Yeah, playing with Japanese voices really makes it grow on you. There's so much subtlety in tone and accent and nuance that even the most trained English speaking voice actors cannot possibly emulate. Ever since my first year of Japanese, I've been totally unable to watch or play anything dubbed. - ThreadSky

josephelacqua.bsky.social • 81 days ago

Yeah, playing with Japanese voices really makes it grow on you. There's so much subtlety in tone and accent and nuance that even the most trained English speaking voice actors cannot possibly emulate. Ever since my first year of Japanese, I've been totally unable to watch or play anything dubbed.

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squirrelbyte.bsky.social•81 days ago

I feel that! There's a specific quality to any material in its original language that can't be 100% replicated. This is maybe even truer with Japanese media and its quirks. It is definitely making me take the story and characters much more seriously this time around.

josephelacqua.bsky.social•81 days ago

There's something particular between Japanese and English at work here too, though I usually talk about it in terms of Final Fantasy VII, since two major characters (Cloud and Sephiroth) both tend to speak in ways that leave almost no emotive tones in their voices. This is done easily in Japanese..

josephelacqua.bsky.social•81 days ago

..but is absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to replicate in English without sounding like a robot. As such, when dubs happen, a lot of this nuance is completely discarded and never becomes a part of the "translation," which can take on its own emotive forms and nuances that are not evidenced in the original.

josephelacqua.bsky.social•81 days ago

Another point to this is (at least in the 80s-00s), Japanese voice actors in anime would watch the entire episode and record their lines together. If one screwed up, they'd restart from the beginning until they got the perfect take. This tends to allow Japanese actors to become comfortable with...

josephelacqua.bsky.social•81 days ago

..their roles as time progresses, and "feel" the characters more, so they learn hoe better to express them. English localization breaks everything down into individual lines, recorded individually, and spliced together in whatever way works best. It's usually too rushed and chaotic for a dub actor..

josephelacqua.bsky.social•81 days ago

...to find anything even *remotely* resembling their character's voice when it's just a matter of determining whether or not you nailed each line recording. And then, because the translation "works," it doesn't really matter to them how it sounds because they can only try so hard.

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