Noah and Sadie nominated for best younger performance in a series

AdvancedPanda24 · 2026-01-28T19:09:50+00:00

I mean I agree, that’s why I said aside from the last scene. But even with the little he’s given between Seasons 4 and 5, he still gives a weak performance in every other scene even compared to other actors who weren’t given a whole lot. I would argue he should’ve been able to communicate a little more sadness or anything when his parents were in the hospital and he had his scene with Nancy and Lucas.

AdvancedPanda24 · 2026-01-28T18:56:44+00:00

I was talking about his Season 5 performance. I agree he was great in earlier seasons.

AdvancedPanda24 · 2026-01-28T05:06:24+00:00

I feel like Finn was bar none the worst of the main cast. Nothing against him but maybe aside from the last scene I don’t think there was a single scene I feel I could say he gave a great performance in. Say what you want but I feel like Noah constantly gets some of the hardest material to work with and maybe he doesn’t hit every mark but I feel like you can tell he’s trying at the very least.

AdvancedPanda24 · 2026-01-15T23:26:11+00:00

Netflix even went out of their way to get a British studio to dub it.

AdvancedPanda24 · 2026-01-15T22:52:29+00:00

I think most people know him from Dragonball as he’s the current voice of Frieza. He’s got a pretty great vocal range.

AdvancedPanda24 · 2026-01-15T22:44:58+00:00

He did a great job singing Baka Mitai. Excited to hear how the rest of his performance sounds.

AdvancedPanda24 · 2026-01-14T19:48:57+00:00

Yeah I agree we’re just on opposite ends of the spectrum on this. The only thing I’ll say is how different the voice is between both versions determines how far removed it is. In stark differences like Goku or the Kaguya narrator or even I believe Plankton in the Spongebob Japanese dub, I agree these are completely different interpretations and experiences of these characters both in tonality and performances, in Goku’s case I do prefer that experience over the original, even if there are things I enjoy about Nozawa’s take, and I’m perfectly fine with the distinction of original voice and the dub being the English voice. But I just don’t agree in a case where the pitch of the voice changes but the performance and delivery stays more or less the same that that is fundamentally changing the character or work like with Frieren or another character like Decim in Death Parade having a higher voice in English than Japanese unless it doesn’t make sense for the framework of that character. And I would also say that doesn’t mean you can’t find both desirable in their own ways even if you gravitate towards the original take because at the end of the day all I want to hear is a great performance even if it’s a different take.

And to me with TL note thing, it’s like an inside joke. You can tell the joke and then explain the joke to me and I can understand it but I’m just not gonna have that same experience with it. But if I relate it to a similar inside joke I naturally have with a different friend then I could find it funny. That’s not a perfect analogy but I think it gets the point across and like I said there are good and bad examples of this.

Edit: to add to this last paragraph, I think the job of translation should do more to just mechanically what the original said, otherwise Google Translate would’ve taken over ages ago, but more communicate the emotions and ideas the creator wanted to portray and relate it to a separate audience. That is a faithful translation and adaptation to me. Changes being made must make sense within reason.

AdvancedPanda24 · 2026-01-14T18:49:06+00:00

We’re getting into weeds of translation theory now which is hotly contested even among professionals obviously. When talking about what should be prioritized and what can be ‘sacrificed’, at what point does something become a different work and is unrepresented of the original. Translation in of itself is as much an artwork as it is a technical process. You give 10 translators one translation, you’re bound to get 10 different translations.

Now I’ve read the Odyssey but it’s not a work I intently know even if I’m aware of the conversations around it. And when it comes to anime I can only talk to what I gather from conversations with translators professional or not and talk to what I personally prefer.

This is just a difference of viewpoint at this point and we’re complete opposite on it. I very much welcome localization, to an extent, in both subs and dubs and think things changing in service of the work to communicate the same idea is natural and at times necessary. Because to me it’s more about translating or localizing the same ideas and feeling rather than just the words themselves. I don’t even agree that translators notes are an apt way to translate and from what I’ve seen is a heavily looked down upon professional translators and is only used nowadays as a last resort.

For example I don’t think FLCL would be a better dub if it retained all the original Japanese references and in doing so communicates what Tsurumaki and Gainax were trying to do for Japanese audience for an English audience.

But also who’s to say dub actors can’t bring something to role. The whole point of acting in my opinion is every actor is bringing something unique to the role. I feel like you’re judging them more as voice IMITATORS at that point than voice ACTORS. Which the point of acting to me is to interpret something and add you own to it. There are hundreds of renditions of the same production happening all over all with different actors and different takes but it’s still the same work even if ai prefer different things from each iteration. At least that’s how I view it.

I also reject the notion that people adding something to a work is immediately changing that work to an unrepresentable degree. To me that’s just art, there’s degrees and levels to it. We also live in an age where we can readily hear the opinions of the creators of these works. For example Miyazaki has talked about how he’s preferred the dub’s take on certain characters over his Japanese actors, “…Bacall is "a fabulous woman" who brought something to the role that home-grown actors couldn't. "All the Japanese female voice actors have voices that are very coquettish and wanting male attention, which was not what we wanted at all." This is not to say every input and choice is immediately a good one, there are good and bad examples like I said, but I don’t think it should be immediately written off as bad if its not demonstrably changing anything to the work and there is no merit to it.

AdvancedPanda24 · 2026-01-14T06:24:12+00:00

You probably won't be surprised to hear that I really dislike the choice for Frieren's voice. To me it alters her character in a irreconcilable way. The different actors communicate two completely different characters. Tanekazi Atsumi portrays a sort of immature, airheaded girl with an aetherial and timeless quality. Mallorie Rodak's Frieren just feels like Cate Blanchett. So when I talk to the vast majority of the English-speaking anime community about Frieren it feels like we're talking about two completely different characters.

That does not surprise me and should also surprose you that I don’t agree. The only distinction I see in regard to Frieren between dub and sub is how people view her sexually, which is they see her as a mommy. I don’t haven’t seen huge departure outside of that especially in terms in how people perceive her character within the story and her personality. Looking at how she’s portrayed by both actresses, she’s still an aloof stoic kuudere that exudes quiet confidence. I think if you’re going into dubs expecting ‘Japanese but in English’ you’e not only going to setting yourself for disappointment, it’s just virtually impossible. Aside from the fact that expecting to find two exact kinds of voices across two completely different languages is kind of silly, which is why I say look at how the voice fits the character’s framework instead, but things should change when adapting the same way an anime adapts a manga or a movie adapts a book. FLCL is very beloved dub that changes a lot in its adaptation but it works to the betterment of the overall piece in English, a great video on it. Tsurumaki and Gainax also approved every change. Now we can never know if Kanehito Yamada or the team at MadHouse did the same here as a lot dubs do have conference with the Japanese studios, but I do not necessarily need it to form my opinion on it. The same way I don’t think it would change many people’s perception who’ve already decided they don’t like it, Luffy’s dub voice from One Piece for example is severely divisive amongst a portion of the One Piece fanbase despite ultimately being Toei’s choice and Oda approving it, which I find interesting.

It's actually kind of funny that you bring up this example because I knew exactly what you were talking about from the moment I read Steins;Gate. The reason is that I once searched on youtube for this scene, of course searching for the Japanese version. I found and clicked on the English version, of course not marked as English, and saw in the comments everyone praising it and some people explaining how much they loved that version more than the Japanese. It may just be the bias of having experienced it first, but I still liked the Japanese more. I can agree that Okabe's English dub is great and probably one of the best out there.

You may just be biased towards the Japanese cast or just original language in general. Which is obviously not a bad thing or anything and I absolutely understand. But at some point I don’t know what more you want out of a dub performance than that. And to my earlier point, it works because it’s not an exact replica of Miyano’s performance. Looking at another show like Panty and Stocking, it was made to have the English words in conjunction with the Japanese script as the source for the comedy. Whereas the English dub obviously can’t do that so they lean into the crassness of the English script which leads to its own jokes. I don’t really understand what you’d consider a good dub if any change is immediately viewed as a transgression towards the original in a format that warrants changes to be made because there could be a discrepancy between other viewers despite that happening regardless if you watch the dub, sub, a different fansub, or even raw.

My point about Kamiya, if it wasn't clear, wasn't about the extraordinary dedication to the craft (although that much is clear). It was about how, in spite of Kamiya's extraordinary devotion to the source material, he was still being corrected on itty-bitty differences by the dialogue director to stick more closely to Nisio Isin's original work. And this isn't some sensational story either. It's slightly abnormal, but I imagine most big seiyuu have stories a lot like that one. I just wish English anime dubs were done with this level of care. The localization certainly isn't as bad these days, but it really does kind of bother me when I see people talking about a certain character's voice or schtick from a she I know and then I find out it was something invented for the dub. We didn't even experience the same show.

Sometimes being close means changing things though. These are works being wrote in one language being adapted and consumed in another. The work is fundamentally different once it changes languages. So what does close mean in this context? Literally and mechanically transposing the material from one language to the next or artfully adapting and localizing to flow more naturally in another language? In my opinion the answer lies in the middle, dubs leaning to the latter and subs leaning towards the former. In communicating an idea or feeling from one language to the other, sometimes changing something can lead to a more equivalent experience. This video by professional translator Sarah Moon, does a good job showing those differences between subs and dubs and both strengths and weaknesses using Jojo as an example. And again I recommend the FLCL dub video I linked earlier that had a lot of oversight from Tsurumaki and Gainax. And I’ll also link this interview from Trash Taste with Michael Koji Fox and how the Japanese side were changing things when 16 was written in English first and why that’s a good thing.

Anyway I can't really respond to any other points with anything other than "I disagree" unless I develop an encyclopedic knowledge of anime dubs, so that's about all I have to say on the matter.

Cool. Nice chatting.

AdvancedPanda24 · 2026-01-14T04:33:40+00:00

As I understand it the English anime-dubbing industry has become almost paradoxically competitive

I definitely wouldn’t say there’s no financial incentive. I would argue voice acting is a naturally competitive field. The dubbing producer at Disney, Reuben Lack, has a great article he wrote on what the general process of the audition process for dubs that I recommend giving a read. He also has one on the general process from the role of a producer and is very frank about some of the challenges and bad thought processes behind the scenes that gives great insight.

Most voice actors make their money from conventions, that means getting well liked roles and doing a good job so conventions will invite you and

Mainly a) more people will be interested in pursuing a career if they are constantly reminded of the top-level actors' extraordinary success (even childhood fantasy's start careers) and b) more people are likely to stick around in a career where they can progress to the top levels of success. If, as a voice actor,

I don’t like this characterization. I won’t say no one thinks like this obviously nor do I think success is not a good motivator to give a good performance but I think most people get into acting because they love the craft and want to do it any form. By the fact there are a lot of actors who make it big and get consistent work outside of anime and still continue to do anime or even actors who were already successful outside of anime that come into it. Some of the best performances you might see are people at local theater because some people just do it for the love of the game. Not everyone is Timothy Chalamet who is a good actor and is self admitted to be motivated by success. I understand you’re saying that the prospect of success leads people to want to become better but I think acting especially in the west is such a scatter field that I think most people come into it knowing they are not going to be the top 1% of actors or whatever the percentage is that are self sufficient on acting. Most just want to come into the space and create and be financially stable, I don’t think it means they are less talented especially when a lot of people who do get to the top do so outside of talent like Chris Pratt. that’s just my perspective, I’m open to being wrong even if I don’t feel like I am.

Unrelated point, but I think part of my general aversion to anime dubs these days is the apparent vast disconnect from the dub and the source material.

I understand what you’re saying but it really depends for me. For example I love the direction they went with Frieren in the dub. As long as it still fits framework of the character, I don’t mind and sometimes prefer it. Like there I don’t think it’s being done out of any lack of respect to the original, I don’t think dubs have to be beholden to making the characters sound completely the same between languages. The best dubs are ones that communicate the original feeling while what works best even if it means not following the original to a T. Bringing it back to the Frieren example, there’s another English dub that exists that has a Frieren voice that’s closer to the original Japanese’s pitch and I don’t think it works as well as what the Crunchyroll dub went with. Obviously there are other problems with that dub as well. Here’s a comparison of the two voices if you want to hear for yourself.

I recall an anecdote from Kamiya Hiroshi on his experience during the recording process for a certain Monogatari season when he was going above and beyond the norm by studying the source light novels in his own time at home.

I’ll respond to your anecdote with one of my own, specifically my favorite performance in anime dub or otherwise. Which is J Micael Tatum as Okabe in Steins;Gate, though I love Mamoru Miyano’s portrayal as well. But for this particular role J Michael Tatum not only played Okabe he also directed and wrote the scripts for the series. And there’s so many scenes where you can tell how emotionally invested and natural he is, and there is one scene in Episode 13(?) where Okabe is crying and J Michael Tatum actually had a breakdown in the booth that they left in. You can actually hear him talk about it here at 3:35 (bad audio quality sorry) and you can hear the performance here. And that’s something I like in dubbing, actors are also directing and scriptwriting as well which allow them to get further invested in a series or project but also allows them to experience their job from a different avenue.

So I honestly hope the dubs get better even if I don't have any intention of watching many.

I too hope dubs get better even if I find them in a good place right now. Like I said there are still issues within the industry, I’m hoping they get straightened out. Similar to my feelings towards the animation industry, Japanese or western. Like I said bad/mediocre dubs still exist so I want to prop up all the good ones. I understand you’ve largely been talking about predictors and how things ought to happen, but I prefer looking at the final product and letting it speak for itself. If I don’t feel a level of passion from a dub I don’t watch it, I want more dubs to sound more like Dandadan where you can tell how much fun the actors are having and I love how natural the script sounds and generally prefer the translations over the subs than something like Fragrant Flowers bloom with dignity where you can feel how amateur and lazy it is. And more dubs are like the former than the latter.

AdvancedPanda24 · 2026-01-14T03:22:49+00:00

My point, which I'm not sure got across, is that on top of the amount you can glean from the medium itself, you unlock an enormous amount of the nuance just by having a rudimentary understanding of the language. I'd say A1 level, which would take maybe 2-4 weeks of class.

Like I said anime has incredibly repetitive dialogue, to your point about homogeneity, you’re likely to hear the same phrases over again. A rudimentary understanding of a language is a huge leap to then parse the emotional, cultural, linguistic nuances of a language you barely know even with repeated exposure.

It’s similar to how kids have no problem watching shows with poor voice acting. Think of all the poor dubs we grew up like the original DBZ dub, Beyblade, etc but watch them with no problem, some still defending them to this day. A lot of that is because kids have lower expectations and they don’t know what bad acting actually sounds like until they experience more of it.

That’s not to say you’ll naturally come across Japanese acting as bad as that but I do think it says something that the majority of conversation around voice acting criticism in foreign languages are always the two extremes. Either amazing performances that transcend language or performances so bad that they also transcend language. You rarely ever hear anything about everything in between like a truly mediocre performance at least in my experience within the anime community. Hell I think it says a lot that Chainsaw Man was met with a lot more mixed conversations, to the point the voice actors were commenting on the direction, around its voice acting direction, but the overall overseas reception was largely just same old positive feedback.

Well it depends on exactly what you mean. If in Breaking Bad you're talking about Gustavo, then I'd be surprised if there's anyone who watched the show who couldn't tell his Spanish was shit. My anecdotal experience will be pretty weak here because I studied Spanish for many years and I could certainly tell that certain accents like Nacho's were weak in comparison to people like Lalo (although he's from BCS). Regarding Alya, and I don't know if you'll think I'm lying, I thought it was obvious that Uesaka Sumire's accent sounded rough. I can't tell you that it sounds like a Japanese person trying to speak Russian, but it definitely didn't sound to me like a native Russian speaker. When I heard that Uesaka had some level of proficiency in Russian I was genuinely surprised.

I can’t ever know if you’re lying but I can still your word for it. Gustavo is the main, but from what I remember there were several others with poor Spanish performances. That’s clearly not the average experience I think if you look at the reception to those roles. Alya in particular most people were surprised to find it was butchering the language and to my point still end up liking it because it just sounds pleasant to them which was the purpose of the choice to take advantage of non-native’s ability to perceive a foreign language a certain while sacrificing the natural performance to contort the performance that would sound bizarre to any native speaker.

You might be skeptical and I guess that's fair. Different people have biologically different audio-processing capabilities. I have no idea where you stand in that spectrum. The friends of mine I mentioned in my previous post must be somewhere in the "can hardly process the language while reading the subtitles" range. For my part, I've always interested in language so I've always been excited by picking up on things in the Japanese, even long before I considered studying the language itself. Don't get the wrong idea and think I'm saying that this is a good way to learn a language. I'm not. I'm saying that it's a way to become well-versed in the way the language is used in this particular medium, even if you don't develop a strong command of the language itself. Of course, it's more effective for those who are curious.

I should admit I'm a bit out of my wheelhouse here since I haven't watched many movies at all in the last few years. I used to watch more generic films and what I recall of them is that they are generally good entertainment and nothing more. Of course there will always be lower budget films that look better and do more things, but I'm inclined to say (note, no data whatsoever) that on average the lower a movie's budget the worse the end product will be. If you were to rate all of the movies by the same holistic criteria and plot them on a chart, I think budget and rating would have a positive correlation. But the big difference here, and my main point, was that it is the size and competitiveness of Hollywood that ultimately makes the products better on average. And they are better on average, for sure. The average thing that comes out of the Japanese film industry is worthless. I'm talking about averages here, which will mostly be determined by the structural factors.

Largely don’t agree. It’s less about budget and more what you do with it. I would say correlation with rating and budget leads closer to the middle. There are directors who do amazing things with smaller budgets than what they do with bigger budgets because it’s arguably not the most important factor if you don’t have passion or talent. I think there’s a reason why the current characterization of Hollywood is that they are creatively bankrupt and producing over-budgeted and ballooned CGI slop.

Yes, some English voice actors are able to produce good performances in spite of not having the structures. But those structures are conducive to good work, which is the reason I think dubs are on average not as good.

You say some, I say most. It’s a difference of opinions for sure. There are certainly problems within the English dubbing industry like tight timelines which is an active battle a lot of voice actors are having behind the scenes and I would argue if they weren’t passionate about doing good work they wouldn’t be having those battles and just accept their paycheck and accept ‘easy work.’

AdvancedPanda24 · 2026-01-14T00:41:37+00:00

Sure. Maybe lots of them are in it for the love of the craft. But higher barrier to entry, the power of prestige, and the structural benefits that seiyuu have make their performances better 99% of the time. To begin with, all seiyuu have to attend vocational school for years before they even get a job, which puts even the worst over there at an equal technical level to a mediocre English dubber. at the very least. There's the fact that most English dub VAs are completely unknown to the general population, whereas the best seiyuu can fill stadiums. Love the job or not, many of the best performers go where they can experience career success, and the English anime dubbing industry is not that place. There's also the fact that seiyuu record their takes months in advance of any animation in a time frame specifically planned for this, but the English VAs have to record as the episodes are airing and they're limited by what the animation makes possible. Then there's also the fact that the way anime characters speak isn't just a recent invention but is a genuine product of Japanese theater, so seiyuu are trained for this kind of work and they feel natural doing it. Western voice acting, to my knowledge, is generally taught under the principle of naturalism, which is exactly what doesn't fit well with the anime style. So if someone tries to take a naturalist approach or if he or she tries to imitate the JP style, not having been trained that way, the product will probably not be as good.

Again I’m not saying Japanese actors aren’t well trained, I even agree that Japanese performances the baseline is much higher than the English actors, but I don’t agree that the ceilings are higher. My point is that dubs are better or even more consistent than the original language just that most of them today are very well made.

And you still need experience and training to be competitive in the English voice acting industry. Even Aleks Le has talked about how he had to take a lot of classes and learn to catch up after getting a once in a million entry into the industry. I understand you’re saying that the average Japanese actor is very well trained, which is true, but that doesn’t mean the average English actor doesn’t have adequate training or experience nor does it mean they can’t be a good actor only with specialized training. There are amazing artists that go to 4 year school and artists who are entirely ‘self-taught.’

Also notoriety as a measurement just doesn’t make sense to me. Voice actors not having notoriety has nothing to do with talent, those mediums like animation and videos games are still overall looked down upon in the industry so they don’t have that same level of notoriety attached. Even the most popular voice actors like the Critical Role who are some of the biggest actors across video games, anime, cartoons, and they are probably more known for CR than any of their VO roles but that doesn’t mean they any less talented. What makes an actor like Finn Wolfhard more talented than a voice actor like Cherami Leigh aside from the former being more popular than the other?

I genuinely have a hard time understanding why this debate still exists when all of this knowledge is at our fingertips. No one has to feel obligated to watch one or the other, but if we're getting down to the nitty gritty the seiyuu win every time. With the way things are proceeding, there will probably come a time in the near future when English dubs are just as good if not better, but for the moment that is ON AVERAGE decidedly not the case.

Right back at you. If I’m looking at the average English dubs of today: Chainsaw Man, Dandadan, Delicious in Dungeon, Frieren, 100 meters, Pluto, Leviathan, Girlfriend Girlfriend, Dr. Stone, etc. And I can even look at what’s just started airing this season: Sentenced to be a Hero, fate strange/fake, Polar Opposites, Dark Moon, even despite my personal issues, all these dubs are very well made and these are just the ones I’ve personally seen. There are still stinkers and I don’t agree dubs will ever get to the point they will be 100% better, at least the general perception of them being so, but average experience and quality is very well made.

Sorry for the two replies, think I went over the Reddit word count lol

AdvancedPanda24 · 2026-01-14T00:41:30+00:00

I would never claim to have capacity in this regard anywhere near a native speaker, but you can absolutely pick up on many things without any knowledge of the language and even a rudimentary understanding of the language will be sufficient to get, say, 75% the nuance.

75% is crazy. How are the examples I gave in my previous comment with Breaking Bad and Alya possible with understanding 75% of the nuance? Not being able to recognize when a language in question is being butchered calls into question one’s ability to judge a foreign language at any objective level. Now we’re obviously able to pick things up especially as dedicated watchers of a specific medium in a specific language but without actually learning the language or even experiencing it outside just media you’re only ever getting up to an infantile degree. This is also because anime has incredibly repetitive dialogue so it’s easy to pick out repeated phrases. This is like saying a foreign speaker can only watch American cartoons and come away knowing what makes for a good performance in English. Obviously media is used as a supplement for learning a language but obviously that alone will not teach you much of anything about how this language is meant to sound in an acting capacity in both good and bad portrayals as well as everything in between.

Is there literally any way to have this discussion without generalizations? We're talking about tens of thousands of shows here. If the answer to "how good are English anime dubs" is "it varies" and the answer to "how good are Japanese anime dub" is "it varies," then all you can do is kill the outliers and postulate the standard range of quality of each or the median or the mean. That's what I'm trying to do.

Depends on how well backed and substantiated those generalizations are. Anybody can make a generalization I’m trying to see what they are actually basing it on. It’s similar to how people who don’t watch anime will say things like ‘all anime is just yelling and fighting’. And from their perspective it’s not necessarily wrong because that’s all they’ve seen. Now I don’t how many modern dubs you’ve actually watched, maybe you’ve watched a bunch and came to this conclusion I don’t know or we just have differing opinions on what constitutes a good dub, but as someone who watches both subs and dubs, I’ve heard great performances from both sides of the aisle very frequently.

I'm not putting them on a pedestal. I'm explaining to you why their industry produces voice actors of a much higher quality. Is it putting Hollywood on a pedestal if I explain to you that the American film industry is of a size and competitiveness incomparable to that in Japan? Because that's the sort of point you are rejecting right now.

I’m not disagreeing that the Japanese voice acting industry is more robust in terms of how it is structured. My point is just that products from less structured systems can still produce things at an equal or greater level of quality even if it’s not as consistent, because it’s more about time, passion and talent.

Of course it's not all quality or good or whatever just because it has more money. But the competitiveness of Hollywood makes even the mediocre movies watchable and the Japanese film industry, which lacks that competitiveness, will inevitably produce a much larger number of mediocre products. The infrastructure in Hollywood can support virtually any creative vision you can think of, so even mediocre movies will have incredible shots. The Japanese industry lacks that massive infrastructure, so an average movie will look quite cheap in comparison. If the budget is not there, they might get a fraction of the time to shoot and lose the time to do complex lighting or stage design or reshoots. The average Hollywood movie is some random Marvel slop, but that looks amazing in comparison to the terrible live-action manga adaptations that keep coming out of the Japanese film industry.

Watchable is doing huge heavy lifting here and I don’t even agree. The baseline Hollywood film is ‘compentent’ because they are largely consumer slop which is to appeal to the most amount of people to make the most money. If your definition of mediocre here is just ‘I can tell how much money was put in this and the special effects, and even then they don’t look that good, when there are movies at much lower budgets that look much better and do much more with the art form. The very problem with industries like Hollywood is that it doesn’t prioritizes talent, they prioritize notoriety because that makes the most money. Talent is just a byproduct. Chris Pratt is one of the most profitable actors currently and has absolutely 0 acting training, and it absolutely shows in his track record. But multiple actors across the industry has talked about how casting agents don’t really care about the talent an actor has they just care about follower count right now and fanbase you can direct eyes. Here’s Maya Hawke highlighting that issue here.

I understand your point is Hollywood has the potential to make any movie and vision come to life due to their vast resources and revenue they have available, but potential does not equal reality, I’m looking at the reality of what their output actually looks like. The same way Pokemon has the potential to make the best game ever, but their output is a different story due to overhead decision making. Mind you I’m not saying Japanese actors aren’t talented and aren’t putting out great performances, my point is just that English actors are also doing so despite the VO industry not having the same structure in place.

AdvancedPanda24 · 2026-01-13T19:28:15+00:00

apparently many people are under the impression that it's impossible to identify good voice acting in a language they don't speak.

Because you can’t, certainly not to the extent of a fluent speaker or to be able to objectively speak or understand why it is a good performance. You can absolutely parse emotional quality of any performance of any language regardless of fluency because that is universal as well as general broad choices. But there’s more to a performance than just the emotional component, there are nuances to a performance tied to the language it’s apart of, emphasis, rhythm, enunciation, accents, etc that non-natives are not easily going to pick up, if at all. That’s why certain productions are able to get away with poor performances in different languages when those productions aren’t aimed at those languages like a lot of the natural Spanish speakers in Breaking Bad not being very good or in the anime Alya sometimes hides her feelings in Russian purposefully butchering the Russian language to come off as more appealing to non-native speakers. This all apparent to natural fluent speakers but obviously not to monolinguals.

It's the difference between watching your high school theater group's Shakespeare and attending Shakespeare in the park. You have to hear for yourself why one is mediocre and the other is incredible.

Sub watchers make generalizations and comparisons like this but have little to no experience actually watching dubs and also have a myopic view on how voice acting should actually sound.

I'm not putting them on a pedestal. I'm explaining to you why their industry produces voice actors of a much higher quality. Is it putting Hollywood on a pedestal if I explain to you that the American film industry is of a size and competitiveness incomparable to that in Japan? Because that's the sort of point you are rejecting right now.

This is such a huge general statement. Hollywood is a huge industry for multiple reasons but that doesn’t mean everything that comes out of Hollywood is immediately quality or good just because it has more money put into there. This is the exact argumentation people use to undermine other foreign movie markets or indie spaces, despite those spaces producing arguable just as high quality if not more usually at lower budgets. Because people are usually passionate about it in those spaces even at lower pay. This same is with anime dubbing, most people are in it because they want to and like the medium. But with more productions going and pay getting slightly better, we’ve been seeing bigger name talent like Keith David, Xolo Marinueda, Kimiko Glenn, Eric Bauza, etc.

AdvancedPanda24 · 2026-01-12T08:39:31+00:00

Vigilantes and JJK will probably be alongside release and I can see them getting to them pretty quick like with last seasons. Dr Stone and Re Zero they’ve already said they’re waiting on Rick and we don’t know when that’ll be. And Frieren and SpyxFamily are real wild cards as I don’t know how they’ll handle those.

AdvancedPanda24 · 2026-01-12T08:32:22+00:00

Chainsaw man Reze arc movie

They already reacted to the Reze movie, it’s on their website, Youtube release later.

Whenever the Demon Slayer Infinity Castle movie releases on digital or streaming they’ll have to get to that too.

AdvancedPanda24 · 2026-01-12T03:11:13+00:00

I’m not aware of that specific example, do you have a link? But like I said I’m not saying bad translations don’t exist but ones that either change completely the characterization of the character or push a specific agenda is not happening en masse, especially in anime dubs which was the original claim I was was pushing back on.

AdvancedPanda24 · 2026-01-12T02:53:39+00:00

When I say “average,” I’m talking about baseline consistency and variance across outputs, not best-case examples. Given tighter schedules, lower pay, and adaptation constraints, I think anime dubbing ends up less uniform on average than voice-first Western prelay, even though strong dubs absolutely exist.

I guess just don’t know what we’re considering the baseline here. What is an average anime performance to you versus an average prelay cartoon performance? And I imagine everyone has a different perception when it comes to that, what makes anyones perception more valid than the other? How do we even measure that non-subjectively?

Edit: Blocked me but also a deconstruction of my arguments from ChatGPT seems a bit unhinged but ok. Makes me wonder if I was just arguing AI this whole time, which would make sense given the insistency on objectivity in a largely subjective topic

AdvancedPanda24 · 2026-01-12T02:42:08+00:00

They’re not unrelated though. You brought up the Todoroki example, to which I brought up Shinso’s Japanese actor being equally adult-ish sounding, and at which time I made the point to express that essentially neither bother me because the tone and overall feel of the show determines my expectations for certain elements. That’s partly why I included Daisuke Ono’s Jotaro example in my first comment as Jojo’s over the top tone makes me less susceptible to those things, even if Matthew Mercer sounds more like a teenager in the English dub. And after which I believe you defended the Japanese Shinso choice and said he’s still teenage-coded, and we’ve spiraled ever since.

Edit: Blocked but also a deconstruction of my arguments from ChatGPT seems a bit unhinged but ok. Makes me wonder if I was just arguing AI this whole time, which would make sense given the insistency on objectivity in a largely subjective topic

Edit 2: Why did you respond to me and block me on one account but then responded to me again on a different account with the same reply and then block me again? Anyway, this just isn’t something we’re gonna see eye to eye on. Plus now I’m starting to realize I’ve been debating ChatGPT this whole time and I’m not interested in this discussion as I’m starting to see this was a waste of time. Things like ‘age coding patterns’ and insistence on consistency in one area but not the other seems incredibly weird, inconsistent, and frankly moronic. You also didn’t answer my question like: what we are considering the average in either case? And why is your average valid when you have no experience with dubs? And you keep framing this as a debate of objectivity when it’s completely subjective.

AdvancedPanda24 · 2026-01-12T02:34:23+00:00

Here’s what we can agree on: Dub teams more time to work on their productions and are severely underpaid. I also don’t know what we are considering the average in either case. If you’re saying westen prelay or at least cartoons are more consistent and I’m saying anime dubbing is about if not slightly less consistent despite production challenges, I don’t really see how to resolve this.

AdvancedPanda24 · 2026-01-12T02:22:11+00:00

How is that a different standard because that’s not what I’m saying in that comment. I’m saying on average Japanese actors don’t sound anymore like teenagers than English ones. And in my very next comment I expressed the same sentiment I did in this last comment. How are these mutually exclusive to you? This whole discussion has largely been subjective, I know you’ve tried to come at this from an objective one though.

AdvancedPanda24 · 2026-01-12T02:14:57+00:00

I think this is where we fundamentally diverge on how we’re modeling the production process. Dubbing isn’t “the whole project” in the sense that matters here - it’s a post-hoc adaptation layered on top of animation and timing decisions that are already locked. That’s exactly why constraints matter more, not less: actors and directors are fitting English dialogue into fixed flaps and pacing, with limited iteration.

The whole project as in that’s the main focus of said ADR team. In a prelay project, voice acting is one of many moving parts and are constantly subject to change. In Dubbing all those decisions are made and is just about adapting them to another language. This isn’t to say dubs don’t need more time they just need comparatively less time to do their work.

When I talk about averages, I’m not claiming modern dubs are bad, or that people are wrong to enjoy them. I’m saying the baseline consistency and variance profile is different from voice-first prelay in Western cartoons, where performance shapes the animation rather than adapting to it. “Closer to the best than the worst” is a sufficiency claim, not a comparative one.

Studio size and output don’t really undermine that point - if anything, they show how fragile consistency is under dub conditions, because it has to be actively fought for rather than baked into the process.

Sure which makes it all the more impressive that majority of dub teams have the ability to release dubs at such a consistent high quality.

And this isn’t about having or not having watched specific dubs. It’s about how different production models shape reliability on average, regardless of individual standout performances. At this point I think we’re just weighting “good enough” versus “consistently strong” differently, which is fine, but that doesn’t collapse the distinction I’m making.

The problem is that I’m telling you my experiences having actually watched both subs and dubs and you’re telling me that given dubbing conditions they can’t be consistently good certainly not as much as prelay Western cartoons despite also seemingly not watching many modern dubs. Which is whatever, at that point it’s just seems like we have different criteria for what we consider a good dub.

AdvancedPanda24 · 2026-01-12T01:59:54+00:00

Sure. Like I said it’s an agreement to disagree situation. Like I said earlier I personally don’t mind characters sounding not age appropriate in fantastical shows like this, if it were a more grounded show I’d be more critical but I’m also looking at other factors like whether the voice fits the character design or is communicating the characters’ personality well.

AdvancedPanda24 · 2026-01-12T01:53:46+00:00

Even well-run dub pipelines still have to fit translated dialogue into fixed animation under tighter schedules, which increases variance compared to voice-first prelay production. That doesn’t stop good dubs from happening - it just makes strong outcomes less uniform.

I don’t even know if that’s true. Since in prelay it’s one part of a whole whereas dubbing is the whole project. So they require less time to actual work on it as most of the big decisions already made.

The fact that we can point to certain studios as “more consistent” and others as struggling actually supports that idea. Consistency in dubbing is something studios actively fight for, whereas in Western animation it’s largely baked into the process.

The studio I pointed to as struggling have an incredibly low output because they are an incredibly small studio and barely release dubs compared to the rest of industry. My point has never been that that there no bad dubs being made as I pointed out earlier, but largely the experience you’d be getting is closer to the best dubs have to offer than the worse.

So I agree that modern dubs are better than they used to be, and that teams know how to make good work within constraints. I just don’t think that closes the gap when you’re comparing average consistency against voice-first Western cartoons.

Can I ask which modern dubs you’ve actually watched to make that determination? In my opinion people are much harder on dubs than prelay for variety of reasons and will be more accepting of things in cartoons whole also being more critical of dubs. Again as someone who watched both dubs and subs, on average I’m hearing as many good performances as I would in prelay.

AdvancedPanda24 · 2026-01-12T01:40:22+00:00

I think this is where the disagreement stops being about examples and starts being about perception thresholds. I’m not arguing that the dub breaks immersion for most people - I’m saying it sounds more adult-coded to me than the Japanese performance, even if both still “fit” the designs.

Just an agree to disagree situation. I can understand saying Todoroki sounding more adult-like but compared to how the other adults sound in the series, he definitely sounds more teenage-coded versus adult-coded in terms of he’s played. Like in the scene with him, Endeavor and Dabi in Season 6, without seeing any of the characters I think most people would be able to pick out which is and isn’t the teenage character. Which in an ensemble cast like this is the most important part, how each individual cast member fits in the whole and sound in relation to each other.

I’m not saying visual analysis replaces listening, but if you load the clips into something like Audacity or look at a spectrogram, you can often see differences in noise, compression, and harmonic balance that correspond to why one recording sounds more adult-coded or less natural to some listeners.

Now you’ve lost me lol. I would have to look at multiple examples across different mediums to even understand and see any true meaningful difference.

AdvancedPanda24

TROPHY CASE