Is the Japanese voice acting good?

[Evan_Jelly]

Played it back on the psp and thinking of picking it up but watched some videos and Jesus that is some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ terrible voice acting on the English VA

[soso]

It is but I think the English voice acting is better. English VA is almost ALWAYS superior. The only reason white people like japanese voice overs is because it sounds foreign too them. Trust me, the japanese voice overs are not as good as you think they are.

[zMyriad]

I am a fan of English Dub as well. I also agree that people do like japanese dub because it is foreign. For example, a lot of people like k-pop despite not being able to understand the lyrics. I think that people like the vocals and the sound of the language, rather than understanding the grammar and raw language itself. However, I would not say that English Dub is always superior. Only a person that is well versed in both Japanese and English language would be able to decipher objectively which dub is better.
Subjectively, in my opinion, this english dub is so bad. The only real advice I can give is look up the same videos with a japanese dub and decide for yourself.

[Fusei]

Originally posted by Moggie Girl:

It is but I think the English voice acting is better. English VA is almost ALWAYS superior. The only reason white people like japanese voice overs is because it sounds foreign too them. Trust me, the japanese voice overs are not as good as you think they are.

Well let's agree to strongly disagree.

[Stormwolf]

Let's just agree that we've got 2 utterly dumbass replies in this thread. Jesus christ, stop speaking for everyone but yourself.

[Irish]

Originally posted by Moggie Girl:

It is but I think the English voice acting is better. English VA is almost ALWAYS superior. The only reason white people like japanese voice overs is because it sounds foreign too them. Trust me, the japanese voice overs are not as good as you think they are.

Agreed

[Random]

No majority of the time English VA is lifeless compared to Japanese VA. Only rarely will English VA be good in games. The only time English VA is ever good in games are when you have actors working with mocaps(ie: God of War).

[Evangela]

Zack's Japanese VA did a legendary job voicing this character. It's one of the reasons why Zack is among the most popular FF characters in Japan. There's no English dubber who can match Japanese Zack.

[the_randomizer1889]

Persona 5 and XBC3 is the exception, most English VA are subpar at best.

[DempseyRoll]

I really enjoy the Japanese voice cast in FFVIIR and CC. I always played my games in japanese audio even from the PS1 days.

[Om3ga-Z3ro]

English Voice Actors in Japanese games sounds like they are reading off the script without practicing.

Japanese Voice Actors sound like they are actually acting their part.

[Sayo]

There's nothing wrong with the English Dub.

[Kumoko]

Originally posted by RandomXDXD:

No majority of the time English VA is lifeless compared to Japanese VA. Only rarely will English VA be good in games. The only time English VA is ever good in games are when you have actors working with mocaps(ie: God of War).

Agree i dont find many EN VA that can truly bring out a character personality to its best meanwhile the jp cast can mostly do it but then again they have course that is purely for voice acting and that part of western is really lacking

[Sayo]

Originally posted by Kumoko:

Originally posted by RandomXDXD:

No majority of the time English VA is lifeless compared to Japanese VA. Only rarely will English VA be good in games. The only time English VA is ever good in games are when you have actors working with mocaps(ie: God of War).

Agree i dont find many EN VA that can truly bring out a character personality to its best meanwhile the jp cast can mostly do it but then again they have course that is purely for voice acting and that part of western is really lacking

No they don't.

[Bio]

Originally posted by Moggie Girl:

English VA is almost ALWAYS superior.

You are friggin high if you believe that lmao. In the localization industry, the english dubs of games/anime tend to suffer for multiple reasons.

1. Scripts. The Japanese scripts are written to flow as originally intended, whereas the english scripts are generally weirdly put together to try to fit english dialogue in to cover the same stuff as the Japanese dialogue would, but in the limited amount of time that character is able to speak or a limited amount of text boxes available, which ends up making the english script either have to rush certain things or with extra room to add superfluous ♥♥♥♥, which is why when you hear dub talking it's usually a lot weirder than just a normal western game/cartoon. This can be mitigated with very good writers, but even they will struggle at times.

2. Talent. In Japan the voice talent base is vast and attracts many insanely talented people. That doesn't mean every seiyuu is a master of course, but there is a much broader range of good actors to choose from. Whereas in the west the most talented of actors tend to shoot for live action first. Not to say there aren't some amazing western voice actors of course, there's a bunch, but you can't fill every project with them.

3. Voice direction. I'm almost confident that most dubs aren't working with real good voice directors, people who will be able to manage the actors and tell them to redo takes that need redoing, they don't gather them together in the same studio to have natural dialogue with eachother like they do in most Japanese productions. Even many projects that do have a lot of good voices and a fine script suffer because of this. Like Persona 5 - Most of the English VAs in that are fine, the script is fine, but then you'll constantly have people pronouncing things or names wrong, like what the hell, who is supposed to be checking that?

Anyway, back to the game at hand, Crisis Core. The english voices for this are fine, Not super great, but useable. FF7R's dub was a lot better tbh. In fact I even used the dub for my FF7R playthrough.

Zack's Japanese voice in this game is amazing though, much much better than the english counterpart. So in my headcanon I'm playing it as if the OG timeline is in Japanese voices, and the FF7R timeline is in english voices. When FF7R2 comes out I'll go back to the dub, I think. The FF7R VAs are just amazing almost all around.

[Ceriss]

How many of you praising the JP VAs even speak the language?

Most of us haven't the slightest ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ clue about how the language handles emotions. Just on a basic level, Japanese is already a more authoratative sounding language that emphasizes drama or calmness well, but that just means weebs think it's better cause of that.

English VAs aren't always better but ffs. Stop being such a japanophile.