Bad voice acting in the Japanese version?

[sangofe]

We all know how there were many miscasts that Vancouver and Texas pulled out their asses, but there is also bad acting in the Japanese version as well. Such as Joji Yanami's Babidi. He made Babidi sound like an old fart rather than a wizard. Other characters with bad acting in the original version is Bin Shimada's Broly. He doesn't make Broli sound butthurt and a sore loser which Broli is. Are there any others?

Personally I love the Japanese Babidi and Broly voices.

[sangofe]

Broli's just a maniac, who hates.... everything. I don't think he's a 'sore loser', in any way. He just wants to kill shit, that's his 'thang.

You're right, I guess. I suppose Bin ain't THAT bad. He just doesn't have any emotion when playing Broli IMO.

That is to me the whole point behind the character Broly.

[DBZGTKOSDH]

I just can't stand Dende's voice in Kai. God, my ears...

[kei17]

I always hated Tanaka's Baba too. It just sounded like her Yajirobe with a cold. Why did Takiguchi leave again? I know he didn't die until while back, did he get sick or something?

That's Toei's fault. They're so cheap that they didn't want to pay for side characters such as Uranai Baba, the Tenkaichi Budokai announcer, King Cold, and King Vegeta.

[DBZ Mick]

Yeah, I was going to say... what is with Tanaka's Baba??

Didn't like whoever voiced the Tenkaichi Budokai announcer in the Boo arc... He had none of the passion or enthusiasm of the original.

Yanami's Babidi was fine.

[DBZAOTA482]

Never was a big fan of Babidi's voice either.

[MCDaveG]

I really dislike a lot Aya Hirano's Dende and her weird breathy performance overall.
She always sounds like she's crying when talking. I'm from Hirano hate club

Well, but she's ''idol'' (or was?) and idols usually are bad in everything comparing them to their proper musician, actor or seiyu counterpart.

[perucho1990]

Hiromi Tsuru is pretty great as Bulma but there's times when it sounds like she's not really doing any acting. I like Joji Yanami's Babidi, he looks like an old shrivelled up alien and sounds like one.

Dragon Ball Kai didn't sound right in Japanese to me which is why I took to it in English so fast, all the actors were too old for their roles, Toshio Furukawa, Hiromi Tsuru and Masako Nozawa had a shaky start along with Shigeru Chiba. Mayumi Tanaka, Ryusei Nakao and Ryo Horikawa were all still amazing though.

It was either they sounded too old or their performances just weren't as great as the original anime.

Well Tanaka is rocking as Luffy, Nakao as Mayuri.

Horikawa surprised me, didnt expect him to be still as close as how he was 20 years ago.

Nozawa should've retired after the OVA in 2008. She just doesnt have it anymore.

Akemi Okamura should've replaced Tsuru because Nami and Bulma are pretty much the same character.

[Gyt Kaliba]

I really dislike a lot Aya Hirano's Dende and her weird breathy performance overall.
She always sounds like she's crying when talking. I'm from Hirano hate club

Well, but she's ''idol'' (or was?) and idols usually are bad in everything comparing them to their proper musician, actor or seiyu counterpart.

She's actually pretty good as Haruhi Suzumiya in Japanese, and AMAZING as Konata in Lucky Star, but other than that...I can't say I'm really looking forward to hearing her Dende.

[OutlawTorn]

To those of you who dont speak japaneese, How do you judge the voice acting?

I can't, really. The delivery of Japanese cannot be judged the same was as English delivery and without knowing the language, there's no frame of reference for judging the actual sound of the dialogue because all you hear is a constant string of speech but you don't know the distinction between words. When you know the language, however, that's not the case. So I really don't know if a line being delivered is being delivered well or if it is flat. The only bit of acting which I would classify as "bad" would be those choking sounds characters make when they're trying to be "intense" or whatnot. I rank it alongside Sabat's "Tasmanian Vegeta" powerup from the original broadcast during the Cell arc.

What I can make a judgement on, however, is whether I like the sound of the voices or not. But, naturally, such judgements are all subjective and the next guy could have an entirely different opinion.

[Savage68]

Like penguintruth says, you don't need to be fluent in Japanese to judge Japanese voice acting, because 99% of what it boils down to is intonation.

[medama_oyaji]

I have a kinda funny story relating to this... when I was in high school, I had a couple Japanese friends, and one day at their house they pulled out a VHS with some DBZ that they had taped off of television in Japan. If I recall correctly, it was a Cell Game episode. This was a HUGE deal for me, because this was at a time when seeing Dragon Ball in Japanese was still a rare treat. I had only a few fansubs at the time, and held the original Japanese version in very high regard. I tolerated the English version but basically hated it with true high school passion. (I'm over it now, don't worry)

So imagine my surprise when a few moments into the episode, my Japanese friends started laughing and talking about how cheesy the acting was. I think it was all the struggling and "k-k-k-k-k...." if you know what I mean. It really put things in perspective for me

That said, I can't really think of any Japanese VA that I dislike. I agree with the support for Yanami's Babidi. It had a funny, distant quality that I always found appealing. He did the voice for Ittan Momen in some of the Gegege no Kitaro anime, and its always fun hearing his voice. Ittan Momen doesn't have a mouth, so there's nothing in his animation really signifying that he's speaking, so sometimes my brain is like, "Is that a Narrator coming in????"

[MCDaveG]

With medama_oyaji, my GF is not native, but studying Japanese some years on university level and she's always annoyed by the way how most of the girls in anime are talking (mainly the intonation and overacting) and she always hates that k-k-k-k-k and screaming which I found amusing.
The next thing she always points out how the Japanese overall is incorect and no-one is speaking like that, including some weirds elements in lines, which no one uses in real life. She asumes that these things are here for kids, to sound cool or to give characters some traits in the language also, but other than to Euro-american (and Japanese???) ''otakus'', it seems to be weird.

Interesting to note, my GF was also otaku, watching Dragon Ball with me, liked Saint Seiya and Naruto, but after she started studying Japanese language and culture, she started to don't like anime overall and always I watch it, calling me otaku
It's half funny and half sad you know. Yesterday, she stepped into my work-play room and uttered: ''Phew. Watching that f**king Gundam again?''
I really feel like cretin sometimes.

PS: What kei17 can toss in about this as a native?

[SylentEcho]

I like Yanami's Babbidi. I never thought it sounded odd. He sounded like one of those evil old men.

Bin Shimada is awesome! What's wrong with u guys. Listen to this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPZS4Oyw ... plpp_video

/\ Sorry for that link. It's the only place I could find that line and that maniacal laughter.

[dbgtFO]

Like penguintruth says, you don't need to be fluent in Japanese to judge Japanese voice acting, because 99% of what it boils down to is intonation.

Yeah, one could just try and search for "finnish digimon" on youtube to hear how bad that is even without knowing any finnish word!

[dbboxkaifan]

I like Yanami's Babbidi. I never thought it sounded odd. He sounded like one of those evil old men.

Bin Shimada is awesome! What's wrong with u guys. Listen to this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPZS4Oyw ... plpp_video

^ Sorry for that link. It's the only place I could find that line and that maniacal laughter.

Yah, I agree.

M. Badidi's VA suits him just perfectly.

[KaiserNeko]

You know, it's sort of funny that people -really- think that people don't need to know Japanese to tell good acting and bad acting.

Despite the fact that it's another language with different sentence structure, nuances, intonations, culture...

Trust me, guys. It comes down to a lot more than "He's angry, so he's screaming! Oh, now he's sad, so his voice is wavering!" Without knowing the language -pretty- well, it's impossible to say whether or not someone is truly a great actor/actress. I mean, just think about how many different subtle and genius performances we've had in American cinema that rely on our language and culture.

[Attitudefan]

Despite Nozawa not being as good as 20 years ago, she's still better than all the English Goku's today.

[dbboxkaifan]

Despite Nozawa not being as good as 20 years ago, she's still better than all the English Goku's today.

Schemmel would probably better voice a superhero than Goku himself, the Ocean Goku and TFS Goku do a better job voicing him (imo).

The best English Goku for me, it's definitely MasakoX.

As for the Spanish Goku, Latin Spanish, and Portuguese, Portugal's Goku Henrique (shame the script was horrible and some of the characters sounded like robots).

[Castor Troy]

I've never understood the hate for Yanami's Babidi. It's actually one of my favorite voices, and I never get tired of hearing it. Even though I get to hear Yanami speak in every single episode, I got sad when I reached the episode where he dies because I knew I'd barely get to hear it again. I was a bit happier when I saw that he had a few scenes in Hell, despite how contradictory that entire premise is.

Feel the same way. Always flabbergasted when people don't like that performance.

My go-to voice dislike is always Mayumi Tanaka's Uranai Baba. It's incredibly forced (more so than her Yajirobe, which is at least hysterical in its tone and accent), but her Baba voice drives me up the wall. I'll take Junpei Takiguchi any day of the week.

I love Yanami's Babidi to the point where I used to be able to imitate it quite well.

For some reason, that robot in the filler Gohan episode at the start of Z just annoyed me with his voice and the dialogue he had to spout out.