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Old 2010-09-10, 14:54   Link #286
Decagon
This was meaningless
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Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Not on this site no more.
Age: 36
Quote:
Originally Posted by synaesthetic View Post
I'm not familiar enough with the Japanese language to tell "kinda decent" from "really good," I'll admit. It sounds far less silly coming from the Japanese voice actors, perhaps because I lack this familiarity.

Unfortunately for dub companies, I am familiar enough with English to do that.

When the dub companies can do as good a job with a dub as Valve did with Half-Life 2, I'll bite.
I'd suggest watching some jdramas if you want more familiarity with real Japanese voices. The voices you hear in anime fit into a stereotype for that medium much like there are specifically cartoony voices in a lot of Western cartoons. It's a psychological phenomena because you're used to hearing English in a certain way and when you hear it in a medium such as a cartoon you already have preconceived associations with what a normal versus a cartoon voice is like. The same applies to anime except for us outside of Japan anime was probably our first audio exposure to the Japanese language, so how horribly Japanese dubs sound compared to spoken Japanese we would not be able to tell.

Also, for some voice actors you can find their natural voices on radio programs or interviews--there is often quite a bit of fluff between their natural voice and the baseline voice they use for their characters, especially how sterile and articulate their voicework sounds.
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