Awful English VA for Kiryu

[Polysorbate]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPYeESdKbbI

One more horrendous reason to not play with the English dub. He's even got that signature Californian "huff" at the end of every sentence when he's trying to sound edgy.

What was the reasoning on this? "Hiring a white guy to portray a Japanese man again would be racist, so instead we'll hire a Korean because... uh, those people are all basically the same I guess?"

Sega has one franchise that's not perennially on fire and this is the treatment it gets.

[Phant0m]

I was coping that somehow, Yong would pull through, but his lines in the Infinite Wealth demo are just... bad. The karaoke dub was leaked too and they sound just "meh", though I will say it's somewhat excusable since Yong isn't a singer like Kuroda is. Really wish Darryl Kurylo came back, would've loved to see his take on the emotional scenes in Gaiden and Infinite Wealth.

[Lestrad]

It's like the Aliens Isolation DLC all over again, but in reverse. With Alien Isolation, sure they got the original movie cast, but they were way too old. So there was a horrible dissonance between how old the characters looked, and their voices.

In this case, it's almost like he's way too young for the role. Combine this with the fact that, despite technically being a VA, it sounds far too much like his normal speaking voice. The combination is just far too distracting.

Unfortunately, all the audio clips I've heard were very low quality, not crisp and clean like you would expect from a professional recording studio. This was the case even with the Darryl Kurylo Vs YongYea vid on Youtube. From what I've heard I don't really expect the final product to be miraculously better, but that does not mean the groundwork isn't there for AI tweaking.

Overall very unfortunate. Given the big series he's been picked up for anime wise, I expected more.

[RenegadeSpider]

I hate when people ♥♥♥♥♥ about someone playing another race, swear that just shows the racist you actually are, who gives a ♥♥♥♥ if its the same race as long as the portrayal was good, haven't heard his lines yet however, and tbh, yongyea is Korean, not white, just a FYI

[boB]

Omg why this is terrible YouTubers should not be VAs.

[Lestrad]

Originally posted by Renegade:

I hate when people ♥♥♥♥♥ about someone playing another race, swear that just shows the racist you actually are, who gives a ♥♥♥♥ if its the same race as long as the portrayal was good, haven't heard his lines yet however, and tbh, yongyea is Korean, not white, just a FYI

If I'm not mistaken, I think the remark you're referring to is not a slight and Yong, but one directed towards the production company (apparently for not hiring the original VA).

However, it's all a mute point if the original VA is not even active anymore (or perhaps didn't want to return).

But I agree, it's not a live action movie, ergo the talent's voice and how closely it matches the intent of the original VA should be the only thing that matters (with few exceptions).

[Polysorbate]

Originally posted by Renegade:

I hate when people ♥♥♥♥♥ about someone playing another race, swear that just shows the racist you actually are, who gives a ♥♥♥♥ if its the same race as long as the portrayal was good, haven't heard his lines yet however, and tbh, yongyea is Korean, not white, just a FYI

Got literacy? You're repeating my point:

Originally posted by Polysorbate:

What was the reasoning on this? "Hiring a white guy to portray a Japanese man again would be racist, so instead we'll hire a Korean because... uh, those people are all basically the same I guess?"

They couldn't hire a white guy to play a Japanese man again even if his voice fit the role, instead they hired a Korean probably because the casting agency can't tell the difference or doesn't care.

I looked it up and he's never even lived in Korea let alone Japan, he looks asian though and that's what matters for a voice role in 2023.

[retsa2b]

I was thinking earlier that somebody would release an AI replacer for YongYea's dialogue. (The obvious pick being Kiryu's original English VA, as heard in Like a Dragon.) That would at least solve the problem of having YongYea's voice taking up hard drive space, even for those of us who plan to ignore the dub.

But even that solution is incomplete. OP laid it out: If the acting is also bad, then fixing that with AI isn't as trivial as reworking it with a new voice. One would need to actually feed an AI both a new voice and the target text, and the results of copy paste voice generation are always really quite dodgy. The silver lining is that it's Kiryu, so the instances where complex emotion is mandated will be inherently uncommon.

I'd still take robotic AI-generated dialogue over YongYea. And a simple voice replacer will be better than nothing at all.

[󠀡󠀡]

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ this is more worse then i originally thought! Wtf RGG! Not even kidding

[retsa2b]

Originally posted by Polysorbate:

They couldn't hire a white guy to play a Japanese man again even if his voice fit the role, instead they hired a Korean probably because the casting agency can't tell the difference or doesn't care.

They picked "Asian" because they understand that 99% of the troglodytes who would actually get bent out of shape over this topic will also be satisfied with any gesture that they recognize as being calculated for their benefit.

The mistake they keep making is in failing to vet their picks for drama. Throwing darts at Youtube isn't cutting it. I already don't like this pick. I wouldn't have liked it even if it was a minor role. Since they're already being careless, it's plain as day that they're eventually going to pick somebody with some gourmet controversy in their background. They already had a reasonably good voice for Kiryu so this was completely unnecessary.

[2D神]

Lol. Yong sound too flat for Kiryu.

[VenturousGamer]

Originally posted by Polysorbate:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPYeESdKbbI

One more horrendous reason to not play with the English dub. He's even got that signature Californian "huff" at the end of every sentence when he's trying to sound edgy.

What was the reasoning on this? "Hiring a white guy to portray a Japanese man again would be racist, so instead we'll hire a Korean because... uh, those people are all basically the same I guess?"

Sega has one franchise that's not perennially on fire and this is the treatment it gets.

Aside my personal feelings about Yong and his content, the actual reason this whole concept of having him portray this character is very conflicting is because the voices are primarily heard without English dubs. Most audiences are more familiar with the Japanese dialect being the default and suddenly it's weird to change it. I'm glad we have options but it's a change that some people might not be interested to accept.

Secondly, Yong portraying this character seems more controversial because there's an established portrayal before he was hired. I'm not suggesting nobody should replace the original actor if there's a reason (e.g., David Hayter as Big Boss) but specifically hiring Yong over somebody that could've easily been qualified is questionable. The primary protagonist of Yakuza seems like he needs a very particular voice to be identifiable.

I just don't feel and see it here with Yong based on this sample.

[KaitoKid]

I'm sure the fact I'm only used to Japanese is contributing to this feeling, but: yikes

[armati]

I've never been a fan of English dub and localisation of Japanese games as it's poorly done. But then again I've learned Japanese.

[Bruno]

That sounds like absolute ♥♥♥♥. Feel bad for whoever is gonna play in English tbh.

[(⌐■_■)]

JP DUB is always better than ENG DUB, change my mind.
Pains voice (Naruto shippuden) in ENG DUB is pretty badass ngl, but thats the only example i can think of.