Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Michelle Ruff is the best English Voice Actress for Fujiko Mine

The role of Fujiko Mine has had eight different English Voice actors in the various Dubs that have been recorded.  Michelle Ruff is I think the best by a pretty large margin.

Of course she arguably has an unfair advantage in having had most of the best material to work with for the character in question.  The FUNimation/Adult Swim Dub of Red Jacket, the best of the four Dubs of The Secret of Mamo/Mystery of Mamo.  The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, and most recently Blue Jacket.

Basically she gets the role when FUNimation does the Dub.  And in general I think FUNimation's are the best Lupin Dubs, and with the other characters it's not easy to say only FUNimation got the best material.  It baffles me that FUNimation didn't get Jigen's Gravestone, which is supposed to at least thematically bridge the gap between TWcFM and Blue Jacket.  I hope they get to do Italian Game and the upcoming series about Lupin returning to France the homeland of his grandfather (I would advice FUNimation and whatever studio in Japan owns the rights to consider hiring Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier as consultants for that project, they are the best at translating the original Lupin from French into English).

Ruff hasn't gotten to do a Dub of Castle of Cagliostro.  Thing is as popular as it is to call that the best Lupin movie, I can't particularly recommend it to people watching Lupin mainly for Fujiko.  Fujiko is good in the movie, I like that she has no jealously towards Clarisse, but her role isn't that major.  Still just for the sake of the other characters I'd like to see this cast get to make their own Dub of Castle of Cagliostro someday.  And perhaps do the Miyazaki written and/or directed episodes of Green Jacket and Red Jacket (which the old FUNimation dub didn't get to) as Blue Ray bonus features.

[[Apparently there is contradictory information out there about whether or not FUNimation did the Dubs that feature Michelle Ruff as Fujiko.]]

Still, in general I feel Mystery of Mamo is a better movie to introduce one to the Lupin mythos.  Cagliostro is a great film, but it's a Miyazaki film more then it is a Lupin film.

I can't really call any of the other English Fujko actresses bad.  I've only watched Ruff's dub of Mamo all the way through, but from YouTube clips I've seen comparing the four Dubs,  Fujiko is the one character who sounds acceptable in all four of the them.  The Fuma Conspiracy has the worst Lupin dub cast (it's like they tried to repeat what was hated about it in Japan), but even there Fujiko sounds the least horrible.  I've watched half the projects where Meredith McCoy voiced Fujiko, she's very good but the only one where Fujiko gets a spotlight is the one where she had amnesia for most of it, still I enjoyed that one for the Yuri subtext.

Perhaps I'm just such a big fan of the Femme Fatale archetype in general, that I'm easily impressed by any actress doing that routine, I'm simply an easy man to seduce.

So that's why it's worth noting that I'm a pretty big fan of Michelle Ruff doing completely different roles as well.  Tsukasa in Lucky Star and Yuki Nagato in Haru Suzumiya.  And Shinon is also probably my favorite character in Sword Art Online, another show I've only watched Dubbed.  She's good as the Viz voice of Luna too, though I'm personally nostalgic for Luna sounding British.  In Code Geass she's Euphemia, Lelouch as a kid, and Arthur the cat.  And probably the first role I ever heard her play was Doujima in Witch Hunter Robin, another where her character was my favorite.

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