Characters Ruined by Their Voice-Acting

Fox12

AccursedT- see you space cowboy
Jun 6, 2013
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Cybylt said:
joshuaayt said:
As much as I love Erin Fitzgerald, I can't look past how much I hate her version of Chie.

It's not that she specifically does a terrible job with her- I was just constantly reminded of how much I preferred the original English actor's delivery. I liked the way original Chie sounded like a normal person- she stammered when she was surprised, and didn't shatter any glass when she shouted.
Fox12 said:
Persona is a weird series. It varies from mind glowingly awesome voice acting to outright terrible. The difference can be jarring.

The biggest one for me is Chie from golden. I loved the original voice actress, since she gave the character both maturity and spunk. The new girl was atrocious, however, and completely killed one of my favorite characters, to the point where she ruins any scene she's in. In fact all the voice changes were awful. Normally I don't mind a change in voice actors, and sometimes I rather like them, but this was a serious trade down.
To be fair to Fitzgerald, it was a director that screwed it up in an effort to make the whole thing go faster by telling her to just try to sound like the JP track.
She may be a decent voice actress, and this role simply left a bad impression. I still think she was terribly miscast for the part, however, even in the persona spin offs, and the changes in voice acting cast perplexed me. I don't think anybody was *bad* in the original cast. Regardless, it's unfortunate that a poor director impacted the quality of an otherwise fine work.
 

balladbird

Master of Lancer
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Sgt. Sykes said:
Mass Effect's Male Shepard. Holy dong, how did they end up picking this guy? FemShep and almost everyone else in ME gives great performance, but the main char male is just terrible.
The thing is, I don't know if it was a mistake in direction, or what, but Mark Meer is actually a pretty solid voice actor. Even in mass effect, he's the voice of a truly staggering number of the NPCs you encounter, and he does all of them well. Not sure what happened with the male shep, but I do agree it was an uneven performance at best... reminded me of The Avatar in Ultima IX. >.<


As for characters ruined by bad voice acting... well, I'm a veteran of the 90's anime OVA era... a time when tiny companies would round up homeless people off the street, pay them with what money they found in the change slot of a payphone, and then have them record voices for the characters... so my tolerance for bad voicework is probably quite a bit higher than many. XD

The lead character from "Samurai Legend: Musashi", that old Square-enix sequel to the PS1 classic, comes to mind though. Dear god, the voice actress sounded like Max Goof from "Goof Troop" doing a goofy impression.
 

[Kira Must Die]

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Sep 30, 2009
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soren7550 said:
[Kira Must Die said:
]
soren7550 said:
Can I say most of the English voice cast in Attack on Titan? Pretty much every character makes me want to tear off my ears. That could in part be because some genius voice director decided to tell every actor "Okay, now I want you to pronounce Mikasa's name wrong for no god damn reason, every god damn time."
They pronounce it "MEE-kah-sah," right? Because that's what I hear.

I'm pretty sure that's how it's pronounced.
No, in the English dub, they all say "Me-kiss-uh".

I have no idea how they came to that.
Then I'm hearing it a lot differently than you are.
 

soren7550

Overly Proud New Yorker
Dec 18, 2008
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[Kira Must Die said:
]
soren7550 said:
[Kira Must Die said:
]
soren7550 said:
Can I say most of the English voice cast in Attack on Titan? Pretty much every character makes me want to tear off my ears. That could in part be because some genius voice director decided to tell every actor "Okay, now I want you to pronounce Mikasa's name wrong for no god damn reason, every god damn time."
They pronounce it "MEE-kah-sah," right? Because that's what I hear.

I'm pretty sure that's how it's pronounced.
No, in the English dub, they all say "Me-kiss-uh".

I have no idea how they came to that.
Then I'm hearing it a lot differently than you are.
About 40 seconds into the English one:


About a minute into the Japanese one:

 

[Kira Must Die]

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Sep 30, 2009
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soren7550 said:
[Kira Must Die said:
]
soren7550 said:
[Kira Must Die said:
]
soren7550 said:
Can I say most of the English voice cast in Attack on Titan? Pretty much every character makes me want to tear off my ears. That could in part be because some genius voice director decided to tell every actor "Okay, now I want you to pronounce Mikasa's name wrong for no god damn reason, every god damn time."
They pronounce it "MEE-kah-sah," right? Because that's what I hear.

I'm pretty sure that's how it's pronounced.
No, in the English dub, they all say "Me-kiss-uh".

I have no idea how they came to that.
Then I'm hearing it a lot differently than you are.
About 40 seconds into the English one:


About a minute into the Japanese one:
I have the DVD, and I always hear "Mikasa." I guess they say it quickly enough that it could sound like Me-kiss-uh.

And to be fair, all the other characters have German names, and she's one of the last remaining Asians, so even if that was the case I can just assume the art of pronouncing Japanese names was lost long ago.
 

Cybylt

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Aug 13, 2009
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Fox12 said:
Cybylt said:
joshuaayt said:
As much as I love Erin Fitzgerald, I can't look past how much I hate her version of Chie.

It's not that she specifically does a terrible job with her- I was just constantly reminded of how much I preferred the original English actor's delivery. I liked the way original Chie sounded like a normal person- she stammered when she was surprised, and didn't shatter any glass when she shouted.
Fox12 said:
Persona is a weird series. It varies from mind glowingly awesome voice acting to outright terrible. The difference can be jarring.

The biggest one for me is Chie from golden. I loved the original voice actress, since she gave the character both maturity and spunk. The new girl was atrocious, however, and completely killed one of my favorite characters, to the point where she ruins any scene she's in. In fact all the voice changes were awful. Normally I don't mind a change in voice actors, and sometimes I rather like them, but this was a serious trade down.
To be fair to Fitzgerald, it was a director that screwed it up in an effort to make the whole thing go faster by telling her to just try to sound like the JP track.
She may be a decent voice actress, and this role simply left a bad impression. I still think she was terribly miscast for the part, however, even in the persona spin offs, and the changes in voice acting cast perplexed me. I don't think anybody was *bad* in the original cast. Regardless, it's unfortunate that a poor director impacted the quality of an otherwise fine work.
Recasting was done because they couldn't get in touch with the union they hired the original Chie and Teddie through or something like that, not because they thought the previous actors were bad. Hell, that's why Teddie's new voice was just trying to mimic the old one.

And yeah, "try to sound like the japanese," is just shooting yourself in the foot for voice direction and I was shocked to see Atlus make such a rookie mistake considering their overall great track record.
 

Reaper195

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Jul 5, 2009
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Jolly Co-operator said:
Ruined might be too dramatic a word here; perhaps "undermined" would work better.

Anyway, my pick is the titular Darkness from The Darkness 2

An ancient, primal power from before the time of creation itself that constantly tries to tempt its host into violence and evil? Sounds interesting to me, can't wait! . . . except for the fact that its voice is ridiculous. It just sounds so feral and silly. A 12 year old trying to sound evil would produce a similar voice. I would have preferred a smooth, suave voice. After all, one of the main plot elements is that it constantly tries to seduce the protagonist into giving in to its will.
Gotta disagree, I think Mike Patton fuckin' nailed doing the voice of an eternally evil being. Granted, I think the quality of it's script was better in the first game, while the second sounded more like "What could The Darkness say that sounded badass?" instead of "What would the Darkness say in this situation?". But I think this is because a different studio did The Darkness 2. Which is sad, considering Starbreeze chose to do Syndicate instead. And while that wasn't a bad game....it was certainly no sequel The Darkness deserved.
 

Fox12

AccursedT- see you space cowboy
Jun 6, 2013
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Cybylt said:
Fox12 said:
Cybylt said:
joshuaayt said:
As much as I love Erin Fitzgerald, I can't look past how much I hate her version of Chie.

It's not that she specifically does a terrible job with her- I was just constantly reminded of how much I preferred the original English actor's delivery. I liked the way original Chie sounded like a normal person- she stammered when she was surprised, and didn't shatter any glass when she shouted.
Fox12 said:
Persona is a weird series. It varies from mind glowingly awesome voice acting to outright terrible. The difference can be jarring.

The biggest one for me is Chie from golden. I loved the original voice actress, since she gave the character both maturity and spunk. The new girl was atrocious, however, and completely killed one of my favorite characters, to the point where she ruins any scene she's in. In fact all the voice changes were awful. Normally I don't mind a change in voice actors, and sometimes I rather like them, but this was a serious trade down.
To be fair to Fitzgerald, it was a director that screwed it up in an effort to make the whole thing go faster by telling her to just try to sound like the JP track.
She may be a decent voice actress, and this role simply left a bad impression. I still think she was terribly miscast for the part, however, even in the persona spin offs, and the changes in voice acting cast perplexed me. I don't think anybody was *bad* in the original cast. Regardless, it's unfortunate that a poor director impacted the quality of an otherwise fine work.
Recasting was done because they couldn't get in touch with the union they hired the original Chie and Teddie through or something like that, not because they thought the previous actors were bad. Hell, that's why Teddie's new voice was just trying to mimic the old one.
Ah, that makes much more sense. I was actually a little offended that they would change such talented actors, but it sounds like it was out of their control. the rest of the voices were fantastic though, so no big deal I suppose. I'll just stick with the original, I think.
 

Danny Dowling

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May 9, 2014
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Sonic in anything other than the Satam TV series. that boy, or the rest of his cast, just shouldn't talk. ever. when he dies he's all like "woooh" nowadays. He should, in fact, just have a nice low piano key go "bong" as he does the starfish and looks at you in betrayal as he vaults off the screen.
 

scorptatious

The Resident Team ICO Fanboy
May 14, 2009
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Yeah, kinda have to agree about Fuuka. I mean, she's not a bad character mind you. But her VA could have done better to say the least.

And maybe it's because I was exposed to P4G's Chie first, but I kinda prefer her newer VA over the older one. I don't know, I thought her voice suited in her the latest version.

But hey, opinions opinions.