History Main / AnimeAccentAbsence

* In ''Manga/{{BECK}}'', Ryusuke and Maho have spent much of their lives in New York City, to the extent that they feel much more comfortable speaking English than Japanese, even amongst themselves. However, their Japanese is fine (spoken Japanese; Maho still has a hard time with the written language), whereas their English dialogue is full of errors, such as "these kid" in the first episode.

* Almost every single character in ''Manga/SaintSeiya'' has a different ethnic background, but everyone speaks Japanese, even the Greek Gods!

* ''[[Anime/MobileFighterGGundam G Gundam]]''. EVERY single Gundam fighter is from a different country, as are their various entourages. NO ONE has a corresponding accent.
* ''[[Anime/MobileSuitGundam00 Gundam 00]]'' features characters both important and insignificant from all over the world - Japan, the middle east, America, Ireland, Russia, just to name a few. All of them have Japanese/American accents in both versions, although it's understandable given the sheer amount of different nationalities involved.
* In the English dub of ''Anime/{{Monster}}'', TranslationConvention means that the German speaking characters are rendered with American accents, though a British couple in one episode are given authentic accents.

* Much like Black Lagoon above, the characters in ''Manga/DGrayMan'' all speak perfect Japanese due to TranslationConvention. It has been stated by the author that they actually all speak English. The only Japanese character, Yu Kanda, has never been seen speaking Japanese and he probably can't since he wasn't raised in Japan. At some point they all travel to China and only Chinese Lenalee can communicate with the locals.

* Averted with gusto in the American dub of ''Literature/DemonCityShinjuku'' - hardly any two characters have the same accent. Some of them make sense, like the prim British accent of the polite [[TheOjou Ojou]]; others, like the Mexican accent used by the scrappy kid, are just plain weird.

** Indeed, the language barrier between English and Japanese is quite prevalent. Although a bunch of the smarter Japanese characters and even Sena (who has just below-average grades and needed Mamori's help for English class) can speak English pretty well, a lot of the time the two are unable to communicate with each other (which can lead to hilarity - see Panther trying to challenge Shin...). This is most apparent in the handful of incidents where the characters write down stuff using the Roman alphabet, like when Monta tries to hitchhike with a sign reading "Sutopu" (which is noted to be incorrect). While the dialogue that the NASA Aliens speak is originally written as Japanese, it is implied that they're really speaking English and it's just being auto-translated for the audience. Even in-universe most of the player just turn to the smartest teammates to translate for them.

* ''Manga/ItazuraNaKiss''. British national Chris speaks near-flawless Japanese. Possibly justified given the amount of time she's spent studying Japanese culture and the time she's spent living there. Her MOTHER, however, speaks Japanese with an obvious English accent.

* In ''Manga/NegimaMagisterNegiMagi'', Negi is supposed to be [[{{Scotireland}} WELSH]]!! His speaking of perfect Japanese is actually explained away as him being very good at languages. Unfortunately, he's also described as an "English gentleman" which most Welsh would take offense to. But the worst thing comes in the anime, when he's reading a poem in English to his class with the worst pronunciation ever. It sounds like a Japanese person who's been given a general idea of what English letters sound like and had a paper placed in his hand. (Which is probably what happened).

* ''Anime/{{Planetes}}'' is a strange one. In the Japanese original, everyone speaks in unaccented Japanese with honorifics, though most of the time it is assumed that the TranslationConvention is in effect and the characters are actually speaking English. In the English dub, everybody has an American accent except for the Russian Yuri, who for some reason sounds British.

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* ''Franchise/D4DJ'', including its video game branch ''VideoGame/D4DJGroovyMix'': Abyssmare are a four-person DJ unit from UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity, USA who have come to Japan to challenge the best of the Japanese DJ units. Despite their American background being prominent, they speak Japanese with no noticable foreign accent, much less the iconic [[UsefulNotes/AmericanAccents "New Yorker" accent]]. While [[TranslationConvention this would make sense if they only spoke that way amongst themselves and other Americans]], that same native-sounding Japanese applies to conversations with people in Japan as well, such as their audiences. Their songs are also mainly in Japanese, with the English lines they sing clearly sounding like English-as-a-second-language. Other than a desire to defeat DJ units in Japan, none of the four members have expressed [[OccidentalOtaku an unusually strong interest in Japanese culture]] and none of them have been confirmed to have any Japanese lineage; the closest possible explanation is that they're managed by a Japanese producer, Sho Mitsuhashi, who ran away from Japan for personal reasons, but given that it takes a considerable amount of time for a Westerner with no prior experience with Asian languages to learn Japanese, the four members are unusually fluent for the amount of time they've spent under his contract. Just to make them stick out more, Photon Maiden is an all-Japanese unit (like the rest of side:origin) and not only do their songs have more English, they sound more fluent in it.

** A completely unintentional funny moment: Father Anderson's Japanese voice actor. The fact that he doesn't speak with an accent can be lost on someone not fluent in the language, but when he first confronts Alucard he tries to ''speak English with an Irish accent'' with an inconceivably thick Japanese accent overtop of it. The badassery of the moment devolved into fits of laughter... At least until he got to the [[CatchPhrase AAAAAAMMMEEENNNNN!!!]]

* John Brown, the Catholic priest from Australia in ''Manga/GhostHunt'', speaks Japanese with a KansaiRegionalAccent. This is {{handwave}}d with the fact that he was taught by an actual Osakan, much like in the ''Manga/LoveHina'' example above. In John's case, however, the joke lies in the accent completely clashing with his meek and humble personality (although the [[LandDownUnder stereotypical Australian]] might speak in a twang sort of like a Kansai accent).

* ''Literature/HaruhiSuzumiya'' actually does this with [[KansaiRegionalAccent Kansai-ben]]; it's set in the author's birth city of Nishinomiya, which is a natural place for that dialect to be spoken, as it sits straight in the heart of the Kansai region, right between Kobe and Osaka; but everyone speaks with a standard Japanese accent, in both the light novels and the anime.

* The non-native Kaolla Su in ''Manga/LoveHina'' speaks Japanese with a broad KansaiRegionalAccent and uses malaprops. This is [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] as her having been taught by Kitsune, an [[TheIdiotFromOsaka actual Osakan]], but the real reason is it just fits her boisterous personality.

* In ''VideoGame/InazumaEleven'', all the foreign characters, (with the exception of Dylan of Pegasus, the team representing the United States, who ''peppers'' his sentences with GratuitousEnglish) speak perfect Japanese for no explained reason whatsoever. While justified for the Japanese Hide Nakata, all the others have no excuse. Fubuki (from Hokaido), speaks regular Japanese as well - though curiously that doesn't apply to his teammates, and Kogure(from Kyoto) and Tsunami (Okinawa) also noticeably lack accents. Rika ([[KansaiRegionalAccent Osaka]]), however, averts it wholesale, using a thick to the point of stereotypical Kansai accent.
* Justified in ''VideoGame/TheKingOfFighters'' by Robert Garcia (an Italian) speaking Japanese as they went with the KansaiRegionalAccent for him in order to give his Japanese an accented flair (as the developers explained that, should he be speaking English, his speech would have an Italian accent).

* In the ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'' anime, Raymond, who's not implied to be a foreigner in any other way that his voice, speaks in a really thick American accent (and even has an American voice actor), while the actually canon American character Matisse (Lt. Surge) settles for really (REALLY) GratuitousEnglish.

* Every member of every European church speaks flawless Japanese in ''LightNovel/ACertainMagicalIndex'', even when no Japanese people are present.

* Emelenzia from ''LightNovel/VenusToMamoru'', likewise, though she is a bit of a {{Malaproper}}.

** ''VideoGame/Persona3'': Averted with French foreign exchange student Bebe. In the Japanese version, his speech is excessively formal and antiquated, suggesting he learned Japanese by watching samurai movies. In the English localization, he speaks in GratuitousJapanese and a French FunetikAksent to emphasize that Japanese isn't his first language.

*** Ann Takamaki is said to be fluent in English due to being part-American and spending some time living overseas. However, when she actually speaks English in the Japanese dub she's...[[{{Engrish}} not exactly fluent]].

*** ZigZagged with the school trip to Hawaii. The introductory cutscene has Ryuji fail to understand a customs officer due to the language barrier[[note]]In the English version, he doesn't understand due to being too excited about being in Hawaii.[[/note]]. The rest of the trip plays this straight though, with the language barrier never becoming an issue again.

** Averted with Pegasus, who's American. His Japanese anime voice can be heard overdoing the ''desu'''s a bit, [[https://youtu.be/ja65A7VCQBI as heard here,]] making him sound slightly less fluent. He also uses GratuitousEnglish ([[https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/199/337/8f2.png "JESUS!!"]]) in a way that highlights that he's American. And rather than use UsefulNotes/JapaneseHonorifics, he typically uses "-boy" rather than "-kun".

** Pegasus's Japanese anime voice can be heard overdoing the ''desu'''s a bit, making him sound slightly less fluent.

* In ''VideoGame/InazumaEleven'', all the foreign characters, (with the exception of Dylan of Pegasus, the team representing the United States, who ''peppers'' his sentences with GratuitousEnglish) speak perfect Japanese for no explained reason whatsoever. While justified for the Japanese Hide Nakata, all the others have no excuse. Fubuki (from Hokaido), speaks regular Japanese as well - though curiously that doesn't apply to his teammates, and Kogure(from Kyoto) and Tsunami (Okinawa) also noticably lack accents. Rika ([[KansaiRegionalAccent Osaka]]), however, averts it wholesale, using a thick to the point of stereotypical Kansai accent.

* In the ''LightNovel/FullMetalPanic'' anime, Kurz (German by birth, raised in Japan), Sousuke (ethnic Japanese raised in Russia and Afghanistan ([[NoCommunitiesWereHarmed renamed Helmajistan]] in anime), Mao (Chinese-American) and Tessa (Italian-American by birth) all apparently speak flawless Japanese. This is partly explained by the fact that both Tessa and Kurz lived in Japan as children, and Sousuke was born and lived the first few years of his life in Japan, details only glancingly referred to in the anime series and provided in more detail in the LightNovels.

* Despite ''LightNovel/{{Baccano}}'' taking place in Prohibition-era New York and including characters that have French, Italian and Eastern European names among others, all the characters in the original speak fluent Japanese. One of the reasons the dub is considered so [[SugarWiki/SuperlativeDubbing universally good]] is that it provides a variety of accents to the characters, including an impressively broad array of regional accents from New York and other East Coast states.