MR.Mark wrote:Indeed, and again on Sean's Goku, I feel it's good but would be mostly great if only the script would be consistent with his slang and such. It's a shame that the writers would be so meticulous on getting characters like Freeza so dead on, yet hold back on the series main character.
As much as I think Gokou's dialect in the original is an important part of the character, whenever someone brings up the idea of him talking that way in English, I couldn't disagree more. It just wouldn't work. That type of dialect is usually dubbed as a southern-style accent, the North American equivalent of a stereotypical 'hick' (and I mean no offense by this). There's no way dubbing Gokou with that kind of accent would
work in English, any more than giving him a woman's or high-pitched male's voice would work. Sometimes you can't just cast a role and make the English voice similar to the Japanese - it should be faithful to the
character, but it's not always wise or effective to try and mimic the original voice itself. A hick accent wouldn't really translate well into the hero of all characters in a series like this. I mean, while I've nothing against southerners or their accents, I have to say it can be really obnoxious to hear the accent in Anime, even when it's there to 'fill in' for a Kansai dialect (which I think is a valid dubbing move)...I remember getting used to the dub of Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi was very,
very hard for that reason, especially being so very Gainax and...Japanese. So yeah, trying to make the dub voice 'match' the original doesn't always work well in another language, even if you have to sacrifice quirks like that. For Gokou, it's better to try to capture his personality and ignorance of the world through tone and script than to try giving him 'the accent'.
I mean, even going from an English-to-English perspective, we got half the FUNi voice debacle on our hands in the first place because characters started off trying to impersonate the Ocean actors, and though they evolved over time, some still never got to mature as their own voices and still have that origin as caricatures (namely, Vegeta; obviously he's no longer a Drummond impression by a long shot, but the direction his voice went in over time is a direct result of originally trying to give it that same sound). Gokou is just one of those characters that should never be cast based on the Japanese voice, but based on the
character. I personally don't think Schemmel is right for that, but I agree that fan backlash would be insane and never expected a recast - but he's definitely better, and I can buy his casual/goofy Gokou. It's really only fighting/angry Gokou that still bothers me, because I don't think he'll ever truly get over that constipated sound.
The point is that characters should be cast based on their personality, dialogue, and who can do the best job, which is what makes Ayers' Freeza so amazing. His delivery of the lines and tone of the script is just fantastic, and it's interesting to know that it was semi-written with him in mind. It really does fit perfectly, and he feels like Freeza. Back in the day, I liked Drummond's Vegeta, possibly because it was what I heard first, but also because even though it was
so vastly different, it suited the character. I think that if the direction and treatment of the series wasn't so shit, he could have been a truly amazing Vegeta, certainly superior to Sabat. And he sounds nothing like Horikawa's Vegeta. I don't care how much a voice sounds like the Japanese version, as long as it suits the character - especially when that character was originally conceived as a black and white comic drawing who spoke in word bubbles. If the voice suits the character, it doesn't have to sound like the Japanese voice. Kuririn is another good example, I think; I've come to really like Strait's Kuririn in Kai, despite being
such a completely different portrayal than Tanaka's. He still feels like Kuririn to me, and that's what matters. It doesn't break the character. Schemmel is halfway there, I think, but still isn't quite Gokou, and I'll never really be happy with him in the role, but it doesn't make me want to claw my ears off like it used to, so...I give the guy some credit for being halfway decent when actually given proper direction and a script. He's even given me a few instances where he really sold me ("I got a message from your daughter for cryin' out loud, I need to leave like, yesterday!!"; fantastic job in that scene, I gotta say). I can tolerate Schemmel as Gokou in Kai, unlike Z.
Kaioh on the other hand...well I've spoken my peace about that already more than once. Dear God, kill it, kill it with fire, and hard. There is absolutely no excuse for Schemmel to be allowed to keep this role, or at the very least, to keep his
portrayal the same - I might buy Schemmel's voice coming out of Kaioh if he didn't have a mouth full of saliva-slathered marbles. I will give him credit for one line and one line only, in his introduction episode - "poor boy. You must be delirious from your journey." Somehow the way he says this fit the tone of the scene and, honestly, amused me. But man, I remember that one morning a few weeks ago when I was lying in bed sick, and that episode came on at like, 7 AM, and I was trying to go back to sleep, there was nothing else worth changing the channel to...and I just couldn't get myself to sleep with that horrible incessant voice of his blathering on and on and on. Gah. Sabat made some good choices, but far more compromises needed to be made in the casting department. Sometimes they still feel too scared to venture out of their comfort zone for fear of the (admittedly terrifying) fanbase. We've already got the unending crises of the Kai recasts, and the lack of Falconer's score...if I were them, I'd be scared, too. But DB isn't exactly a property that'll stop selling because of a few (okay, several) heated online hate-debates. Especially since at least 50% of those complainers are probably still dishing out the cash for the DVD's, if only to complain about them. Yeah. People do that.
BUT THIS THREAD ISN'T ABOUT SCHEMMEL'S GOKOU. It seems that this thread continues to derail into other voices, which is okay to an extent (I mean I just did it, but it was part of an overarching point of response), but whenever it becomes about Schemmel it just goes on
for pages and pages because the fanbase is pretty divided in their opinions of it. I'm not a fan, but it could be much worse (ex. Big Green Dub, which pretty much cast The Big Musclebound Hero as The Big Musclebound Hero, ignoring the character underneath the muscle). This is about Freeza...and I really can't wait to hear what kind of crazy awesome shit will go down with his voice tomorrow.
"I came to save you thanks to a magic bean. And if you think it was easy to find that bean, you're wrong."
--'Big Green' Yajirobe
She/Her 
