Dub Commentaries Demonstrate the Fine Art of Dubbing

Anime dubs:  even just mentioning the idea calls to mind for many people less than favorable thoughts--mispronounced names, dumb localization changes, that ridiculous and cartoonish "splat" sound effect added in the End of Evangelion, and so on.  But the general consensus seems to be that although most dubs are absolutely terrible, there is such a thing as a good dub, and there are even some series that sound just as good (or rarely, better) in the English version when compared to the Japanese one.  I, for one, really do enjoy listening to dubs, but the unfortunate truth about them is that most are utter garbage, so any enjoyment I might've had in a good dub is ruined.

Recently, though, I've been getting interested in dubs again and have been absolutely fascinated by  what I've found.  It turns out that in Blu-Ray releases of certain anime series, the creators will release a dub commentary on it.  I knew well this happens in live action TV special features discs and so forth, but finding them in anime is so few and far between that I really didn't take a close look at it until now.  In fact, I didn't even know they existed until it came to me in a dream:  I looked them up afterwards and, sure enough, they're out there.

However, what I've discovered is simply so eye-opening that I have not been able to look away from it for a second.  While I was watching these commentaries, I began to realize that they provide such an absolutely astonishing view into the art of anime dubbing.  And not only that--watching these commentaries allows us to pinpoint the more proximate causes of the bad quality in many anime dubs.

Therefore, today I'm going to present two case studies on anime dub commentaries.  I'll be featuring dub commentaries from two anime series I really enjoyed:  Psycho-Pass and A Certain Scientific Railgun, with the Psycho-Pass dub being what I would consider a good* dub, and the Railgun dub being what I would consider a much poorer quality dub.

Before I do, though, this article is going to be absolutely FILLED to the BRIM with spoilers, so don't say I didn't warn you!

*Yeah, the Psycho-Pass dub isn't the best out there, but I wouldn't consider it anywhere near as bad as most anime dubs.  I still think the Japanese CVs out do the English ones in the end, but for the most part it isn't bad by any stretch of the imagination.  In case you haven't heard it, here are a few clips from the dub.

Now that I've got all of that out of the way, I'm going to put up a few of the more important parts of the Psycho-Pass commentary that really stuck out to me.

In the commentary on Episode 11, "Saint's Supper", we have the pleasure of listening to the voices of Akane (Kate Oxley), Kogami (Rob McCollum), and Makishima (Alex Organ).  There was supposed to be a commentary on Episode 5, but the release I have saved on my PC doesn't have it.  I'm going to go through and quote the more important things that the actors have to say before I move on to talking about the implications of them.

• First, before the opening even finishes, all three of the commentators are articulating their thoughts on the overall mood of the episode.  They're able to put forward immediately that this is one of the darker episodes in the series, if not the darkest episode in the series, with relation to the subject matter.  It seems trivial, but pay attention to this later on.

• Second of all, still before the opening is done, Alex asks Rob the difference between this project and the other anime series he's worked on.  He's instantly able to respond and say that it's more realistic:  there isn't much archetype or caricature in the roles.  He almost wanted to call working on the project "real acting" because, in his own words, he tried to play Kogami's role "as real as possible".  He was "a lot closer to the darkness [when he was playing] these really dark scenes".  It was the same way with Kate as well:  she describes how getting so close to Akane as a character and then having to act out the truly grim subject matter in this episode was, in fact, very disturbing to her, because she really did develop a true connection to the role.  The point of this is the actors have real bonds to their characters' personalities, true connections that are formed between them.  Again, more on this later.  In fact, I won't say anything, just remember everything for later.

• Another one on a similar note:  when Rob describes why he was so eager to get a role in the series, he immediately goes into the relevance of the subject matter the show touches on, especially in relation to modern technology and policing techniques.  He really "gets" what's going on in the series, he really understands the social commentary that's being presented.  The other two also comment similarly--Alex knows full well that this series is delving a little bit deeper than most anime series like to go, and he recognizes the importance of that.

• Next, on character development.  Kate is able to explain the journey that Akane takes in the world from start to finish.  She's aware of the developing and maturing that Akane goes through as the series progresses.  The same is true for both Rob and Alex as well.  Yeah, it may sound trivial to the viewer, but it's very critical.

• Final point on this episode, and it's about how the dub was done:  the actors didn't watch the whole series beforehand, as that would ruin the surprise, nor did they do all of the acting beforehand, as they wouldn't know what they were doing.  Instead, they acted out their roles as the series went on.  They went through their characters' lines as the characters developed and went through the series in time.  So they were really immersed with the ups and downs their characters went through.

We now move on to Episode 18, "Promises Written in Water", where we'll be listening to the director of the dub, Zach Bolton, as well as Stephanie Young (who voices the Dominator) and Linda Leonard (who voices the director of the MWPSB, Kasei).  The actors in this episode are, of course, more minor actors, so there's a lot more focus on how the show was cast with the director, Zach, being here.  A few points on this episode:

• First of all, we get to see the inspiration for some of these characters.  Linda, for example, explains how her character was based on Nina Sharp from the hit American TV series Fringe.  Apparently, even the design of Kasei herself was at least in part inspired by it.  This meant Linda had the opportunity to really make a connection between the two works.  If you haven't seen Fringe, again I can show a few good clips that demonstrate a little about her.  And apologies, a few short YouTube clips just can't demonstrate the really clear inspiration drawn from Nina.  I would highly encourage anyone to watch Fringe just because it's an excellent TV series, but if one would, he could see the really striking similarities between many aspects of these two characters.  The reason why this matters, though, is Linda knows this.  She's able to draw from this source and use it to improve the voice of her character.

• Second of all, Zach makes an important comment on the nature of the dub as a whole.  Many of the people who were in this dub were doing voices that were a little bit different from roles they were used to.  Although there were some exceptions to this, a decent portion of the cast was going out of their comfort zone in these roles.  Why do I mention this?  The dub is supposed to have a character of its own, it's supposed to be greater than the sum of its parts, it's not supposed to be a few people who are good at doing one or two generic voices amalgamated together.  It's supposed to BE Psycho-Pass.

Now, before I move on to getting the important parts from the Railgun dub, I will say that there is a lot more to this commentary that I didn't put here.  I only got the parts relevant to the voice acting itself and wrote them down, there's a wealth of material talking about other aspects of the show that you can get if you watch the entire commentary yourself, so without I doubt I would encourage you to do so.

So going into the Railgun dub there are a few things I'd like to comment about it before we go through the episode itself.  First of all, this is a lighter series than the last one we looked at.  Sure, there are some parts where the writing delves a little deeper into things, but it comes back out of it pretty quickly.  It's not exactly a show that would leave you with the more dark and depressing feelings that some of the Psycho-Pass episodes gave me.  Another difference is it's also much more archetypal.  It's a very "anime" show and it likes to do a lot of "very anime" things, and that extends to the characters and their personalities as well.  That's not necessarily bad as long as it's taken somewhere interesting, but it does have an influence on the voice actors and how they should do their roles.  So the content of the stories isn't a 1:1 ratio comparison by any stretch, but it doesn't need to be.  We can at least make an effort to control for these differences and look only at what matters, the voice acting itself.

Anyways, let's move on to the episode.  In Episode 3, "Tokiwadai is Targeted", we're greeted by  Brina Palencia, who plays Saten, and Cherami Leigh, who plays Uiharu.  Now, before I go into the points made in the commentary, I'd like to talk a little bit about the dub itself.  We have the pleasure of listening to two voice actors with a long list of roles performed (obviously this counts for some sort of practical experience), beautiful voices, and they're filling the roles of two really lovable characters in this series.  I'm sorry to say, though, that I really could never enjoy this dub.  It's certainly not the worst I've ever heard, but it's pretty bad, and it's bad enough to the extent where it really does interfere with watching it.  The actors' voices themselves don't sound bad on their own, sure, but they don't link up to the characters at all.  They don't fill the shoes of their characters like they should (instead they feel more like hollow husks), names tend to be horribly mispronounced, and all-in-all something just feels very "off".  Now I'm going to break into the commentary itself and try to find a few reasons why:

• Right off the bat, during the opening, there's a few things I'd like to point out.  The most striking is actually that we get to hear a little chit-chat about the characters being played, but for the most part, their understanding of them is, well, quite spare.  Cherami is able to comment a little bit about some of the traits of her character, but for the most part, it appears to be very much limited to just the lines she recorded.  Sure, the lines themselves are important, extremely so, but they have to be put in the larger context of the story and other character interactions.  So her understanding of the character is just coming from the lines she read, and that's pretty much it.

• Second of all, even the understanding of the characters themselves (as opposed to their personalities) really does seem to be limited.  Brina, for example, thinks that Uiharu's ability is growing flowers on her head.  When I first listened to this commentary, my jaw dropped when I heard that.  I could absolutely not believe what I was hearing.  We specifically get to see what Uihari's ability is in this very season, it's not some kind of knowledge one could only get from the manga or something.  Sure, it's only touched upon later on, but despite that, it's 100% right in the series.  And the actors should know full well that the characters can only have one ability because the first story arc in this season IS SPECIFICALLY ABOUT SOMEONE WHO USED A SPECIAL TECHNOLOGY TO GET MULTIPLE ABILITIES, WHICH ISN'T NORMAL.  So I was just completely flabbergasted when I watched this commentary because the actors just know so little about their characters, aside from what's immediately in front of them.

• Final note on this episode, there is a lot they could've said about the story of it as a whole, rather than what's currently happening.  They make a few comments about this line or that line but they're not very observant of the narrative devices that're being used, nor are they really even talking much past what's right in front of them.  It eventually got to the point where the actors simply ran out of things to talk about and regressed to mentioning random websites they've visited on the internet.  And I'm not joking about that.

And now we're at the other episode I'd like to call attention to, Episode 6, which is entitled "Everyone is Proactive When It Comes to This".  There were other episodes in this dub that had commentaries, but the reality of them was that they were even worse than these two and they just continually demonstrated the same problems that these did, without really adding anything different, and, to some extent, it just got too hard to watch.  Anyhow, in this episode we have Misaka (voiced by Brittney Karbowski) and Kuroko (voiced by Alison Viktorin).  This casting fits very well because 1.06 is very much about their relationship.  Just a couple thoughts on this one:

• First of all, Brittney and Alison don't really seem to talk much about the dynamic between Misaka and Kuroko.  (Do they even notice?)  Sure, they're both able to give commentary on their own characters, or talk about each other's character, but they don't really say much at all about their dynamic.  Brittney had a few things to say about Misaka's attitude towards Kuroko but not much of anything truly deep is said about their friendship, which is VERY disappointing, especially because, well, Railgun is very much a story about friendship, and the bond between the characters, their dynamics, and so on plays a big part into the entertainment factor.

• Second of all, this episode plays a bit into the larger story arc but neither one of them has a thing to say about it, which really made me frustrated.  I actually wonder whether the actors were aware of what's going on at all in that regard because despite it being pretty out in the open that there are story developments going on in the episode, absolutely nothing is said about it.

Well, that's pretty much it on this commentary.  The one thing that I would like to say before I go into comparisons, though, is that despite all the negatives, this really was an entertaining commentary to listen to.  It was fun to hear all the chit-chat and the jokes, and I really did have a laugh at some of the things that they said.  The problem, though, is the dub is still not nearly satisfactory and, that doesn't change what I think about it.

Now that we've looked at these two dubs on their own, I'd like to make a brief comparison between what's going on in each of them and how it pertains to the quality.  About this, I have three points to make on how the Psycho-Pass dub was better than the Railgun dub:

• Voice actors knew their characters.
• The actors in Psycho-Pass were people who truly "got into" their roles.  They understood their characters' emotions already when they were saying their lines.  Recalling what I wrote above, the actors went through their emotions alongside their characters.  Sure, the actors in Railgun had some vague, superficial sense of their "character", but at least from what they let on, I heard nothing on the level of the other dub.  Instead, I heard voice actors who didn't know their own characters' abilities, couldn't pronounce their own names, and overall said very little that seemed like a deeper analysis.  Pretty much everything was confined to the surface; they gave some expression on how their characters felt, but it wasn't put into the larger context of the series; Misaka, to give one example, got mad and standoffish when Kuroko warned her about the nuances of her job.  This was mentioned by the two actors, but it wasn't elaborated on how that played into her character as a whole.  I honestly wonder if Brittnew Karbowski knew her character was even a tsundere because she doesn't seem to mention anything even remotely related to her archetype once, and she was in only one commentary episode.

• Voice actors realized their characters' surroundings.
• The actors in Psycho-Pass were able to articulate their characters' dynamics, how they adjust to their environment, and so on.  They understood, as I told you to remember earlier, the mood that each episode conveyed, and they clearly used that knowledge to improve their acting.
• Furthermore, I'm not talking just about the characters' actual, immediate surroundings.  The voice actors knew what was going on in the story at that time, what was happening to other characters, how they reacted to what was going on, and so forth.  They were aware of the setting, aware of the world that the characters lived in and what an impact it had on them and their decisions, just so say a few things. 

• Voice actors understood the story as a whole.
• This is probably the most critical point, and the biggest difference between the Psycho-Pass dub and the Railgun dub:  the actors in Psycho-Pass were exposed to the story as it went along.  They were guided through what was happening to their characters, they were filled in and informed on what was happening in the story, but only up to that point.  No spoilers, though, because that would ruin the genuine emotions that the actors felt WITH their characters through both good and bad, because we know very well that played into their voice acting.  We also know the voice actors were, as I noted earlier in the article, following their characters as they came to grow and develop as the series went on.  The Railgun dub, however, was done just the way that most other dubs are.  Actors were brought into a recording studio one-by-one and would read down the page with their lines and record them all until they ran out of lines or the session time was over--whichever came first.  The actors only later figured out what was going on in the episodes they acted in when they rewatched their own work.  This is often done because it is the most economically efficient method of dubbing, and, simply put, you get what you pay for.

In conclusion, what I've managed to learn from watching dub commentaries is this:  making a good dub isn't just about getting good voice actors.  It's about filling those voice actors with character, it's about capturing the true spirit of the original voices and managing to transfer that feeling to English.  The average anime dub is so bad because so little is invested in doing this.  Everything is reduced to the most economically efficient manor of doing things (because dubbing is a very cutthroat business; dubs can barely turn a profit due to licensing costs, paying actors, and so on) and as a result all of the character which was put into the original voices was stripped out of the product, leaving just a hollow shell behind.  These voice actors are people with fine voices, but it doesn't matter a cent when the only thing they're given is lines to read off of a piece of paper, which is, from what I understand, what tends to occur in most of these mediocre dubs.  Maybe someone involved in the industry or more knowledgeable than me will come along and prove every word I said here wrong, but from where I stand it simply boils down to this:  what you get out of dubs is what you put in, and people simply can't afford to put much into them any longer.