Evangelion spike spencer rant1/10/2024 ![]() I can never recall ever so much as insinuating that Japanese is inherently superior as a language. * For all the accusation of "weeaboo" that have been thrown my way. This is the sort of stuff that keeps me up at night. So in brief, I'm boggled by the apparent fact that those who can't pick up dramatic intonation in another language can be moved, sometimes to tears, by English voice acting that is typically of inadequate caliber for the material it's tackling and is sometimes so terrible is comes off as a parody of what natural spoken English sounds like. Something like Eva deserves so much better than it's gotten and it's disillusioning to me that a sizeable number of people find it an acceptable product. Batman and Gargoyles), for goodness sake. Do anime dubs exist in a quaint little ghetto where their awkwardness is part of the charm and appeal? Do those who willingly and eagerly partake actually find the acting good, like, "wow, this would totally hold up in an AMC or BBC TV drama" good? The acting in the Eva dubs doesn't even reach the level of work done in dramatic American animation from the late 90s (cf. Acting is something that people are sensitive to performances that don't hold up will get skewered. I almost always look up reviews for movies and TV shows I've watched to get a second opinion, and I skim through the comments as well for the incisive ones. As a general rule, they're light years away from the caliber of acting that generally qualifies as "good" in media produced in one's native language. Anime dubs are better than they used to be, yeah, but they have yet to fully escape all the trappings associated with them. The Eva dubs don't have that advantage, though - their vintage is thoroughly, well, anime dub. The quality of the production house can compensate for some of these problems, as by providing good direction and well-rounded actors who have things on their resumes other than voicing over preexisting foreign productions. The dub that isn't stilted in some bizarre way - owing to the fact that a film that was never supposed to be presented in some other language is having it pasted over anyway - is a very, very rare thing. Is this without any consideration for acting quality or naturalism? For all that the Japanese is lacking for those not used to it, secondary dubbing (into any language, not just English) is plagued with problems* and, in my humble opinion, has an incredibly difficult time ever feeling natural. If I understand correctly, there is a sentiment that something being in one's native language can automatically give it an edge. I don't quite understand the idea in play here and previous posts by other users. Pwhodges wrote:While alienating isn't the word I'd use, this is a better explanation than I gave of why I prefer listening to the dub. ** Excepting well-done digital manipulation or rare specimens capable of sounding like 10-year-olds or something. or, rather, both sexes kinda sound the same until puberty. Funimation really dropped the ball there.) *. Accordingly, he should not be voiced by an adult man, period.** (Greenfield even allows, in one of the DVD commentaries, that they probably wouldn't have done this had their options been less limited way back when. Judging from the casting choices that Anno made, we see (or hear, rather) that Shinji is developmentally behind three other boys in his age group, Toji, Kensuke, and Kaworu. When this event happens varies depending on individual. For those who think Ogata sounds too "feminine", it might be worth noting that young males generally tend to sound "like girls"* until their vocal cords thicken. ![]() ![]() ![]() Even my boyfriend, who could somehow tolerate Spencer in the TV dub, agrees with me about his 3.33 performance being an Impact-scale disaster. He was bearable if he had to speak in an emotionally neutral tone, but the moment dramatic inflection was required. I haven't listened in on the revised 3.33 dub to see if things have improved any, but, when I was in the theater, Spike Spencer's Shinji was by far the worst element. ![]()
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