic suckness of a thousand baby black holes that suck up all light and all possible improvements on the part of actors under your direction. STOP SITTING ON YOUR THUMBS, AND DO SOMETHING. Your voice actors' characters HAVE NO RANGE, and since most voice actors probably look to you for, oh, I don't know, DIRECTION JUST MAYBE, then you might want to actually consider, oh, maybe, DIRECTING.

If an actor doesn't realize that he should expand his range just a TINY bit (oh PLEASE DEAR JEEBUS PLEASE), then it's up to YOU to tell him to at least TRY. Because otherwise you get crap like this, and it really does completely ruin the entire characterization, and I do not entirely blame the actor for not being psychic and knowing better. I blame YOU. Useless MORON.

clip #2

In listening to the voice actor under your direction, I'd say he had potential. HAD. Maybe. But none of it comes out and that's not really his fault, it's YOURS. You are the DIRECTOR. Go freaking DIRECT these people, instead of sitting outside chain-smoking between whistling Dixie and figuring whatever gets recorded is good enough. Did I mention already you're a moron? Yes? Fine, then: imbecile! DO SOMETHING TO EARN THAT MONEY I PAID.

FIFTH! DUBBING COMPANY! GET A FREAKING CLUE!

Maybe once upon a time, when 99% of the world was ignorant of Japanese entertainment (or hell, any international entertainment) outside what we saw in bad dubs on Bravo or worse dubs in the theaters, or maybe knew a lucky friend who'd set up a way to get VCR tapes monthly with home-made subtitles by some fanatic in Singapore, MAYBE back then we were willing to accept your dubs because we didn't have any choice. Videotapes came dubbed, period, end of sentence. What was on TV, like cartoons and then Cartoon Network and then whatever, was dubbed and we watched it and we LIKED it.

Now, with DVDs, we can flip from the original to the dubbed... and then RIGHT BACK AGAIN. And you know what? There are very few, VERY few, dubs that really rival the quality of the original, and I don't mean in voice actor quality. I mean in sound production, I mean in directing, I mean in script writing. These are things that are NOT an aspect of personally preferring A's voice over B's or the sound of X language over Y language. Your scripts are badly written, mangled to fit the obsessive lip-flaps at the cost of clarity and grace, your sound production is consistently flat, and your actors HAVE NO RANGE.

So, wait, WHY am I paying this money for an American-produced DVD? The Japanese company is probably quite capable of farming out the script to someone who will do a good job who is NOT in the dubbing world and does not obsess over your stupid OCD lipflappy crap [hello? Neil Gaiman, sir? could we petition you to do some more scripts, please, with lots of cherries on top because you are should-be-framed example of gorgeous script-smoothing for Spirited Away?] and then, having SAVED a crapload of money by NOT WASTING it on a dubbing company that mangles more than it provides, hello, international anime might become affordable! The Japanese companies might even find exports to be downright profitable!

Because right now? They're not. Money made overseas is a drop in the incoming budget for a lot of the companies, who are struggling to make ends meet. For whatever reason, the anime market is glutting and the money is capping out -- in Japan as well as in international markets -- and instead of cracking down on fansubbers, I say the Japanese companies should crack down on these lazy-ass useless story-mangling dubbing companies. Skip them. Just skip them, until they figure out that if they want to keep getting contracts that they should actually, oh, I don't know, maybe DO SOME ACTUAL WORK.

Just once, give it a shot, someone, and broadcast a SUBTITLED version on Cartoon Network. Try Adult Swim, those folks might have the patience. Yeah, yeah, I know not everyone likes subs, but if you go with my master plan for world domination the goal is to end up with BETTER subs and you want that, right? Okay, so you might have to suffer a bit for the beauty, so stay with me on this one. Get a subbed-series on a network, and see how it goes. The cost of creating/producing a subbed-only version -- which consists of what, someone to put in the subtitles and one or two people to translate, and then master it and off it goes? NO MIDDLEMEN, imagine that! Distribute through one of the major movie companies, and see how the dubbing companies like being cut out of the loop. If they don't, then they've got to realize that to compete, they're no longer competing against other shows in the same time slot: they are also, let's be HONEST here, also competing against the ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK.

And with the exception of those folks watching only via Cartoon Network, I really gotta wonder what the possibility is that the dubbing companies are LOSING the competition. I betcha it's by a lot longer amount than they realize.

I mean, honestly! If someone tells me that if I don't like the dub to listen to the sub instead, then my point is totally missed: because I am still PAYING for that dub. That means my money is supporting a SUCKY DUB. There is no reason, NONE, that I should have to listen in a foreign language; I know for a fact that we do have good voice actors in my native language who COULD do a good job, but even when they do, if the script is flat and the production value is mediocre and there's no intelligent direction to get the ensemble cast to actually gel as an ensemble, WHY SHOULD I BOTHER. I don't want my money supporting that kind of half-ass production, which is exactly what happens when I purchase a DVD with English tracks.

So from now on? NOT BUYING. Not until I get word that someone is actually doing DECENT work, y'know, that includes knowing what all those knobs and buttons and dials are for on the soundboard and ACTUALLY USING THEM.

Until then, no dollars from me, you freaking lazy-ass brainless twits of a dubbing company.

I mean, REALLY.

NolovenoneatALL,
me.

Comments

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

First; BWAAHAHAHAHA. gwing. HAH. yes. *dies*

Relicensed? Hunh? I have no idea, it's the copy we got. I wasn't aware it had been released and then re-released, what's up with that?

I can watch some dub anime, but strangely, most of the good stuff is from four to six years ago. Somewhere along the way, the effort put in began to drop, or maybe the companies lost some good directors, or what. I've no idea.

GW remains the top example of shoot-the-director, if you ask me, for that bizarre accent choice, which IIRC was director-choice ultimately, not VA choice. (Pixie, below, would probably know for sure.) All I know was in listening to the dub, I was like: surfer? he's a surfer? (My mother's from E. Tennessee and that doesn't sound anything like Tenn to my ears!)

I had CP do a listen to the original and after a moment or two, he said, "that's Tokyo rough trade." Another minute and he kinda got this grin on his face and said, "yeah, that's definitely rough trade, there." Our eventual conclusion was that Duo should've had a dub-accent (if any) more like a kid from NYC (I said Hell's Kitchen would be best, but most folks don't know the specifics in the differences, so maybe Bronx or Brooklyn); failing that, a Southie from Boston would do the trick.

Y'know, something that lets you know from a mile away that this kid looks friendly but he's probably carrying a switchblade and likes to harass little old ladies or something. There just isn't any American accent that has quite those connotations half as much as a strong NYC accent. That isn't the VA's place to decide, I say, but the director's, being the person who should have a good handle on the characterizations. Given that how we sound characterizes us just as much as what we say, you would think people would PAY ATTENTION. But noooooooo...

*heddesk*

[dogemperor.livejournal.com]

OK, so it'd be from the initial licensing then. (There have been rumours that Mononoke was supposedly licensed, but I've not heard anything on that since April--and supposedly the company that released the Ayakashi dub DVD has since gone out of business.)

The two dubs I can actually watch without cringing are the GITS:SAC dub (which actually isn't bad) and the Excel Saga dub (which actually, surprisingly, WORKS). Otherwise I just rely on the subtitles because I know something is going to end up making me want to punch babies. :P

Re the "Duo sounds like he's from Tennessee" bit--I'm thinking, oh, truckers in Nashville or something, not Appalachia. :3 (I'm in KY, for the record.)

I think a lot of the reason for sucky dubs in the US, to be honest, is because there pretty much is *no* training nor any real chances for training for voice acting in this country. The UK and Japan *do* still have traditions of radio serials, where good voice acting is a must; we haven't had such a thing here Stateside, other than with audiobooks and reading services for the blind, since the mid-sixties (and the animation industry here *heavily* skews towards slapstick acting). Even Disney typically has to rely on Hollywood stage actors for voice acting (which, whilst better than someone untrained at all, is still by no means perfect--there *is* a real difference).

Canada *did* have radio serials until fairly recently, which is probably why a fair amount of voice acting has been farmed out there--but I do remember stories in the early 90s re the Tenchi Muyo dubs where it was claimed Pioneer was mostly using work staff to do voicing (I fear I am showing my age in anime fandom here :D). Whilst we do have a few professional voice actors here in the US, the majority of studios *still* pretty much use the same approach as Pioneer does.

If we're to have any improvement, I think what we'll need is a combination of a) editors NOT FUCKING WITH THE DAMN SCRIPT and b) ACTUAL TRAINING IN VOICE ACTING (possibly having specific college vocal drama courses, not just for anime but even for stuff like audio books--hell, you could even have people train with reading services for the blind, as most of those are run out of NPR stations that colleges own, have them do their internships there).

(Or we could always farm the shit out to the BBC, seeing as there still is that tradition of vocal acting there.)

[dogemperor.livejournal.com]

And as others have noted, the Cowboy Bebop and FMA dubs are also well done (though I do have some quibbles, but then again, these are *excellent*, enough where I'm not "GOD MAKE IT STOP").

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Sadly, FMA (along with Spirited Away) are two examples of dubs that were ruined for me by a very simple issue: close-aged characters... ARE NOT.

Spirited Away, they found an 8-yr old to play Chihiro... who's 12. Cripes. The girl screams most of her lines. I get that she's excited, but come on. They found a THIRTY-YEAR OLD man to play Kohaku. He's supposed to be 13. Every scene between the two of them felt utterly perverted, and I do NOT mean that in a good way. It felt like all the "we're close in age" beauty of the first parts were ruined by the fact that I could not shake the sense that he was so much older in voco. Bleah.

FMA, the two brothers? 12 or 13 yr old actor, I think? and another 30yr old (or thereabouts). Again, so far removed in voice pitch and quality as to make Al sound like he was 8, and Ed sound six or seven years older, instead of both of them pitched so much closer like the original VA. That was one thing that had me so incredibly torn watching the original, because both of them sounded so young, and often even sounded much alike in their cadence. Very much like brothers.

In both cases, I can't say any of the VA were bad. I don't think they were. I just didn't think the casting choices were at all well-done in light of the characters needed. The american VA pickers seem to think that one voice, hey, if you can kinda mimic then that's good enough -- and I am sick and tired of hearing middle-aged women squeaking to pretend to be 17, or kids just out of college trying to do Old Man or Old Woman voice. It doesn't fool me. It sounds horrible, too.

That, and I really get annoyed with the US insistence that boys-play-boys and girls-play-girls -- the Japanese pattern of grown women with husky voices playing adolescent boys does work really well, if you ask me. (Especially when there aren't a lot of 12-16 yr old VA out there who also have the acting chops; the maturity means the female VA can inflect more depth, while their voice does sound early adolescent. I keep waiting for US VA to wake up to this fact, but so far... sheesh, people.)

Personally, I think a voice like Kathleen Turner's would be awesome for a pre-teen like, say, Sasuke Uchiha.

I am probably totally alone in that opinion.

Also: you are so, so right about the slapstick. I was thinking about that this evening, and realized: the only time US VA really get stuff is when either the ensemble has worked together at length (Bebop, Saiyuki, even Kenshin) or when it's comedy. The minute it goes into drama, they all go flat, like they're super-self-conscious about it, or something. Forget hoping any of them will cry, truly yell, or make those awesome extra-roar or squeaky sounds like the Japanese VA will. Sigh.

[luna-the-cat.livejournal.com]

My husband and I get pretty much exclusively subtitled anime -- including all the Studio Ghibli releases -- from Hong Kong. Most of these have a dub version as well, and on the rare occasions when the subtitles just don't work very well, the voice acting for the dub has invariably been better than anything you would ever find in the US.

Oh, did I mention they are dirt cheap and the post from Hong Kong is really fast?

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Are you sure they aren't from Taiwan? Those are usually the bootlegs, though come to think of it I can't recall the bootlegs ever having a dub track -- I've never actually looked, now that I stop and think. The really cheap all-region DVDs out of either Taiwan or Singapore being nonlicensed for the US, I try to avoid now, but at the same time the only other option is US, and even if I *could* understand the Japanese, we can't play Japanese DVDs on our player anyway because of those stupid region-rules (someday I will find whomever came up with THAT stupid marketing rule and HURT them). Not to mention the taxes on Japanese exports, sheesh...

[luna-the-cat.livejournal.com]

Oh, we do get some things from Taiwan, but a lot of the anime does indeed come from Hong Kong. We don't particularly care about black market, but they seem to be able to get a lot of the actual Japanese disks, too.

Now, about playing Japanese DVDs -- if you can't afford a regionless player, you need to find out if there is a regionless hack for the player you have. It's amazing what can be done with a little bit of firmware. ...So, what model DO you have, anyway? My husband is remarkably good at finding hacks, he'll probably know if there is one.