How does the Japanese voice actor industry compare with the North American one

I dislike Death Note in all forms.

Nope, it's most definitely the performances. They're almost always over the top and make me want to mute the sound.
 
FAIL



To be fair, though, there are tons of English dubs that sound that way as well (and I'm a person who happens to love several English dubs of various anime titles). Sometimes the voices are even supposed to sound over the top, like with Tamaki's character in Ouran High School Host Club.
 
I agree with Ensatsu, plus anime and entertainment in general is over the top, so the voices automatically have to be over the top as well, and this applies to any language
 
Again American voice actors almost always sound better in pre-lay.


There many factors in dubbing that can affect a performance that aren't present in pre-lay.
 
Yeah, because in pre-lay, you have almost no restrictions, no original voice, no mouth flaps, no Japanese producer supervision, you can pretty much do the character in your own way
 
I'm aware of that, and I agree, but my statement was only referring to English dubs of anime when I was saying that there are also tons of English dubs that sound over the top. I wasn't referring to English voice actors who do pre-lay work.

I'm also aware that dubbing is much more difficult to perform than pre-lay, due to the restrictions of having to match the timing of the mouth-flaps of the characters, but that doesn't meant that they always have to sound over the top, unless the character is made to be that way, or unless there is a line that they just can't get around without making it sound over the top. A good example of an anime that comes out sounding pretty natural with its dub is Cowboy Bebop. In my personal opinion, most of the voice actors in it portray their characters well, and match their lip-flaps, while having the voice acting sound just as good as it would if it were a pre-lay.
 
Strangely this isn't the first time, they sorta did that back in 1996 with Kodomo no Omocha (Kodocha), because some of the characters were played by Japanese live action actors, and Sana was played by Japanese radio host, Shizue Oda
 
Double-Action (Sword Form)
Double Action: Rod Form
Double Action: Ax Form
Double Action: Gun Form
Double Action: Wing Form
Action-ZERO
Real-Action
Double Action:Coffee Form
Double Action: Ga-Oh Form
Double Action: Den-Liner Form
Double Action: The Final

Freakin' Den-O man. The songs have to END! I don't care about how hot the seiyuu are for the Imajin!

(For the record, I do actually like these songs. There's just too many of them. Rod Form is my favorite)
 
There's also 4 Piano Form and each of them has a 'dialogue' version with lines from the show. Including two different Momotaros version. I think DenLiner Form might have different ones too or is that Climax Jump DenLiner Form?

Personally the classic Sword Form is my favorite. Especially Momotaros version. ORE SANJOU!!!
 
Yes but in general pre-lay work gives one a better indication of one's level of skill as a VA then dubbing does, despite the fact there are some exceptions that prove the rule, like Cowboy Bebop.
 
Off Topic. long post is long

Pfft.
Watch "Lemon Angel Project" and tell me if you think that is 'Good acting'. Seriously if you can't hear it then I envy you. And it's not hard to pick out bad acting and bad singing in another language.
If it was however -something like Theater acting, I would agree with your statement.

My examples.
-myco who played Mitsuki Koyama in the "Full Moon wo Sagashite" (in my opinion) was terrible, her acting was stiff and the voice choice didn't fit the character at all, I was literally laughing every time she spoke - She did alright as the show went on - which usually happens with a lot of VAs in Anime. The lady is great at singing but Voice Acting isn't her thing.
-Another Singer who voice acts is Momoi Haruko - who I love and a big fan of her singing, but when it comes to voicing characters it's a mix-bag. Sometimes she shines as the character, other times you can just hear the stiff acting but also hear the enthusiasm. She's popular so she is used a lot.
-Then there is Saeko Chiba, perhaps it was just her Dokuro-chan role that made me wary of her acting, I'll check out more of her work. It sounded like she had this "OooooH ... REeAL-LY!?" type of way of acting, like fake. "NAaah-Nii?!". I think it was just this role that bugged me, the show itself is amusing.


There are Anime roles when the voice actor is just terrible, yet when they do a different Anime role they are terrific. Perhaps the role was just wrong for them or the director wasn't...directing lol

With "Air Gear" Kenta Kamakari as Ikki was just terrible I was literally cringing, the guy is a good Stage-actor, but as Ikki his acting didn't improve till the show was nearing it's end. I felt that half the Japanese cast for Air Gear was just bland. Chris Patton as Ikki and the English cast (to me) was a lot better.
With exceptions when it came to Akito/Agito. And I mean this for both dubs (Jnp and Eng) I found both voice choices to be unfitting, but the VAs were good at bringing out the character, and their acting was enjoyable.

I watched "Disney's Hercules" in Japanese and was surprised at how bad it was. Not because I am use to listening to English (I watched it in Spanish too) it was seriously just badly done.


Most people who say that the English dub track is bad, is mostly just ranting and look at Japan as some shinyland of happy. You can find clips and episodes of anime in Spanish, French, German, and people will say the same thing because they just have a preference for listening to Japanese, even if the acting is bad. And when it comes to popular Anime you definitely see people making claims about how "Inferior" every dub is.


On Topic.
I think you should actually ask an English dubbing Anime voice actor about this. Many of them have blogs and emails they reply to. The only replies that can be gotten here is *points above* Opinions. And how much time is put into the dubbing. And what we think happens.
....? Unless that is what the purpose of the topic is.

Since Anime is an industry in Japan, of course the way of getting voice actors is different from other countries and each country has their own method for their own Animation industry.

In Japan there are schools for voice acting and lot of them are in music groups. It's literally a career choice and the people are practically celebrities as-in movie star status.
Those are the only two major differences -from my view. Overall, many voice actors have various careers, it could be Stage acting and Radio that gets them chosen for a role.

A thing they have in common is that they [Voice Actors] love their work. They have opinions about the characters they play and they have their favorites. A lot of people think you have to like everything about the character to play the part - well from an Otaku perspective.

And then there are some Studios and VA's go out of their way to please Fans.
 
The Simpsons cast makes 400,000 dollars an episode, that likely makes them the highest paid voice actors in the world, has Japanese show ever had voice actors that demanded a fee similar to that?
 
Bottom-ranked Japanese VA's get about 15,000 yen per episode after taxes and fees, while some higher-tier animes could get their actors paid 80,000 yen per episode.

Their contracts prevent such gouging of salary that the Simpsons cast do.
 
About 163 and 871 dollars respectively. Granted, American anime dubbers get paid by the hour (I think average minimum is $25/hour) but yeah, 99% of voice actors get paid diddly. Simpsons are the absolute exception, not a goal.
 
I'm sure that union pre-lay voice actors make way more money then anime dubbers, however it doesn't seem like Japanese VAs make more money then American VAs, overall.
 
You can't compare The Simpsons to anything when it comes to VA salaries. It's way above normal and into ridiculous levels. They even demanded one million per episode a couple of years ago, and nearly everyone agreed it was ridiculous beyond compare. No VA is worth THAT much money.
 
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