Funimation ("You Should Be Watching")

No, they aren't dubbing Nichijou. I was excited about that, but it's a sub only release.

Funimation's approach right now seems to be "We'll dub movies (and the rare OVA, like that Black Butler thing) and do the Broadcast Dubs, but we won't dub much else, unless there's already a dub of previous iterations." I guess they might be dubbing the second half the D-Gray Man series as well since there was a mention of that.

Honestly, I don't really mind that too much. They're still dubbing a ton of stuff, in fact they're really emphasizing it, and the sub-only releases are still a minority. It does mean that they're releasing stuff where they either never bothered (like C3-Cursed x Cubed x Curious) or where there doesn't really seem to be a large demand, like Doamygar-D. (Although C3 turned out to sell really well at HMV here in Canada. It was on their best-seller list for about a month.)

edited 5th Nov '16 11:33:08 AM by Zendervai

Well, I never expected anyone to dub Nichijou anyways. It's one of those titles which are nigh-impossible to dub due to its sheer ridiculousness and an insane number of Japanese pop culture references.

Granted, Love Hina was also said to be impossible to dub back in the day, yet it was dubbed in Filipino, English, Spanish, and some other languages just fine.

edited 5th Nov '16 11:38:23 AM by judasmartel

I'm actually okay with that given the reason that it may take longer than usual to adapt. Maybe Funi will change their minds given enough fan support like what Sentai's done with a few titles (certainly possible as My Ordinary Life has a lot more fans in the US), but the fact we have it legally available at all is enough for me (and I'm sure there's people who will be happy to have it on BR).

I kind of got my hopes up too early, I guess. I mean, I just saw a fandub on YT where Yukko and Mio kind of sound like Jamie Marchi and Jad Saxton, respectively. I don't think they're the exact same persons, though, being a fandub and all.

With that announcement by Funi, can we start fan casting as early as now?

• Jamie Marchi as Yukko
• Jad Saxton as Mio
• Caitlynn French (?) as Mai
• Tia Ballard as Nano OR the Professor
• Ian Sinclair as Sakamoto the Cat
• Josh Grelle as Koujirou
• Luci Christian as Misato

Anyone else's thoughts?

edited 5th Nov '16 1:11:13 PM by judasmartel

1502: Wrong trope there, buddy. The dubs for that anime are all considered awful. (Granted, it was mostly behind-the scenes stuff that made them so bad. But hey, it can be done.)

The English dub was So Okay, It's Average; the show itself was awful.

I didn't think the show was too bad (it's spiritual successor Nisekoi was better) but that's off topic. (And the dub wasn't Funi anyway.)

Anyway, are there any major examples (other than Danganronpa) of Funimation having a bad track record with dubs after 2012?

People point to Future Diary but I thought it was pretty good, just the script was a bit weird is all.

I don't know if this counts, but One Piece kind of zigzags. Some who were all too used to the 4Kids dub say the voices are off, especially Colleen Clinkenbeard as Luffy, but that's just Toei insisting Luffy's voice actor to be female. But her Luffy voice does grow on you over time, you will eventually get used to it. I think it was around the Water 7 Arc that Colleen as Luffy really started to shine, and it just snowballed from there.

Then the criticisms came back with a vengeance during the Marineford Arc. While it had its fair share of awesome voice acting (like that awesome rendition of Coby's speech by Micah Solusod, or Whitebeard declaring that "ONE PIECE IS FOR REAL!"), I kind of think the Funi dub lacked the emotion the Japanese dub had during that arc. At times it felt like a lot of the voice actors were just reading the lines, which I kind of understand because the Marineford Arc is so freaking long and awesome the voice actors exhausted themselves into it.

Funi's dub of A Certain Magical Index was So Okay, It's Average for some (me included). Let's see:

• Lack of accents for the foreign characters (British for Index, Stiyl, Laura, and Sherry; Italian for Orsola, Biagio, and the Agnese Forces), but eh, I guess that's asking for too much, I doubt Funi had someone fluent in British English and Italian in their roster or something.
• Brittney Karbowski as Mikoto sounds so much like a female Black*Star, the Misaka clones don't sound monotone enough, and Last Order sounds too old for her physical age, but given that Moe Moe is very difficult to pull off in English...
• Austin Tindle as Accelerator, to say the least, is very underwhelming in comparison to Nobuhiko Okamoto as Accelerator. But just like Colleen Clinkenbeard as Luffy, Austin as Accelerator does grow on you if you're patient enough.

I like that insight about Future Diary. Translated scripts has always been a problem for English dubs; sometimes Woolseyisms are not enough to carry dubbed titles, especially when the original titles have too many over-the-top dialogues or too many references to Japanese pop culture.

But hey, for once, Greg Ayres DOES NOT voice yet another wimpy protagonist. So how did Josh Grelle and Brina Palencia handle their respective roles? Is that Chopper as the freaking Queen of Yanderes?

edited 6th Nov '16 9:56:14 PM by judasmartel

Interesting you mention Future Diary. Josh Grelle cites it as his least favorite dubbing experience so far because the Japanese sent Funimation corrupt tapes that had no audio whatsoever. The team had to dub lines without any music, background ambiance, or other audio cues! Add to how dubbing involves staying put in a tiny booth with little air circulation and no other actors to work off of, and you begin to wonder how they were able to do HALF the stuff on that show!

edited 6th Nov '16 10:18:47 PM by kyun

And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is why Funimation is THE best in the business!

edited 6th Nov '16 10:24:50 PM by judasmartel

I've not watched much anime as of late, but Sentai's dub for Illya is perfectly fine. Not amazing, but far, far from terrible. Seems to get a bad rap from more diehard fans because Japan kept their original cast, whereas Sentai did not, likely for budget reasons.

These days though I find Sentai when not decent, can be very good. They've definitely stepped up their game over the last three years from being the Butt-Monkey of licensing companies because they weren't ADV Films.

We thought Funi was done with major license bombshells for a while. We thought wrong — Wolf's Rain will be back in print in February!

edited 11th Nov '16 5:18:42 PM by PikaHikariKT

And the one everyone's really been waiting for! The Mystic Archives of Dantalian!

Okay, I actually like this show and will probably buy the DVD, but it's five years old and it wasn't really that popular back when it first came out.

God dammit... 2016, would you END?! RIP Cole Brown.

Still hoping that on January 1st, [deity of your choice] pops up and says "April Fool's! We had a few thousand years of backlog, so we decided to hit you with all of them at once. No one actually died this year, Trump isn't president, and everyone gets free cake."

Is Danganrompa unwatchable in English or something? I don't care they weren't able to get the game cast, I plan to watch the anime as its own thing with no knowledge of the source material, or at least the spoilers I've not been exposed to.

Well if you're just talking about the dub (as a fan of the games, I personally find the anime itself to be awful but since you're not familiar with the source, you might be fine), while I certainly don't like it, I wouldn't say it's unwatchable (I can't say the same for Danganronpa 3's dub).

edited 30th Nov '16 2:20:29 PM by LordVatek

Chris Sabat broke the internet. He tweeted the official reveal of Funimation's cast for their dub of Dragonball Super today. Funimation also released two English dub clips.

Is this the first time Laura Bailey didn't reprise her role as Kid Trunks'? I guess she really is too busy to do anymore Funi roles outside of short anime.

From that 8-minute highlight clip, I can safely say Danganronpa 3's dub is a masterpiece.

Apparently Alexis replaced her as Trunks's half of Gotenks in both Xenoverse games as well. According to Sabat, Laura's schedule was way too busy.

edited 30th Nov '16 4:33:53 PM by PikaHikariKT

She should just retire from anime at this point

People believe that she honestly has.

Its funny since this is the second time Alexis Tipton has had to fill in for her; the first being Blazblue Alter Memory.

I thought she did already? What does she even do in anime anymore?