This makes sense. Just make sure to get good voice actors for all of them. It is a distraction to hear laughably bad voice acting, especially since so many shout their moves. Oh yeah and on shouting moves, it is kind of better not to understand.
Spinning bird kick! Dragon Punch! I don’t want to hear that, only an idiot would shout out moves in a fight considering you are depleting your stamina and giving it away. In Japanese, it doesn’t sound as bad…though perhaps characters shouldn’t shout their moves out at all.
Well it’s not Street Fighter if people aren’t shouting their moves so it’s something you live with. But as long as the VA isn’t outright distracting, I don’t care. And Fuerte’s VA is the only one I would consider being distracting…and yet the VA fits his character perfectly so I can’t exactly hate on it either.
I also think some of it is an effect that the translations of the trash talking weren’t that good. I only need to mention “PROFOUND SADNESS!” to illustrate my point.
The trash talking is typical Japanese trash talking, but when you translate it directly to English the phrases sound awful. It gets lost in translation.
This is true. Honestly, it’s funny that I think the voice acting and actors in UMvC3 is waaay better than that of SF4. Don’t get me wrong, Johnny Bosch Yong does well as Yang, and I think the English VA for Rufus, Fuerte, C. Viper and Juri are done really well also. But you’re right, most of the voice actors are seasoned enough in the JP acting that they get it done right and well. Maybe that’s why the acting in UMvC3 was done better, because the majority of the actors were the actors who voiced the Marvel characters in the cartoon (though I think Doom is horrible, and sounded better in MSH and MvC2). But the actors in UMvC3 (D.C. Douglas, Tom Kane, Fred Tatasciore, Wally Wingert, and absolutely Nolan North and Charlie Adler), those are well known and great voice actors. That same kinda research and effort should be made for SF games.
Just as you speak of the short docu for the SF4 sound design, I say Capcom should look at John DiMaggio’s docu on Netflix, ‘I Know That Voice’. It says very bluntly that in order to be a convincing voice actor, you can’t just walk in a booth and speak lines and be done – you gotta be able to ACT! Someone shoulda told that to the Makoto, Gouken, Sakura, and Dan English actors…eeesh.
Indeed. They are transliterating rather than translating. The SF2 movie actually* translated* the Japanese SF2AM, this is why the actual script/dialogue is actually different in parts but the general message the characters are trying to convey or the feelings they are trying to incite remain relatively the same. To be able to translate properly you have to be completely fluent not only in both languages but the cultural contexts of both languages. This kind of attention to detail is what Capcom has lacked in their SF characters. This also why SF animes that are released always tend to be better portrayals of their characters, not because they are good rather because Capcom’s are too 1 dimensional.
My friends in Japan told me that part of the reason you probably think that is cause the voices are “exotic”, and to them they sound like any other voice actor, and sometimes even annoying, just a thought. Makes sense that we think our English voices are lame most of the time, when yes, lots of the times they are, but still.
That is part of it, since I don’t like the yelling of attacks not understanding them makes it less distracting. However sometimes the voice actors they get for dubs are just horrible. Like is it the devs children or relatives? Why don’t they hold open auditions or something if they can’t afford to hire professionals?
They can’t afford for Charlie to be low tier, would take away the hype, especially from people who are tier whores but don’t want to admit it. Plus that teleport already looks like a good start.
the voice director for SF4 is the same person who does Blanka and Adon voices Taliesin Jaffe. so maybe Capcom should think about getting a new voice director. look at IMDB will don’t see much credit to his name as a voice director other than the fact he was the voice director for Hellsing, and 4 episodes for Hellsing Ultimate.
Yeah it’s easier to tell if something is awful or cringe-worthy in your native language than in another language, but then there are also some obscenely campy lines in the script that no voice actor can save with any kind of delivery imo. When even the writing doesn’t lend itself to any high class acting, I don’t really expect much from the voice talent at that point.