Oh yes, wow you haven't heard that one before right?
So with this first blog, I will go on ahead and say that I am an unconventional person. First off, I am gonna say that I'll likely post about anime related more than anything else. Don't like it? Then tune in for the popular events and political ones. I do those whenever I feel like I have something I just wanna say. Which isnt very often. Unless if the news actually intrests me like that lakota deal did.
Ok moving right along, I am just gonna go into a nice lil subject that has to do with one of my all time favorite animes.
That is.:
Kanon 2008
Or, if you watched it when it was being released in japan;
kanon 2006
so without further ado, a review on the dub followed tomorrow by my personal review of the series:
Well, I pre ordered this dvd back in october when I heard it was being released. An intresting thing happened today when I went out to FYE to see if they would have it out on the 1st or not.
I got it.
Simple as that, one of the guys went back into the storage area n whatnot and boom. They had it ready to go for pre orders.
So being the fair kind of guy I was, I decided to watch it dubbed. Simply to see what i thought of it. So herien lies the review of the first volume of Kanon Dubbed.
God help us all.
Well, You all already know what I think of the series and if you dont come back tomorrow and you will.
So really, I am gonna focus on the major things that I haven't and that is, dubbing.
I am uber anal when it comes to dubbing. and this might take a while so just bear with me and remember, I come from a time in which it didnt matter if the voices were good. people were just out to make a fast buck and the fans would buy it even if they didn't like it.
Starting with the initial stages, they apparently used 2 differant voices for ayu.
Ok 3 if you count chibi ayu-ayu. Her voice is...Well I guess you could say it fits.
She has the emotional range down right. To hear though, that kind of voice coming out of a 17 year old. Well I dunno I guess it would be critical of me to say i expected more high pitched...ness to it.
I guess thats the easiest way to describe how Brittney Karbowski ,who is the same age as me by the way, did her job for ayu.
In the original series ayu was a rather high pitched but constantly happy person. No biggie there since the character attitude was the same excepting in episode 3 where there was a bit more melodrama in her voice than one would expect.
Whatever, its no major points against her.
Moving on, I seriously expected the same voice actor for yuichi as was in chobits and haruhi suzumiya. But heck, its kind of nice not to hear the same guy who does a horrible job in dubbing. Anywho, they used chris patton, he did the voice of Greed in the american dub of Full metal alchemist btw. He did a good job of getting Yuichis voice down pat.
However, the major problems with him was that in order to get the timing right for the series. alot of his little sidebar comments were changed.
Essentially, you lost alot of the humor he originally had. Plus, some of the things he said were off. Alot of yuichis humor was in his comments which were executed with almost impecable wit and timing. Which was ment to be like tanakui or whatever play.
Essentially, you lost alot of the humor he originally had. Plus, some of the things he said were off. Alot of yuichis humor was in his comments which were executed with almost impecable wit and timing. Which was ment to be like tanakui or whatever play.
Frankly, I would have liked to have heard him shout and then say what he was supposed to say in episode 2 when waking up Nayuki. Hey, cant hold that too much against him.
Oh, speaking of Nayuki: Jessica Boone who did chiyo from azumanga daioh did the voice of nayuki. Her voice acting was spot on to a fault.
With the exception of a few bits her voice was done.It was a mature in a way yet childish tone of voice.
Frankly, I thought "If nothing else, at least she sounds 17".
Oh yeah... Tiffany Terrell can die in hell.
She is doing the voice work for makoto sawatari (Thats SA-Wa-TA-RI).
Her voice acting was.... I wasnt impressed.
It seemed so off from what it should sound like.
Keep in mind Makoto is a 14 year old. And the chick TRIED to get it right. Lets face it though, she used words my neice wouldnt ever use.
Even if she was a fox turned human (oh spoiler btw).
Plus, I frankly, wanted to shoot the woman in episode four when she completly mispronounced her name. Makoto was right but it was all downhill from there.
Speaking of... It seems in This release, they dont mind damaging a few names.
Its not as bad a screw up as saying hurahi was (Swear to god they said hurahi. go find the official trailer on youtube) But when they cant say Sawatari or even Tsukimiya right (Tskimia is how it should sound but instead it sounded like they were saying zucunia or something.
It was so off ...) Other than that, they still use the dull yellow subtitles everyone knows and hates. There isnt much changing that though since thats industry standard.
Another good thing I liked, they werent high and mighty shoving their names in only. In the opening, CREDIT WAS DUE AND THEY GAVE IT.
Thats right, they left the original cast and crew alone by translating the names to romanji and displaying them proudly instead of saying "presented by adv films, editing, timing sound check quality by american names go here, they gave the proper credit and I respect that.
At the end, I was pleased to see they listed off who was playing who instead of like in days passed when they said these people were the voice actors but we wont tell you who they played. Another plus. directly after rolling the VAs for that episode, they then ran the ORIGINAL voice actors. That was worth many win points btw.
The credits were clean and I was impressed with the added features this series had by going in depth with a segment about how the whole series was made and the inspirations.
They gave credit to the original visual novel and I really liked that. Packed into the extras were the clean opening and endings, normal with any series mind you, then some previews which I didnt really look through. Kanon is the only dubbed series I will be following for a while.
Most of my major japanese series excepting clannad have wound down so I'm gonna have to start looking again for another series to follow.
Well that about wraps this segment up. First major Review I have done in a while. Do see my original notes about kanon for the animation, sound quality and so on if you are curious.
~Dan-Dan
