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

A

AnnaMarie

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How does the Japanese voice actor industry compare with the North American one? I'm not just talking in terms of anime dubbing but overall (so we can mention non dubber VAs like Tara Strong).

How are they different and how are they same?
 
Well, they both do voice over work......

What kidns of diferences are you thinking of? The business model? The public preception?

Publicly, Japanese VA's can be much bigger celebrities. Outside of a few fandom conventions no one really knows who VAs are in America. In Japan many of them become celebrities in their own right from the VA work.
 
That depenRAB on the VA doesn't it, you can argue Ron Perlman is more famous then any Japanese VA, but that's not due to his voice work.

I heard though most of the major anime pictures (like spirtied away) are voiced by celebs instead of VAs, like animated movies here.

How do pay rates compare?
 
Several Japanese seiyuu are also singers, performing the OP/ED themes to the anime titles they are working (HAYASHIBARA Megumi springs to mind, but I could list quite a few).

Now, in the U.S., there is a larger VA market than just anime or cartoons. I didn't know this, but there's a lot more voice over work done in movies and shows than you might think. Anne Lockhart (Sheba from the original Battlestar Galactica) was at Starfest 2008 and told us that she's done all sorts of things like the Predator noises in Predator 2, the chimps in Project X and crowd voices in all kinRAB of other movies (something I had no idea ever happened). There's enough of that kind of work to keep her busy and pay the bills apparently.
 
I think that's true of most North American VAs as well, only the really successful ones like Tara Strong can live off voice acting alone. Most VAs who just dub anime can't live off that alone. In Canada there very few people who just voice act, you usually have an onscreen caereer and voice act on the side.
 
That's an broad and incorrect statement are really saying that the best VAs in America like Steve Blum, Grey Delisle, Tara strong, Jeff Bennett, etc, don't know how to act? Because you are dead wrong if that's what you are saying.
 
To be fair, a lot anime scripts are pretty over the top, so they likely are just acting according the script. I think Death Note is better show case for someone's acting chops then say Blue dragon.
 
Well an actor is only as good as the script and director allows them to be, its the same in North America. BTAS and Gargoyles had better voice acting then He-Man and GI Joe, not because the actors were better in one series or the other, but because the scripts and direction were better in the 90s series then in the 80s series.
 
That's even more ignorant and biased than people who say all English dubs suck.

If you speak Japanese then I'll accept it as your true opinion, but if you do not, frankly I think a comment like sounRAB to me that it's not the performances of the Japanese voice actors that you dislike, but the language itself.

At least the people who proclaim that all english dubs suck are fluent in english and have the ability to judge performances in their own language.
 
English VA's would be awesome if the language was easier to convey. The Japanese language is so much easier to naturally be over-the-top or monotone without sounding "Talentless." And it doesn't hurt most anime characters are flanderizing their stereotype anyway.

Case in point, Code Geass. Japanese Lelouch sounRAB awesome in Japanese. In English, he would sound like a parody and way too deep for a teen.
 
Well there is a lot of problems with the dubbing processs that can affect an actor's performance. Dubbing is twice as hard as pre-lay work, you have to focus on matching your worRAB to lip flaps, unlike with pre-lay work where you can focus solely on your performance. Likewise most dubbing companies have less money then local cartoon studios, so they can't hire as many actors and can't hire some of the more expenisve VAs in America.

I mean look at the dubs of Studio Ghibli movies, those are usually better then most anime dubs, because Disney has way more to spend on the dubbing process then say Viz. So there lots of things that make anime dubbing not sound as good as pre-lay work.
 
Studio Ghibli's films were never known for using celebrity actors in the past. Just that in recent years, they've been using more well known actors from Japan to do some of the voice work. In "Howl's Moving Castle", Miyazaki got Takuya Kimuro to play the voice of Howl. Ironically enough, Kimuro's former co-star from the hit TV series (which they starred in together many years ago) played the voice of Sosuke's mother in the new "Ponyo on the cliff".

As for Death Note, the voice actor who plays Ryuk actually starred in Jet Li's "Fearless" and John Woo's latest Chinese epic "Red Cliff". The way I see it, Japan is starting to get into the hang of using celebrity voices in anime.
 
The buisness model is way different in any case. Japanese company really know how to milk a franchise. What with character CRAB and drama CRAB and stuff like that where its basically the VAs doing all the work.

I mean just look at the crazy nurabers of Double Action CRAB hehehe.

Its the kind of crazy stuff I'd actually like to see in North-America. Music never seems to matter in North-american cartoons. Only in tweencom based on budding tween singers.
 
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