A
voice acting panel on Friday at Ushicon saw a rare gathering of several
schools of dubbing. From ADV Films in Houston came Tiffany Grant, who
has been with that company from Guy in 1994 to Angelic Layer in 2004.
From Funimation in Fort Worth came Mike McFarland, actor in Dragon Ball
and director of Yu Yu Hakusho dubs. And from the West Coast school of
dubbing came Johnny Yong Bosch, best known for his portrayal of Vash
the Stampede in the Zro Limit dub of Trigun. Bosch was by far the
quietest of the actors at the panel...
...and
he was asked how Vash could be such a bombastic guy on screen when the
actor is so quiet in person. "That's acting," replied Bosch. "Right now
this is me, but in the booth, when you see what your character is, it's
like turning on a switch - you go for it." Since Trigun, Bosch has had
several dub roles in Last Exile, the second Please Teacher series,
Wolf's Rain and Witch Hunter Robin, but Vash remains his toughest
performance. "He was so over the top, and suddenly I'd have to be real
subtle. It was the first time for me to do it, and I had to make sure
the Right character was coming out of my voice."
McFarland,
who voiced Master Roshi in Dragon Ball when Funimation moved its dub
production from Canada to Fort Worth, said one of his toughest roles
was Baby is Dragon Ball GT, and another was Ritsu Soma in Fruits
Basket. Each character screams his lines as much as speaks them and, it
wears on the voice to the point he can dub each role for only a couple
of hours each day. "It really hurt to do that voice," said McFarland
about Baby. On little Soma, "sometimes he talks in whispers and
sometimes he screams. I'd look at the lines and he'd have two
paragraphs of screaming."
Some
anime fans love to blast dubs for allegedly damaging the artistic
integrity of anime shows, but Grant doesn't buy that argument.
"Hopefully the adaptation is being done so it can tell the story
without killing the story," she said, adding that some fansub
translations don't make sense. Dub actors don't sound like Japanese
actors because of the different techniques (solo recording in dubs,
ensemble acting in the originals) and because there are cultural
differences in the sound of voices that don't translate well from
Japanese to English. An example from Grant: a male villain's voice
often sounds effeminate, but that sort of performance wouldn't make
sense to an English-speaking audience conditioned to think villains
have deep voices - a practice that goes back to 18th century opera.
A
voice acting panel on Friday at Ushicon saw a rare gathering of several
schools of dubbing. From ADV Films in Houston came Tiffany Grant, who
has been with that company from Guy in 1994 to Angelic Layer in 2004.
From Funimation in Fort Worth came Mike McFarland, actor in Dragon Ball
and director of Yu Yu Hakusho dubs. And from the West Coast school of
dubbing came Johnny Yong Bosch, best known for his portrayal of Vash
the Stampede in the Zro Limit dub of Trigun. Bosch was by far the
quietest of the actors at the panel...
...and
he was asked how Vash could be such a bombastic guy on screen when the
actor is so quiet in person. "That's acting," replied Bosch. "Right now
this is me, but in the booth, when you see what your character is, it's
like turning on a switch - you go for it." Since Trigun, Bosch has had
several dub roles in Last Exile, the second Please Teacher series,
Wolf's Rain and Witch Hunter Robin, but Vash remains his toughest
performance. "He was so over the top, and suddenly I'd have to be real
subtle. It was the first time for me to do it, and I had to make sure
the Right character was coming out of my voice."
McFarland,
who voiced Master Roshi in Dragon Ball when Funimation moved its dub
production from Canada to Fort Worth, said one of his toughest roles
was Baby is Dragon Ball GT, and another was Ritsu Soma in Fruits
Basket. Each character screams his lines as much as speaks them and, it
wears on the voice to the point he can dub each role for only a couple
of hours each day. "It really hurt to do that voice," said McFarland
about Baby. On little Soma, "sometimes he talks in whispers and
sometimes he screams. I'd look at the lines and he'd have two
paragraphs of screaming."
Some
anime fans love to blast dubs for allegedly damaging the artistic
integrity of anime shows, but Grant doesn't buy that argument.
"Hopefully the adaptation is being done so it can tell the story
without killing the story," she said, adding that some fansub
translations don't make sense. Dub actors don't sound like Japanese
actors because of the different techniques (solo recording in dubs,
ensemble acting in the originals) and because there are cultural
differences in the sound of voices that don't translate well from
Japanese to English. An example from Grant: a male villain's voice
often sounds effeminate, but that sort of performance wouldn't make
sense to an English-speaking audience conditioned to think villains
have deep voices - a practice that goes back to 18th century opera.
