Eng vs JP voice

[Saya]

which best ?

[HolyGrail]

Originally posted by Junkz:

Originally posted by DeathevokatioN:

So true oomfie

It may sound pathetic, but sometimes I look at what the English voice actors look like and decide then

I mean look at the difference in attitude too..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiC14HHUWhk&pp=ygUPbWVndW1pbiBhY3RyZXNz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lub7nDWcfSc&ab_channel=AsmongoldClips
(couldn't find another version cuz they seem to be getting copyright struck)

One of these women ruined a man's career with false accusations too.. guess which one?

[Legion Grimclaw]

i gave the game a go to see if i wanted to buy it, but even in the tutorial section just listening to the japanese voice over i could tell that what i was reading was wrong, and that even i without being able to speak japanse could do a better job with translating. and not just little changes but entire sentences fundamentally changed. so whoever translated/ localized this, good job, you just drove away a customer.

[HolyGrail]

Originally posted by Legion Grimclaw:

i gave the game a go to see if i wanted to buy it, but even in the tutorial section just listening to the japanese voice over i could tell that what i was reading was wrong, and that even i without being able to speak japanse could do a better job with translating. and not just little changes but entire sentences fundamentally changed. so whoever translated/ localized this, good job, you just drove away a customer.

Funny thing is they think they're actually localizing it for an audience..

[Junkz]

Originally posted by Zekkn:

Originally posted by Junkz:

I absolutely would if we had subtitles for the Japanese script. I had to play FF7 and Nier in English because I saw that the localization was terrible. Not terrible as other JRPGS, I assume

honestly i rarely come across one that isn't bad in some way, usually just to varying degrees.

there is a difference between picking between 2 options for what a word could be translated as where even if i disagree with the one chosen i can see how they *could* choose the one they did...

OR

Playing a game with different characters/interactions to the point you have been sold what is essential the equivalent of a Chinese bootleg ripoff in text and VA form. The sad part is the amount of people who aren't aware that this is way... and i mean WAY more prevalent than you could possibly imagine, spanning decades.

At this point I'd much rather have AI translation to replace these localizers even though the AI translation may not be perfect

Originally posted by Cryemore:

Originally posted by Junkz:

I absolutely would if we had subtitles for the Japanese script. I had to play FF7 and Nier in English because I saw that the localization was terrible. Not terrible as other JRPGS, I assume

I actually chose to use the english dub in the ff7 remake. The dubs for that were actually not bad outside of a few characters. I played nier with japanese though, I have no idea if the english vo was any good.

If the localization is truly egregious it often only pertains to the dub, as subs usually use a separate, far more accurate and faithful translation. The worst examples I can think of off the top of my head are this game and xenoblade chronicles 2, as they use the weird localized script for the subtitles with the japanese vo. In Xenoblade 2 they literally changed the names of characters in the localization, then used that script for the subs of the japanese audio.

2B was just a completely different character in English. I really wanted to play as Mikasa's voice. With those accents on XB2, I would force myself to play on JP and deal with the terrible localization

[Junkz]

Originally posted by DeathevokatioN:

Originally posted by Junkz:

It may sound pathetic, but sometimes I look at what the English voice actors look like and decide then

I mean look at the difference in attitude too..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiC14HHUWhk&pp=ygUPbWVndW1pbiBhY3RyZXNz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lub7nDWcfSc&ab_channel=AsmongoldClips
(couldn't find another version cuz they seem to be getting copyright struck)

One of these women ruined a man's career with false accusations too.. guess which one?

Konosuba enjoyer I see. Yeah I saw that video before. Filthy woke translators that need to be replaced by AI soon

[Tiasmoon]

Originally posted by Zekkn:

Originally posted by Tiasmoon:

Its because they "act the character" instead of "acting like the character."
A lot of anime-speak is weird, strange, outlandish, or at best simply someone speaking in a way people are not used to. To make talking like that believable, the person has to believe what they are saying.

A good example of someone that can actually do that irl would be a real life chuuni. VA is practically make for them, lol.

People that have done theater acting are also pretty good or amazing at it. However as far as I know few actors (nevermind voice actors) these days have taken lessons in theater. Nevermind been an actor in theater plays.

yeah the ENG VA market seems to suffer from... i wanted to be an actor but i didn't train enough, nor did anyone actually hire me and even invite me back to a second screening for a role, so lets hope this ANIME VA thing gets me some money to survive till next month.

"what.. you don't need me to take that line again? it doesn't matter? okay. You sure you don't need to make sure i sound like the original character in the slightest first? no... Cool i guess."

"yeah same time next week? exact same voice, that doesn't fit the character or scene? Ive got you covered."

Its not all down to the VA's. The voice directing is not remotely as good as in JP, which is a combination of not having the original people (sound/voice directors, other important creative directors etc) involved much if at all and in part due to simply lacking a lot of experience. With how competitive the JP industry is, you kind of have to become amazing at those jobs just to do a "good" job.

Then there's the fandom.

If your fans always tell you "you were amazing! you cant do anything wrong!" (aka the VA's get gaslit..) then they have no motivation to improve. There's a lot of astroturfing and gaslighting being done in the EN Dub/VA fandom communities. A good deal by VA's or dub staff themselves.

All the above (and more) makes it much harder for the EN VA's that are passionate and who do want to do an amazing job, to actually achieve that.

JP VA industry is brutal. You have to work hard just to be able to get half-decent roles. But as a result the quality is also brutally high. This is why JP VA is usually of much higher quality. Because EN VA's common best is like baseline for JP VA.

There's exceptions to this. But then you are talking about people like Christopher Lee who had an incredible amount of acting (including Theater) experience and who were also the kind of person to be passionate about the job. People like that can perform an English VA job that is on par with JP's best.

But due to the state of the EN VA industry.. there's exceptionally few people like that, and im not sure how many of them are still around. Most people capable of that are not doing voiceacting unless its for some big budget animation movie.

In the end what it comes down to is:

If you have very high standards, then your product will be very high quality.
If you have low standards, then you get a low quality product.

Sometimes you get lucky and still get a high quality product with low standards because some EN VA is super passionate and dedicated to their craft and does an amazing job despite everything else.

There's also some differences between anime and game voiceacting quality.
Typically in Japan games have worse voice acting then anime.
Whereas in the West its the other way around.

Bad JP VA does exist.. but then you are looking at indie (doujin) games, VN's (these have a wild difference in quality..you can have amazing VA or terrible).

That said, these days with more and more younger VA's being otakus or having more personal interest in anime and games, (believe it or not, this used to be pretty rare) the quality of VA in Japanese games has increased a lot. You can play some niche game and hear some famous VA's. That's not likely to happen in the west. In the few cases it does happen, you get VA's that become very famous because "they are in everything".

Not sure why not more VA's do that, but I guess its a pride thing.
In case of more famous JP VA's it makes sense.. because those people are like movie stars and some are literal big idols and huge celebreties. But in case of EN VA's I dont think that pride is deserved. And ironically.. if they did voice many minor roles that would actually make their pride more deserved.

[Cryemore]

Originally posted by Legion Grimclaw:

i gave the game a go to see if i wanted to buy it, but even in the tutorial section just listening to the japanese voice over i could tell that what i was reading was wrong, and that even i without being able to speak japanse could do a better job with translating. and not just little changes but entire sentences fundamentally changed. so whoever translated/ localized this, good job, you just drove away a customer.

While the localization is terrible everything else is awesome. Gameplay is fantastic, the art style and design are charming and downright beautiful at times, sound is on point and the music is top tier. The actual gameplay loop when you are just doing quests at the mission counter is satisfying and fun.

The campaign is actually great whenever you aren't reading the fanfic localized subs or subjecting yourself to the terrible english vo. It's bombastic and moves along quickly from set piece to set piece. It's sad how much the localization detracts from the story experience.

Luckily the story is short and is most definitely not the focus of the game.

Despite the script being actual fanfiction I wholly recommend purchasing this for the gameplay experience alone. I can understand wanting to avoid the game to not support this localization, but the game itself is a gem.

With any luck the recent exposure and ridicule the localization industry has been subjected to will result in positive changes going forward. While I don't want to support bad localizations I absolutely want to reward the developers for creating a game that brings me such joy.

I want this game to succeed to encourage cygames and other Japanese devs to put this amount of funding, care and creativity into their anime style game projects going forward. I also want to support cygames in particular to prove to them and others that they can be successful without free to play mobile games. On the other hand I want it to fail so that bad localizations become a thing of the past.

I honestly believe that Japanese devs have no idea how damaging these bad localizations are.

[Kou]

EN is terrible and the localization is awful. Learn Japanese

[system2]

For this game is simple. The JP Cast has had over a decade of experience voicing these EXACT characters. The performance won't be matched by ENG.

However, in boss fights it can be pretty difficult to keep up with everything while reading subtitles. (But its not gana make the fight super hard or anything)

So its up to you what you want. Either way, I think post-game you can replay the main campaign again in a harder difficulty. So you could do a run on each language.

[yaemikosimp]

JAPANESEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

[MoonKnight066]

This game is a bit special due to the liberties the in house translators took with the text. The english voice acting matches the englush script, but the JP audio significantly at times doesn't match the EN Text. This is fairly common though but weebs are far more common these days than 10-20 years ago so its just so much more noticable and vocal online and they aren't wrong. I prefer the JP Cast simply because the Gacha and they are LEGENDARY CV from Japan on so many anime and Games. however, the EN Cast is actually pretty good but i think Lyria sucks even though its Sandy Fox (Chibi Usa from Sailor Moon since 1995, who even did great in Sailor Moon Eternal 2 years ago) Dunno how she did so mediocre. The only issue with the EN Audio is Zeta and also it doesn't blend into the environmental audio as well as the Japanese Audio, it sounds more slapped on top. But my kid loves the game and needs it in english so we play in a mix and shes a die hard Sailor Moon fan and has the same haircut as Djeeta so the captain is "Her" and Lyria is Chibi Usa so whatever. Its fun being a Dad Gamer sometimes <3

[MyEroAcademia]

JP absolutely always the top priority. Because anime.

[MoonKnight066]

Originally posted by 低欲望倘平高手:

JP absolutely always the top priority. Because anime.

Weebs unite

[Saiha]

i grow up playing the mobile game, i can't listen to any other voice
even Eugen's current jp voice is too different from what i remember him
RIP Fujiwara Keiji

[楊玄。杨玄。LangrisserWWE]

Actually, Japanese really really sounded very stupid for me when I was growing up. So was English. But I really learn to appreciate them as I get used to them.

I have no problem with both language now. That said, Japanese voice actors are more professional then their English counterpart in most media.