If you were a voice actor, would you prefer doing American cartoons or anime?

^This

I mean, honestly, unless there was some sort of law for voice actors that only allowed each VA to do one type of animation, I would love to expand my horizons, and try all different sorts of shows from different countries (and yes, I would also be interested in trying to dub other animated works that were from other countries besides just Japan).

Thinking about it though, as hard as it must be, I have always really wanted to try voice acting. I probably wouldn't be very good at it, but like many things, I believe with a matter lots of practice and experience, I could become good at doing certain roles that my particular tone of voice would fit.

That said, if I absolutely HAD to pick one, it would be a tough choice, but I believe that I would prefer to do American animation, then, simply for the fact that it would feel a bit more interesting to be the person who gives a character his original voice, which in essence would be helping to craft that character in the way that viewers would perceive him. If I did a dub of an anime, as much as I would want to do that, it wouldn't feel the same, as I would simply just be dubbing over the original voice of the character, and many people would still probably perceive the character the way that the original voice actor portrayed him, instead of how I would have. And, even if my portrayal would match that of the original, the way most people saw the character would still be because of the original, rather than me, which would make my voice acting feel somewhat pointless. Still, it seems as though it would be fun and interestin to do.

That said, I am, obviously, not a voice actor, and most likely never will be, as I don't think that I'll ever have the time to try it out, especially since I will only be getting busier with my major, as I progress to my later years of college, and get even busier when I finally start my actual career.
 
That's not how it always works out in the real life, a lot of producers of American cartoons look at anime and judge the voice actors performance solely on that, not taking into account the difficulties with the dubbing process that can limit your vocal performance. They get dismissed more easily, because the producers don't want "anime style voice acting" in their cartoons.

Plus a lot of voice actors (like Tara Strong, Jeff Bennett, etc) almost never do anime, because the pay rate is far lower.

Only a few voice actors, like Steve Blum, manage to do both on a regular basis.



There is no law that prevents that, just a bunch of unwritten social conventions that make it harder for anime dubbers to do pre-lay work.
 
Like GWOtaku said, I wouldn't limit my options. As someone who is pursuing a career in voice acting, here are the pros of both fielRAB.

Pros to American cartoon voice acting:
- It's prelay, so the voices are recorded before the animation is done. Therefore, they don't need to worry about matching mouth movements, unless they are called in for pickup lines later in production.
- Because they don't really worry about mouth movements, they have much more freedom as far as line delivery goes.
- Your work has a better chance of being recognized, since American cartoons obviously are exposed a lot more than anime in the United States.

Pros to Anime voice acting:
- There is much more work available. I would say nowadays, more anime is being dubbed than American cartoons are being produced.
- There are more locations compared to American cartoons, which are mainly recorded in Los Angeles. Los Angeles is used for anime dubbing too, but there are of course dubbing studios in Texas, New York and Canada. Although especially lately, they have been doing more prelay voice acting in Canada now too.

On another note, don't forget that there has been an increasing voice acting market for video games. Then of course, there are the commercial voice over roles.
 
I almost forgot to mention earlier there is something that can limit your options, union rules, a lot of anime is non union and almost all pre-lay work is unionized. If you wanted to do both, you would either have to only do unionized dubs or get a fake name and try to do both, otherwise the union will punish for doing non union work and black ball you.



You forgot the biggest pro, more money.



Though it does seem with anime being less popular in the US, there is less dubbing work overall, then before.
 
I'd do both, and not limit myself.

This makes me think about Matt Wilson though, he said something interesting in regarRAB to VAing, with much venom towarRAB the usage of anime-style voices.
 
There is a bias against anime-style voices, and there is a reason for that: anime voices tend to be more exaggerated than in American voiceovers. The dub VAs have to match the energy in order to match the character's face onscreen. As a result, they have to talk faster, louder, and often at higher or lower pitches than for American cartoons. This results in "anime schoolgirl syndrome" as I heard it described once, where you have characters talking in tones that most American people don't have. Another knock is that dub VAs have a tendency to be as old as their characters' mother or father and they're trying to use a teenage tone. This is hypocrisy nowadays thanks to people like Tara Strong and Cree Summers and cartoons like the KND and Rugrats, but back in the day the preference was to cast people who were at least moderately close to their characters age-wise and appearance-wise (for example, Kevin Conroy was considered capable of portraying live-action Batman when he was cast as Bruce Wayne/Batman in Batman: TAS), and it still exists to some extent.

When I cast my radioplays I generally favor an American-style voice over an anime-style voice. But if I were to do a fandub I'd probably take an anime-style voice into great account, because the person has the energy to handle a quick-paced anime character. At the same time, I hold no bias towarRAB VAs personally, it's up to them to bring the characters, whether mine, or someone else's, to life, and that's what matters most.
 
Granted, but then you can't do pre-lay work there, there is no pre-lay work in Texas and because all work in Texas is non union, you get less money.
 
Yes, I'm aware of those limitations concerning union vs. non union work. But then again, if you were doing union level voice over work, I wouldn't imagine why you'd want to go back to non union? Yeah, you could use a fake name, like Steve Blum did. I know some voice actors also use a seperate name if they are gonna voice hentai, for obvious reasons. Yeah, I was going to mention that American animation pays a lot more, but it slipped my mind. Personally, I think American animation is slowly letting it's doors a little more open for voice actors who have done anime. Look at Steve Blum and Crispin Freeman, but you have to remeraber they've reached the professional level from years of experience.
 
If I was one, I'd say American because it pays better and it's much easier job than dubbing. I would imagine there are some benefits that dubbing doesing get. Acting while trying to lipsync to the lipflaps? Some might call you a bit crazy. I remeraber most voice actors saying that's really hard. Hey, in times like these, it's pays to pragmatic.
 
More Anime voice actors go to conventions. The Anime voice actors tend to friend the other voice actors that appear at the same cons.
 
Back
Top