General Sonic The Hedgehog thread

I would imagine it's because general audiences probably gravitate towards Ben Schwartz more than they would with Roger Craig Smith.

Like, they recognize Schwartz as "one of the guys from Parks and Recreation and DuckTales (2017)", but will draw a blank on Smith and be like "...who's this Roger guy?"

I'm telling you, unless they're celebrities, voice actors get little to no real respect...

Pagetopper.

Edited by TargetmasterJoe on Sep 8th 2018 at 12:29:08 PM

Maybe the video game VA has some scheduling conflicts? Or the new guy is just as good. Even WB doesn't have Kevin Conroy voice Batman in everything.

Edited by windleopard on Sep 8th 2018 at 9:21:44 AM

Even though they really should.

One reason I like listening to things in Japanese is specifically that they avoid this. Unless the seiyuu dies or quits the business, they'll always voice that character. It adds a nice bit of... I dunno... continuity to the whole thing.

If that was the aim, it may have backfired slightly as I've seen plenty of people both within and outside the fandom who had absolutely no idea who Ben Schwartz was when the casting was first announced.

Anyway this talk of celebrity voice acting reminds me of a dream I had a couple of months back, wherein said dream I was at the premier of an animated theatrical Sonic SatAM movie (in-theory anyway, the film was referred to by people in the dream as a SatAm movie, but in practice it seemed more to be based on Post-Reboot Archie Sonic, with some pre-reboot characters and Boom-esque longer limb designs).

And once the film started a lot of the audience was pissed off because the film had resorted to Celebrity Voice Actors over professional voice actors (which you'd think the audience would have been aware of before the movie started but whatever...), a lot of people weren't happy with the actors picked for the roles and the Moral Guardians were upset because the film opened with a theme set to cyberpunk visuals resembling the Batman Beyond opening and thus was considered too dark for the film's child audience.

The general public doesn't really think that way about voice actors in the first place. A sad reality of voicing acting is that, unlike live action actors, only either animation lovers or members of the fandom will think twice about who is actually performing the character's delivery.

Isn't it almost the reverse in Japan, with voice actors being damn near celebrities? Norio Wakamoto probably has the same star power over there as Leonardo DiCaprio does here.

Pretty much. They get as many tv interviews and shows like TV actors.

Not surprising. America in general has a stigma against animation and voice over, seeing it a "lesser work," that isn't always shared everywhere in the world.

That probably has to do with a difference in greater attitudes. America is sort of obsessed with being "mature" and "adult" and "I'M NOT A KID MOM", while from what I've seen of Japanese pop culture, there's a huge shadow of Growing Up Sucks looming over that country.

Though with the onslaught of memes about just that from America's millennial generation, and the overall dour at best atmosphere engulfing us, I have to wonder if in the future, we stop trying to be "adult" hardasses and start cherishing "childish" things like never before, if only so we can fuckin' be happy again.

I wouldn't be opposed to it.

Edited by PhysicalStamina on Sep 8th 2018 at 4:13:02 AM

I would fully welcome such an event.

It's more of a problem of the fact that, historically speaking, somewhere during the jump from film to television animation has become associated with children in general in America (and some other Western countries, though arguably not to the same extent) where it doesn't have that same connotation elsewhere.

The association with animation (and comics and so on) with growing up or staying young at heart or either is just plain less of a thing in Japan in the first place. While being fixated on such things is a sign of immaturity sometimes over there, it's stereotypically more associated with shut in behavior than with childishness.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Sep 8th 2018 at 1:42:30 AM

Dub voice actors in general get a pretty bad rap by a good chunk of the anime fandom, simply for not being the original unaltered performance. Combined with the low pay and having to scrounge for all the roles and paying hours they can, it's a rough business. Several voice actors need at least a second job to keep the lights on and food on the table.

I reckon the pay is so poor because the work isn't respected.

A shame because there are plenty of good dubs these days.

That is unless they're union from what I've heard.

What's with that Union stuff? God, Brazilian VA's never made such a mess over their own rights. They also may have never had to, if you think about it.

Edited by ZeroDozer on Sep 8th 2018 at 2:28:39 PM

Some people don't like being underpaid and working through poor working conditions.

That's why if you even vaguely know your dub voices, you'll swear there's a familiar cast member or 5 in a show but don't get credited, actors use aliases in non-union work.

There's still a lot of works that don't have credits at all, just to remind you how disrespected the job is. The first Bayonetta had no credits in the voice talent whatsoever, requiring the voice director for the movie version to go on an exhausting search more than 6 months to track everyone down.

Is voice acting that disrespected of a job in the US? Here these guys are just as respected as actual actors.

I'm still baffled as to why acting is so respected. If anything from 9th grade english actually stuck, I thought there was a time when acting was bottom-barrel work.

Now, if you're lucky and get into a good film you could shoot from meal coupons to billionaire.

Edited by Soble on Sep 9th 2018 at 9:56:52 AM

I may be misremembering, but I think I heard somewhere that voice actors in Canada who are part of the union have their pay fluctuate less than voice actors in Amercia.

Edited by WillKeaton on Sep 9th 2018 at 10:56:03 AM

Animation in general is disrespected in the US.

That's because Canada has better unions, probably.

Still, if American culture goes where I hope it goes in the near future, the connotation may stick, but people won't see it as a bad thing anymore; maybe even the opposite, actually. That's what I'm hoping for.

Edited by PhysicalStamina on Sep 9th 2018 at 1:14:50 PM

Sonic Adventure 2 meets Harvest Moon:

I really hope the Sonic Twitter sees this post of my Sonic the Movie VHS.

Live and Learn or What I'm Made of.

which is the better crush 40 song?