Anime Dubbing?!?!

Preparing English American versions of anime series poses vexing problems for the small, highly specialized industry of writers, producers and actors in the United States who seek to bridge the language and culture gaps. For one thing, Westerners might have trouble understanding a too-literal adaptation, but if the English version strays too far from the original, otaku (die-hard anime fans) will object.....hehe...I was one of these for this show..... When a heavily edited version of "Cardcaptor Sakura" appeared on the Kids' WB as "Cardcaptors," for instance, fans mounted online protests about the changes in the characters and story line....I did this too

Anime offers a much wider array of situations and characters than American programs do, and often requires more complex voice characterizations. No Hanna-Barbera show ever demanded the kind of intensity required to play the beleaguered brothers Edward and Alphonse Elric in "Fullmetal Alchemist," or the cynicism that shields the wounded heart of the space cowboy Spike Spiegel in "Cowboy Bebop," or the constant shifts between samurai bravado and slapstick farce of the wandering warrior Kenshin Himura in "Rurouni Kenshin."

A major decision in casting is how close the English voices should be to the original Japanese ones. Fans want them as close as possible, but the higher-pitched, more childish voices of some anime heroines grate on our ears, such as Naruto was one of those types that, while being a boy, was voiced by a japanesefemale. And there's no American equivalent of the voices of some other characters, like the long-haired bishounen ("The Pretty Boys that look like girls").

"I tend to go more for the acting than a voice that sounds like the original," said Ken Duer, president of Phuuz Entertainment in Los Angeles. "But it's up to the client. When I worked on 'Lupin III,' they wanted comparable voices, so we held a lot of auditions to find actors who were good, and who sounded like the Japanese cast."

When the English voices are recorded, the actors have to match the words to the characters' mouth movements, which were originally timed to the Japanese dialogue. "That's the hardest part of the job," said Chris Patton, the voice of Sousuke, the highly trained, terminally dense hero of "Full Metal Panic: Fumoffu!" "If you're passionate about acting and telling the story, you go in and chain yourself to the fact that you're going to have to match those flaps."I was laughing at this because while being a stay at home kid I beieved that Anime wasn't popular in my time cuz I never heard it in school or anything. But really, I can relate with these guys because what if your childhood cartoon finally came to your region....but it sucked....there are lots of examples like Naruto's Believe it, which was supposed to be just a word he made up... But it was feared that they needed to replace that with something...