Twelve Moments 2009 “Day” 8: Pretty Good English Voices

The Nationals cap was a nice detail.

Eighth of 12 entries in this year’s “Twelve Moments in Anime” project.

You may have noticed that I skipped Monday & Tuesday – that’s because I started work training this week. I intend to finish the remaining four installments by the end of the year, December 31st.

While eating lunch yesterday, I thought of something memorable to write about from this year: the pretty good English voices in the first episode of Eden of the East. These include the federal agent who yells Saki, the truck driver who yells at naked Akira (“Hey, you wanna die?”), the guy who reminds him what apartment he’s in, the dispatch man who transmits a photo of Akira, and the policewoman who asks him a few questions. It wasn’t surprising to discover the voice actors for those single-episode characters were unknowns like David Whitaker, Gregory Pekar, Michael Charisma, Rudolph McCollum, and Sonja Inge (although Pekar has an fair filmography of bit parts and McCollum was in two Pirates of the Caribbean movies) but I was impressed that Production I.G. made the effort to get English speakers to bolster its fictional portrayal of Washington, D.C. instead of settling for out-of-place and awkward-sounding Engrish.

I would really like for Funimation to keep these small performances in their upcoming dub of the series, perhaps through some sort of negotiations, but I know that may not happen.

(By the way, I have only watched that first episode so I can’t make worthwhile comments about the whole thing.)