For me, I try to never post anything unless it's either a positive appraisal or constructive criticism. This is especially true of voice actors. I'm not a fan of every single dub actor's performance, but if there's a performance that I really don't like, my "criticism" is simply not talking about that performance. The old "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all" saying is very, very true. Especially on the internet, which will keep a permanent track record of everything you say.
For that reason, never in a million years would I directly reach out to an actor to tell them I don't like their work. That's just low, and a sign of just how disconnected someone is...I'm curious to know if the person who said that to Ayres would ever have the nerve to say it in person.
Eh, I'd stop short of saying that nobody saw it.precita wrote:Makes me wonder what would have happened if social media was a big thing in 1999 when the Season 3 dub was airing. Back then people just complained on forums that nobody saw...imagine if social media was a thing back then?
In fact, from what I've been told, back in the "Season 3" days, it was almost impossible to find anything online that remotely resembled a compliment about the dub. The dub certainly had a following, but not one with people who were savvy enough to use the internet yet.
Actually, Sean Schemmel once said on his Facebook page that the reason he stopped interacting online with the Dragon Ball fanbase for many years was because of how brutal some people were. I was surprised to read that at first and considered it a little over-the-top ("What's he talking about, I love his performance and so do countless people I've seen on YouTube!"), but as I learned just how inaccurate the original DBZ dub was, and after reading stuff like DBZ Uncensored (a sort of blog that kept track of the DBZ dub's differences from the original version), it was kind of an epiphany. I just sort of realized, "Holy crap, Schemmel and a lot of the actors were the target of a seemingly endless barrage of criticism, most of which should have been directed elsewhere...yup, that is, at best, demoralizing, and at worst, certainly painful enough to make somebody bitter."
I should come clean and admit that a factor here is that I'm an actor too, and I get it. You do occasionally have to work with producers, directors, and writers who don't completely know what they're doing. Nevertheless, the actor will bear the most of the criticism, fair or unfair.
Put another way, let's say you're someone who really, really, really wanted to be a voice actor in anime, and then after years of hoping and training, you finally land your first role...........and it's the 4Kids dub of One Piece.* You're excited as hell and do your best, only to have your hard work called "unbearable" due to things that are beyond your control, like producers who made a blatant decision not to be faithful to the original show. In a way, that's kind of how it must have been for Sean Schemmel and others. They signed up to do something that they thought would be fun and rewarding, and all they got in return--at least for a few years--was criticism for participating in a dub that was essentially the 4Kids One Piece dub of that era.
*Not referring to myself, to be clear.
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