FUNimation has made some licensing and dub casting announcements over the past week. During their Katsucon panel on Saturday, the studio made public their licenses of Bamboo Blade, Dragonaut, Blassreiter, and The Tower of Druaga (the press release implicitly indicates both the Aegis of Uruk and Sword of Uruk seasons). Three of those – the ones that aren’t Bamboo Blade – are Gonzo titles (continuing their existing relationship) and two have previously been digitally distributed online.
In fact, Blassreiter and Tower of Druaga can still be seen through Crunchyroll. They have already received English subtitles through that process but I figure that FUNimation will want to compose their own translations, which is probably a smart thing as their staff should have more familiarity with English flow and those results would help in the dubbing process. It’d be nice if two subtitle tracks (Gonzo’s and their own) were included in the sets but I can understand if doing the timing for both would be too time-consuming.
In D.Gray-Man news, CJ reports that the series’ website has been updated with an auto-playing (!) trailer and release dates for all four box sets. It was already known that the first will be released on March 31st so the new dates are set #2 on June 23rd, set #3 on October 6th, and the fourth and final one on January 5th, 2010. Initial English casting has been confirmed over the past few weeks with Todd Haberkorn voicing Allen Walker (and also directing ADR), Travis Willingham playing Yuu Kanda, Luci Christian as Lenalee Lee, Jason Liebrecht as Lavi AND the Millennium Earl, and J. Michael Tatum as Komui Lee. Other less core roles are Cherami Leigh (Mai in Ghost Hunt) as Road Camelot (come on! spell it with a K!), Wendy Powell as Hevlaska (the Innocence assessor), and Chris Sabat as Marion Cross (Allen’s mentor). [ALSO: Katsura Hoshino will be resuming the manga's serialization in Shonen Jump on March 9th.] Read the rest of this entry »
I have previously written a number of times about English dubs out for genuine interest in how well or poorly titles are adapted for American consumption. That’s why I was very pleased to read G.B. Smith’s detailed review of Ouran High School Host Club Part 1 for Mania – the first of what I think should become a regular series of Eigo kudasai columns. (This seems like a more fleshed out spiritual successor to a previous AOD column – “Being a Brief Discussion of Anime Dubs” – that was written by Way Jeng, although it should be easier now to evaluate performances more fully now this age of 13-episode season sets.) The reviewer evaluated how well the respective voice actors’ performances conveyed their characters’ emotions, their ability to reflect the existing character dynamics, and the script issues that appear in varying degrees in any English adaptation, especially FUNimation.
It’s a good read if you want to get a sense of how some of the roles were not much of a challenge (Vic Mignogna’s Tamaki, Luci Christian’s Honey) or were “hardly unique” in the case of Monica Rial’s Renge. I concur with the “recommended” verdict of a “solid effort” after sampling some illicitly uploaded dubbed episodes on a certain video-sharing site. FUNi, I would advise you start clamping down on those out of pure business interest since they may detrimentally affect your box set sales to a certain degree!
Last night, I tuned into Sci-Fi Channel to watch the TV premiere of the Bang Zoom-produced Gurren Lagann dub. I actually thought it was pretty good and something I’d watch weekly but then again, I am more forgiving of dubs than other, more purist fans may be. Kamina didn’t seem to possess all the machismo that he should’ve and Leeron’s voice may have played up a certain angle a bit too much but Simon (aka Simoun), strong Yoko, and the extras sounded good. Now we have to wait for next week to see how Viral, Kittan and his sisters stack up. (Other bloggers’ reactions: DTZ loved it, CJ called it “bearable”, xephfyre played it safe, Author-san: “quite palatable”, and Mr. Miao rightfully hates on the commercials.)
While I’m on the subject, I’d like to talk about the short Gainax interview that ANN posted yesterday. At the end of it, TTGL product manager and Gainax co-founder Hiroyuki Yamaga said, “We hope to be working on Gurren Lagann for the next decade. This work we know as Gurren Lagann will continue.” They have already released most of their Parallel Works project (which has been halted until just before the Sept. 6 premiere of series recap film #1 of 2), a DS game last fall (review from a Destructoid C-blog), a cancelled MMORPG involving first-person digging of tunnels, and a manga adaptation drawn by Kotaro Mori. It’s obvious that the studio will focus on its other projects including Shikabane Hime over the next few years but this franchise is too popular not to expand upon sometime in 2010 or 2011, although I hope it won’t get overly revised like Eva did.
As a preface to the upcoming announcement of the main English dub cast, I figured people might be interested in how another country’s dub of Ouran sounds. Someone videotaped a portion of episode 6 from an Anime-Virtual DVD with Polish subtitles and it provides a sample of voices from each main character, which sound pretty good IMO. Read the rest of this entry »
Justin Sevakis, ANN’s digger-upper of forgotten anime gems, wrote in his “Buried Treasure” column this week about some bad attempts of companies to dub anime songs including a short video montage that worth checking out alone. It’s an interesting look into a situation that doesn’t come up that often when casting English voice actors since not many series feature scenes where the main characters sing apart from music-based ones like BECK and Full Moon. (Viz didn’t replace the Japanese singing in Full Moon while Greg Ayres sang many times while voicing Koyuki and was pretty good.) A recent instance of it in a non-musical series was Wendee Lee singing “God Knows” and “Lost my music” for MoSH and, after watching that scene, I think they cast the right (or at least appropriate) voice for Haruhi and her character’s energy and passion.
Over the weekend, the dub casts for both Code Geass and Lucky Star were announced. Johnny Yong Bosch now has another high-profile protagonist role as Lelouch and Wendee Lee will be following up her Haruhi performance by taking on Konata. There are also two overlapping actresses: Kate Higgins will voice CC in Geass and Kuroi-sensei in LS while Karen Strassman will be Kallen and Miyuki. Both titles are being distributed by Bandai with Code Geass v. 1 debuting on Adult Swim next spring while Lucky Star is TBA with 6 volumes planned and special editions in the works. I can’t help thinking how poorly Konata’s opinion of dubs would likely be, if she cared at all about them in the first place. Fuller casting details after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
Over the next couple weeks, I am set to receive the first DVD volumes of Tsubasa Chronicle and Haruhi. One reason I preordered their initial releases was because I enjoyed both series when I watched them on fansubs and, to cite the “moral anime fan” line, I wanted to support the artists and studios involved. Another more curious reason was to hear for myself how the characters are voiced in English. Unfortunately, I almost always seem to worry that they won’t sound “right” – not in terms of faithfulness to the sounds of the original seiyuu, but rather if the new voices work with each other and appropriately and accurately convey the characters’ feelings. Read the rest of this entry »
Tonight, I watched the first dubbed episodes of Trinity Blood and Bleach as well as continuing my weekly Eureka Seven fix. I found Trinity’s dub to be pretty good and Bleach was also enjoyable…for the five characters that were heard. I’ll have to watch a couple more of each (especially Bleach) to get a good feel of the English adaptations but for now, I’ll just say they’re not bad. Read the rest of this entry »
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