My taste in Acting is different

I am a big fan of Anime Dubs, whether they're from FUNimation, Viz or Aniplex (or back in the day ADV).  And I've talked about many aspects of that already.

Digibro is not like many others who dislike Dubs, there is no purist argument.  He simply doesn't like the voice actors who are usually used.

I however not only am fine with them, I like them more then almost any other English Language voice acting I've heard.  In fact my love of the voices I was hearing was probably vital to my getting into Anime in the first place.  And so I kinda want to hear them doing other roles.

Explaining why this is involves some context.

First of all the context that even my taste in live action acting is not what's currently main stream.  I'm someone who kind of resents the influence of Marlon Brando, Brando himself I always seem to enjoy (my favorite Brando performances are Julius Caesar and Mutiny on the Bounty), but his influence seems to be a perception that his genius was mostly in how he was often understated.  Early talkies were largely just stage actors applying their craft in front of a camera, Brando broke with those conventions when it was helpful, but people forget how he was still often quite theatrical.

Now I am as I've said before relatively easy to please.  So this acting pet peeve of mine isn't constantly ruining my ability to enjoy post-Brando movies.  And I can appreciate an actor being very good at what they do even if it isn't my preference.  But my preferences can make a big difference in my deciding whether to give something a 9 or a 10, or an 8 or a 9.

One old classic that is a personal favorite of mine is Becket, staring Peter O'Tool and Richard Burton.  The DVD I have of it includes an audio commentary by Peter O'Tool and some guy who had nothing to do with making the movie.  In it O'Tool talks about how he hates modern whisper acting, that he doesn't get why people think that is more realistic, he doesn't know anyone who talks that quietly in real life.  And I went "Yes, someone else does feel this way".  I'm sick of watching a movie at home and constantly needing to turn the volume way up during talking scenes but then way back down when the explosions start.  And this quality of Becket overlaps with a lot of the old Hollywood Biblical and Historical epics I love.

So in SFDebris' review of the Sci-Fi Channel's Dune miniseries, when he complained about how because most of the actors were stage actors they didn't know that "you don't' have worry about making sure people in the back row can hear you", I felt rather annoyed.  I love that Mini-Series precisely because of it's theatrical acting, and the follow up Children of Dune is even better.

George Lucas was also going for a similar older style of acting in the Star Wars movies.  They're often not the best examples of that kind of acting cause Lucas was trying to get it out of actors who weren't used to it, and because they weren't given the best dialogue to work with.  As a Prequel fan I keep pointing out that these same cringey acting moments were all over the OT as well.  Still part of why I like the Prequels more is because they had more theatrically trained actors and so much more of them do that style of acting justice.

However, what I want from Voice Acting in Animation is different, or more specific.

One example is that in Live Action I do not want it to look like it's obviously Dubbed over, I can tolerate that in campy stuff likes Dubs of most Godzilla movies or Italian Sword and Sandal films, otherwise it annoys me.  And so that's why with foreign projects I'm much more inclined to watch Subs if it's Live Action.  Which again returns me to Becket and that commentary, Peter O'Tool took great pride in how they made sure the audio came from what they performed on set as much as they could.  And the 2012 movie of the Les Miserables Musical did the same thing.

[[Since I've brought up Becket so much talking about Anime, I should mention it's a movie that Fujoshi and Fujonshi should check out.  I watched it to begin with because a Gay Man recommended it to me.]]

Animation is the opposite in this regard.  I think part of why I prefer Anime to western Animation is that in Japan they draw the animation first and apply the voice acting later, so the lip flaps often don't match even in the Japanese.  As Digi has said this is why even Anime inspired stuff like Avatar still obviously isn't actually like Anime.  I like that about Anime, I think it hinders the animation flow in the west when they're trying to animate it over the acting.  I generally think it turns out better to just not care that much about the lip flaps.

I talked before about how a lot of my issues with the DC Animated movies are them hiring Movie and TV draws instead of people who's primary talent is Voice Acting.  Disney is generally better, which is why the Ghibli dubs I can enjoy in-spite of them generally not having the usual Dub actors.  When Disney does hire a name, they get them to understand how Voice Acting is different, Karen Gillian talked about how she had to adjust for her role in Princess Monoke.  And Theatrically trained actors like Patrick Stewart or the Broadway stars they hire for the semi Musicals, are often the most adaptable.

Digi talks about how FUNimation mostly just hired people who lived in the area.  Thing is when you hire local actors they're often stage actors, since even a town as small and dying as mine has a local theater or two.  Kevin Conroy, everyone's favorite Batman voice, also came from the stage before he got that role, his first instinct was to compare the character to Hamlet.

This YouTube video confirms how in all likely hood any new up and coming Anime Dubbing studio will probably hire local theater talent.

And indeed as a bit of a Shakespeare buff, I'd love to hear how Shakespeare would be performed by my favorite Anime Dub Voice Actors.  Like hearing Crispan Freeman say "Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war".

Basically I like "overacting", I like hearing hearing Crispan Freeman and Monica Rail give over the top performances.

Digi complains about the Cute Girls being voiced by obviously older actors.  Thing is "Moe" voices were never meant to be realistic, The Anime Man talks about how Maid Cafes are unpleasant cause the Maidtresses try to talk like Anime girls, and in real life it's annoying.  Now I rarely dislike the voice acting I hear when I do watch an Anime in Japanese.  But when I do it's usually girls having overly squeaky high pitched voices, Wixoss was unlistenable in Japanese to me.  I also find Yuno Gasai annoying in the Japanese, her Dub actress however gives a phenomenal performance.  And in other cases I'm far from inclined to be the most critical of the female actors, when she was still alive I was the only one defending Elizabeth Taylor's performance in Cleopatra.

Non Anime English voice acting also commonly takes advantage of how you don't need to cast actors who are the right age, Kelly Hu voiced a teenager on Phenius and Ferb and it sounded believable to me.  In live action the constantly casting 20-30 year olds to play Teenagers annoys me as I ranted about before.  But in Animation you don't need to look the part, you just need to sound it.  And for Cute Anime Girls you just need to sound Cute.  Rebecca Forstadt is still able to sound Cute even though she's in her 60s now, so I see no reason to complain.

Plenty of Anime Dub actors have more range then they get credit for.  Crispan Freeman proved he can do a more relaxed role by playing Kyon.  Noir is my favorite Anime, and is so largely for it's Dub.  For a long time I thought Mireille was the only one I was often hearing show up in other Anime (and I'm always happy to hear her voice), but then I checked the MAL pages for the others, and found my favorite character shared a voice with several characters I'd listened to and failed to notice.