huang pao-lin ⚡ 黄宝鈴 ⚡ dragon kid (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
i_am_not_cute) wrote2017-11-02 02:02 pm
i_am_not_cute) wrote2017-11-02 02:02 pm
Entry tags:
⚠ blub blub on the dub dub ⚠
A compilation of my thoughts of each episode of the T&B dub. Originally done as a series of posts in my friends-locked personal journal every time a new dub episode was released during the latter half of 2012 and the early part of 2013. Since I've had to refer back to it multiple times in discussions elsewhere, I figured I might as well just make it easy on myself and transfer it here. Beware discussions of other fandoms of mine and my RP life with Pao-Lin. Especially the latter.
...and, uh, if it matters to you: yeah, there are spoilers in here.
VERDICT: Watch the sub first for the ~true~ experience. The dub's just sprinkles on top that you may or may not like.
EPISODE 1:
I WATCHED THE FIRST T&B DUB EP AND I LIKED IT
HOPE THE OTHER FANS DON'T MIND IT
IT FELT SO WRONG
IT FELT SO RIGHT
DON'T MEAN I'M IN LOVE TONIGHT okay I'm done with this stupid parody
In all seriousness, I'm really pleased overall and am very excited to watch the next episode (and not just because I'll actually get Pao-Lin dub lines from it)! Though I still have reservations about the main duo, whoops. But Wingert's Kotetsu and Lowenthal's Barnaby aren't bad -- they're just different from Hirata and Morita. Wingert in particular has some pretty good delivery, and he even added in Kotetsu humming as he's looking around for Apollon Media's building that I don't think was in the original Japanese. But he just sounds so much younger than Hirata that I feel like the dichotomy of the old and uncool hero vs. the young and hip hero is less pronounced in the dub. Lowenthal's Barnaby, from the few lines he had in this episodes, comes off more as a smug jock than as as a smooth, self-assured pretty boy.
I have no real quibbles with the rest of the voices heard in the episode, although I confess some trepidation at what's-his-name keeping up Fire Emblem's affected manner of speaking for longer lines. (I'm so amused that he actually says that Bison has "junk in the trunk".) I was pleasantly surprised to find that I liked Kaede's voice. I was a bit worried she'd come off as annoying, but no, she was spot-on here.
My goodness, though, every time a dub episode comes out I'm probably going to lose an hour and a half of my day to it. Half an hour to watch the dub, then another half hour to rewatch the sub, then probably another half hour spent rewatching certain sections of either the dub or the sub and fangirling/fanbitching about it.
EPISODE 2:
Episode two is the first time we get actual lines from Laura Bailey's Pao-Lin, and, well...the most I can definitively say about her rendition at this point is that at least she doesn't sound like Cheria, which is good because then things would be reeeaaall awkward with Pao-Lin and Hubert in Lucetiverse. But my reaction upon hearing the first line from Dub-Lin not to be confused with that city in Ireland was: "...that voice doesn't sound like it should be coming from Pao-Lin." Which was pretty much the reaction I had to Wingert's Tiger (and I'll discuss him later in this entry), so it might just be me needing time to get used to it. Bailey makes Pao-Lin sound older than Ise does, but Japanese lady tones, particularly in anime, are in a league of their own, which makes for double the trouble when trying to find a good dub match for them. I'll have to wait until I get more lines from her to really say anything else. Unfortunately, I'll be waiting for a while, because she doesn't get actual dialogue again until her spotlight episode in episode 9...
The other voices, save for the main duo, are all pretty golden for me. Ivan is all kinds of adorable, I continue to be surprised that I really like Kaede's actress, Tony's pretty cute, Mr. Legend sounds great (and also familiar, but I can't place where he's from), and holy crap Willingham's Rock Bison, I can't even with him. I'm really enamored by his dub rendition and I'm not sure why. (Maybe Willingham brought a little of his Roy Mustang swag into even a buttmonkey role like poor Rock Bison?) Seriously, I was more-or-less indifferent to Bison while watching the original series, but within the first two episodes of the dub (hell, even just the first episode) I kind of loved him a little. That's some talent going on there, let me tell you. I'm not ashamed to say that I cackled at his reaction when he literally got fired into action from his sponsor's cannon launcher thing -- he just sounded so freaked out. Then there's Jamieson Price as Maverick, which keeps causing all sorts of on-the-verge-of-mental-blue-screen-WHUT reactions in my brain because even though I can tell the difference between the voices, there are enough similarities that I can't help but think of Malik when listening to Maverick talk. I won't lie, though -- I'm looking forward to how Price is going to handle Maverick's later scenes, because dat man can act. (For that matter, I want to hear Tara Platt as Agnes gleefully pwning Maverick with media in the last episode. It'll be tough to match Kaida in that, but...!)
Wingert continues to shine in Kotetsu's childish/goofy moments. The highlight of the episode in that regard is the scene where Kotetsu gives Barnaby his cutesy nickname, then proceeds to mock Barnaby's objections to it. Definitely comedy gold, and you could tell Wingert was really having fun with it (I think he's having fun with this aspect of Kotetsu's character in general). But we also get to see him try on Kotetsu's serious side in the second half of this episode. Overall, I found the performance uneven. I'm guessing he was trying to be energetic and encouraging, but he mostly came off as a bit flippant to me. He did, however, have his moments (such as when he was seeing off Tony) where he attained the appropriate gravitas. So he has the capacity for pulling off a more serious Kotetsu, at least. It's just a matter of him actually employing it at the right time.
I'm warming up to Lowenthal as Barnaby. But I think I'm starting to pinpoint what, exactly, is bugging me about his dub rendition, and it's not entirely Lowenthal's fault as a voice actor. I was watching the sub side-by-side with the dub, and noticed very early on in the episode that the English script modified one of Barnaby's lines.
JAPANESE
"Ikimasu yo, ojisan." (Let's go, old man.)
ENGLISH
"You gonna talk all day, old man?"
Here's the thing you have to know about Barnaby in the original Japanese: he speaks very formally and politely. When he's acting the part of being HeroTV's hottest new star, and not flipping his shit about Ouroboros or finding out that his memories have been fucked with, Barnaby uses keigo, which is basically what you learn as a beginning Japanese student so that you're much less likely to offend native speakers. That's why he contrasts especially well with the brash, manchildish Kotetsu. It's part of his charm as a Hero to his fans that he's so "cool" and polite. He clearly disdains Kotetsu at first, but it's one that's couched in calm, distant formality. Basically, he returns Kotetsu's enmity, but he doesn't stoop to Kotetsu's level to express that.
Are you starting to see what the problem might be here with the dub script?
I can't speak on a line-by-line basis of the rest of dub!Barnaby's dialogue yet, partially because I haven't got that far in my side-by-side rewatch and partially because my offhand Japanese knowledge is rusty, but -- the issue with the particular line I've singled out for this is that it seems to close that distance between Barnaby and Kotetsu. Actually, you could argue that the insulting aspect in the dub is practically the opposite of what it was in the original Japanese. Dub!Barnaby chooses not to address his professional senior with the appropriately formal, respectful tone, instead talking to him like he would a peer (or hell, a junior) that he doesn't particularly care for. The rendering of this line skips past the formal aspect of Barnaby's celebrity persona and goes straight for the rudeness that it sometimes hides, which is I think at the heart of my thought that Lowenthal's Barnaby comes off as a jock-type instead of a supermodel-type, as Morita seemed to play him. And you know what? I think that's still a legit interpretation of that part of Barnaby's character, especially considering that in America we prize the macho jock over the effeminate supermodel (though that's not to say that the two can't converge in varying degrees or anything). But it definitely changes the tone of the Kotetsu/Barnaby dynamic. As I mentioned in my post about the first episode, the dichotomy of character types for the main duo seems less pronounced in the dub, but at the time I was basing my objections solely on the similarity vocal tones. Now we have a potential textual reason for it.
I've already disclaimed that I'm not a native Japanese speaker or even particularly proficient in Japanese, but I feel like I should emphasize that fact because of all of my translation babbling. I'm perfectly willing to acknowledge that I might be missing some nuances for Barnaby in the original Japanese that would explain the English adaptation for him. I'm also aware that there might be lip-sync issues as well, and likely translation snafus with even the fansubs (there's at least one documented case of it involving Pao-Lin listed on TVTropes, even).
EDIT: This is not to say that I think all of the translation/adaptation choices (whether for Barnaby or someone else) were bad! In fact there've been a few that I liked.
EPISODE ONE
-I mentioned it in my other entry, but it bears repeating -- Nathan's comment on Antonio's "junk in the trunk."
-The scene where Kotetsu meets Lloyds for the first time. In the original, Lloyds misread one of the kanji for Kotetsu's name (pronouncing it "Toratetsu"). In the dub, Lloyds just straight-up confessed that he had no idea how to pronounce Kotetsu's name at all, which sadly makes sense for the quasi-American setting of Sternbild.
EPISODE TWO:
-Right before Origami Cyclone nearly bowls over Wild Tiger in his rush to photobomb Blue Rose's appearance as HeroTV goes live. Barnaby says that it's time for him and Tiger to show up as well, but in the original Tiger protests that he's not done chewing out Barnaby for his less-than-heroic view of the Hero business. In the dub, Tiger instead sneers: "You sure? You don't want to touch up your makeup?" (Interesting how it shifts the focus from Kotetsu playing the role of a scolding father to being, well, kind of a jerk just on principle.)
-Okay, this one is less me liking it and more just noticing the difference in tone once again for Tiger. As him and Barnaby are racing to confront the walking statue, Tiger says "I'll show you what being a Hero is all about!" in the original Japanese. The dub has him instead snap out the Pre-Asskicking One-Liner of "I'm gonna have to drop a line on this little guy!" (Though it's preceded with "I'll show you how to bring this thing down!") (Also noticing that the dub seems to have added lines for Tiger as he's trying to target the statue not too long afterwards...actually they've added a number of lines for him, like when he's rushing out of Saito's lab to get ready to see Kaede's ice skating performance, or when he's trying to convince her that, yes, he's going to be there to see her.)
-Agnes warning Tiger against destroying the Stone Lion statue. In the original she mentions the damage fines; in the dub she outright says "You break it, you buy it."
EPISODE 3:
I can't tell if it's me getting used to the voices or if it's the actors getting used to their roles, but the performances in this episode seemed a lot better than in the first two (which were already pretty good, despite my nitpicks). The arguments between Kotetsu and Barnaby as well as Kotetsu and Agnes were pretty spectacular. My main gripe is with Fire Emblem's VA and his way of affecting Nathan's flamboyant tone, but I think I can deal with it if he can pull off serious!Nathan. The dub rewrite of his lines (regarding his thoughts about Barnaby) for this episode was pretty epic, though. "Oh, yes, he's going places! I only hope my place is one of them." (Compared with the original: "He's got a pretty face, so he's got to be popular with the ladies too.") Whoever was in charge of doing the translation and adaptation for this series sure had a ball with it (perhaps too much of one, considering how they've chosen to render Barnaby's lines, but I've already talked about that before). See also: Kotetsu calling Barnaby "homie" when he was pretending to ask Barnaby to hang out on their supposed day off. Arguably that's the highlight of this episode, but then again, I've yet to see the infamous "that's a building" scene in dub form, so hopefully I'll report back here whenever I get around to that.
(replying to a comment on this post:) Yeah, it's definitely a more-than-competent dub, and I'm really excited watching it because in a way it's sort of like fanfic -- it's interesting seeing how things get reinterpreted, you know? But my other main issue is that, although the actors certainly seem to be having fun with their roles, it sometimes feels like they don't go far enough with the emotions (and I've heard other people say that this is typical of English dubs as a general rule). Sky High is earnest, but not earnest enough, in comparison with Go Inoue's rendition; Mario the announcer is pretty dramatic, but sometimes not dramatic enough. So I'm both anticipating and dreading how Lowenthal's going to handle Barnaby's breakdown scenes.
EPISODE 4:
The funny thing is that this episode was never high on my list of favorite T&B episodes, despite Karina and I sharing quite a lot of similarities in terms of our aspirations and life situations. I'm not entirely sure why.
Well, anyway, Wahlgren really brought her A-game for this episode. She's got Karina's teenage personality down pat and is quite the accomplished singer! Additionally, I'm getting more comfortable with the idea of Wingert's Kotetsu -- he was pretty good here fo both his serious and goofy moments. The mental jury continues to be out to lunch on Barnadub, but it's occurred to me that this may be a side effect of both Lowenthal's interpretation of the character as well as where Barnaby's character is in terms of the overall narrative. I don't think I really started warming up to Barnaby until maybe...shit, I don't even remember, but he definitely didn't strike me as a potentially interesting character at the beginning of the series. So it's entirely possible I'll be singing an entirely different tune come the Jake arc or something. Fire Emblem gets more substantial line time; still can't decide what I feel about him. Hopefully episode 6 will clear that up.
On a non-voice note, I'm curious whether this localized version is mix-and-matching DVD edits to the animation. Barnaby's ~quality~ giraffe impression is still present in this episode, but the ouroboros symbol is gone from the Stern dollar that Karina has and the piano keys were also fixed from the original aired episode, which were changes made for the DVD releases. Chu?
EPISODE 5:
During the botched surprise robbery birthday party in the original Japanese, Barnaby tries to intimidate the criminal into compliance by name-checking himself: "I'm Barnaby Brooks Jr. Have you heard of that name?" The dub changes that to: "I'm Barnaby Brooks Jr., and this is Wild Tiger. I assume you've heard of us?"
"Wild Tiger" is not only in his civvies, but he also doesn't have his eyemask on.
In effect, Barnadub has just outed his partner to a criminal.
Uh.
Yeah.
To be fair, this isn't She's a Man in Japan levels of discontinuity, but I'm scratching my head over why it was even changed in the first place. It makes more sense for Barnaby to exclude Wild Tiger completely, since at this point he doesn't think much of the other man. Not to mention that Barnaby has enough star power on his own to back up his threat. He doesn't need to bring Tiger into it. Is this meant to be a red herring for the second half of the series, where Kotetsu's only hope of redemption from being falsely accused of murder (barring the Daughter Ex Machina that undoes Maverick's brainwashing of the other Heroes) is running into people who are familiar with what he looks like in and out of uniform?
In more amusing changes, I think the dub possibly managed to make one of the lines in this episode of gay even gayer. Behold, Kotetsu trying to rationalize surprising the very conservative Barnaby with a birthday party:
JAPANESE
"When you surprise people [who don't usually like surprises] with parties, they get teary, say 'Thank you!', and shake your hand!"*
*I would cite the Japanese if I could actually make it out.
ENGLISH
"When Bunny finds out we went to all this trouble for him, he's gonna be like 'Thank you!' He's gonna hug all of us!"
In other adaptation notes:
And then in voice notes:
EPISODE 6:
1) My fears about John Eric Bentley have been laid to rest. He hit his stride just in time -- he was (pardon the pun) on fire the moment he spoke Nathan's first lines in the episode. Also, manly Nathan is a yes. I'm looking forward to seeing how he handles serious Nathan in the next episode.
2) They slightly changed the send-off conversation between Kotetsu and Nathan. Basically, as Nathan's dropping off Kotetsu for the night, he asks if Kotetsu wants someone to stay with him (because he noticed Kotetsu was looking kind of down after events from earlier). Of course, this being Nathan, it sounds pretty suggestive as well, but Kotetsu just laughs and declines. Mainly my nitpick with this one is that the dub version isn't as specific as the original version: the original line has Kotetsu saying something along the lines of "I'm going to get a crick in my neck from using your arm as a pillow", whereas the dub has him just saying "You're not my type, you're too tall." I find this abbreviation strange in light of the dub's tendency to overexplain things via adding lines, but ultimately I'm just splitting hairs. Either rendition of the scene is pretty golden, and I love for what it reveals about both Nathan's and Kotetsu's characters.
3) I continue to be impressed not only with the main talent, but also the side voices for many of the nameless characters. In particular from this episode: the criminals at the beginning and Barnaby's photographer. The roles are throwaway; the performances are not.
EPISODES 7 & 8:
I'm not surprised Lowenthal pulls off angry!Bunny effectively -- we are talking about the dude who played Asch the Bloody, after all. Meanwhile, Bentley continues to sail merrily along as Fire Emblem, and holy shit O'Brien as Lunatic is like audiosex hnnnngh. Damn, damn, hot damn.Pun possibly intended. Ivan is appropriately woobie-like and more than a little adorable. Interestingly, Price's delivery on his Maverick lines seems different than before: I've mentioned before that I was hearing shades of Malik in Maverick, but there's none of that in episodes 7 and 8. Guess he needed some time to grow into the character, as well? On a slightly related note, I was definitely hearing Cheria in Mary's lines. And I still maintain that Saito needs to be moar obnoxious.
Comments on the script...Kotetsu, did you seriously just refer to yourself as a "young buck"? LMFAO. Also, was that a Dinosaurs reference I heard? "Gotta love me!" And I still continue to love Blue Rose's appearance in episode 7. "Oh, good, you're wearing black -- that means you won't have to change for your funeral!" To hell with her haters, man.
Next week is Dragon Kid the babysitting Hero. 8DDDDDDDDDD
EPISODES 9 & 10:
Yes, Tiger actually does make a Scarface reference in episode ten when he picks up one of the machine guns that the Ourobots dropped and uses it against them. This fucking script, man.
Speaking of the script!
HEADCANON CONFIRMED. :|b
Actually, in general, Dub-Lin seems to have a bit more 'tude than how I typically play her. (You could say this about pretty much all of the characters, actually...) But I can't tell if that's legitimately something changed for the dub (though certainly it comes through in that line, compared with the original) or if it was always there but I didn't catch it due to the language barrier and lackluster subtitles. There's something to be said about context, though, which is something I've talked about before regarding her (how she acts around adults versus people her own age), not to mention she's 13 in this episode and 15/16 by the time she drops into Luceti. But I have always tended to play her as softer, nicer, and more childlike (childish?) in general. Dub-Lin, in contrast, definitely feels more like a teenager. Which...she is, technically, so perhaps I should just shut the fuck up right now. But she's always come off as more innocent in the original and especially in the supplementary material. I'm also wondering if part of it is just the different voices: Ise sometimes lends a certain huskiness to Pao-Lin's voice (that I like) that I'm not noticing in Bailey's performance. In fact, Bailey's Pao-Lin sounds a lot like Wahlgren's Karina, which is where I guess part of my problem with the voice comes in. The huskiness simultaneously makes Pao-Lin sound older and more like a young boy, which is the main conceit of her character concept. And I feel like that got lost with this casting choice. (See also: My previous rants on the dub casting for Kotetsu and Barnaby.) To be honest, I wasn't impressed with Bailey's acting in the episode in general, either, but I may just be speaking as a super-finicky Pao-Lin RPer, so ignore at will.
(It absolutely does not help that I associate Bailey with Cheria Barnes, which, well...if you're not familiar with Graces, that picture alone should tell you that she and Pao-Lin are very different characters.)
TL;DR I have to think more on how I'm going to be incorporating the dub. Bailey's voice might end up being the basis of my mental Pao-voice, though I'd probably merge it with Ise's performance. I'd also be willing to introduce just the tiniest bit of snark and sass into Pao-Lin's character, but unless later episodes give me some really spectacular reasons to change my mind, I'll probably essentially stick with a more child-like Pao-Lin. Given the dearth of Pao-Lin lines in subsequent episodes, though, I'm not forseeing that I would warm up to it all that much in later episodes (as I have been with Wingert's Kotetsu, surprisingly enough...it's gotten to the point where sometimes I do actually mentally hear Kotetsu as Wingert, instead of Hirata -- so surreal). On the other hand, I fell in love with Willingham's Antonio by the first episode, so packing that much charm and personality into a few lines is possible.
EDIT: It occurs to me that there may be a contradiction in my headcanon if I was thinking that Pao-Lin had noticeable problem with a potty mouth but was overall still childlike and innocent. Again, need to think more on this.
Meanwhile, over in episode ten, Stephanie Sheh as Kriem is great, as is Steve Blum as Jake.
EPISODES 11 & 12:
Blum as Jake is uncanny. It's like they suddenly endowed the original Japanese seiyuu with the ability to speak fluent English. And then told him to make Jake sound even more off his rocker.
Strangely, despite having less than ten lines across the two episodes, Bailey feels like she's starting to settle into Pao-Lin's character better.
Seitz is getting better as Sky High as well, but he doesn't feel as "iconic" in the role, if that makes sense. The voice tone is good, the delivery still needs work. Though I can't decide how much of this can be blamed on Seitz himself and how much can be blamed on the script adaptation. Episode 15, don't let me down!
The scene with Barnaby chewing out Kotetsu for not trusting him in episode 12 (when Kotetsu barged into the warehouse to arrest "Jake") was also rendered really well.
I almost kinda like Sheh's Kriem better than Neya's????? (Don't cut me.)
EPISODES 13 THROUGH 19:
Rotwang, the creator of the killer android Cis and later of the H-01 androids that the Heroes face in the endgame of T&B, was never a particularly interesting or compelling character for me (except in the sense that I headcanon that Pao-Lin has more of a personal grudge against him than against Maverick). His character design was clownish, his voice wasn't much better (and this is the guy who voiced Roger Smith from The Big O in Japanese!), and he didn't get exactly a unique or nuanced portrayal in the canon before meeting his untimely end. He was only interesting for peeling back a few more layers on Barnaby's past -- more specifically, on what Barnaby's parents did before they were killed.
Enter the T&B dub. Color me shocked that Rotwang actually comes off as legitimately menacing, despite his cartoonish face. I suppose it helps that we have an official English pronunciation for his name now (approximately ROHT-vahng, as opposed to...something more unfortunate-sounding), but it's amazing the difference that a different delivery and tone can make. It's still clear that Rotwang's not all there, but the insanity is at a mild simmer rather than a wild boil. There also seems to be some sort of vague accent to his sentences: not a culture-specific one as far as I can tell, but just a different lilt that adds an unsettling otherness to an otherwise cliche, flat character.
"Wow," says I. "I am seriously impressed by dub!Rotwang. In fact, I think I like him better than the original! I'm really looking forward to seeing how the actor will handle him in the endgame. In fact, who the hell is this guy's actor, anyway?"
...
...
...
...
...
...VIC MICGOGNA?!
VIC
MOTHERFUCKING
MICGOGNA?!
ARE YOU EVEN FOR SERIOUS
I
I JUST
WOW
WOOOOOOW
Even better: Micgogna also voiced Chuckman in the dub, and pulled off a good job there as well despite the scant material to work with. Hello, my mind has been blown for the day.
No, wait, it gets even better than that. I remember there was a huge uproar in the fandom when dub casting was still being announced for this series because many folks were afraid that Micgogna would be given one of the two main roles. Some went so far as to insist that Micgogna be given no roles whatsoever because of his consistently unsavory IRL/OOC behavior. In the end, it looks like there was a compromise: he might have gotten two roles in the series, but both are Doomed Henchmen roles, meaning that those in the intersection of T&B fans and Vic-haters can at least have the satisfaction of hearing/seeing him (or the characters he voiced, anyway) meet untimely ends.
Whatever your personal opinions of the man, though, you really have to give him credit for at least his performance as Rotwang. Because damn. And again, damn.
(The word is out on Cis, though -- I've yet to find a credit for her. Then again, I didn't look harder than Wikipedia.)
***
Speaking of! Seitz has admirably redeemed himself as Keith in my eyes with episode 15, as I was hoping. He still will never match Go (as Lowenthal will never match Morita), but hearing him do Keith's depressing monologue in the middle of the episode...yup, that was a stiletto heel to the feels, no doubt. On the opposite end of the emotional spectrum, viewers were treated to hearing Keith go "Hey. How you doin'?" to Cis while greeting her with a bishie-sparkle smile the second time he met with her. Thanks to voicetwinnage, you may also picture Dhaos from Tales of Phantasia and/or Frederic Chopin from Eternal Sonata doing the same thing. You're welcome.
I had few issues with Bailey-Lin here (in fact I rather liked her for the few lines that she had), but I had to nitpick both her delivery and the script's rendering of Pao-Lin's most memorable line from this episode, a line that also received a bit of contention in fandom even with fansubs. It's when the Girls' Team is proceeding to give Keith advice on how to approach Cis.
The objection to the fansub's version of the line is that it specifically mentions a boy when that reference wasn't present in the original. (This became relevant, I think, when the 5th drama CD came out with a Pao-Lin -> Karina shiptease.) Technically, there's space for it to be inferred, given the topic at hand, but to me it makes more sense for Pao-Lin's character if she were simply speaking from her own experience as a human with a heart (to reference something she says later in the series). So, a more accurate translation might be: "If I were her, it'd make me happy if someone complimented me."
On the other hand, the dub seems to imply that Pao-Lin actually pays attention to things like romance and relationships, when I don't think that's true at all. I could see the argument that she possibly picked up on that kind of thing from spending time with Karina after they bonded together better during the events of the 5th drama CD, but the dub line still jibes weirdly given her body language when she says it:
Yes, I made a GIF of this. It's adorable, okay okay.
That's not the body language of someone confidently dispensing love advice -- that's someone shyly offering up her two cents on a topic she knows next to nothing about, a price that is paid from the stores of her own general experience as a person and not because she has any actual firsthand experience or the equivalent of academic experience in the field. (...I may or not be elaborating a little.) The "boku dattara" of the original Japanese makes this clear, and it's a nuance missing from the dub.
On the other hand, you could argue that it's simply a language difference, that after all the Japanese language as used by native Japanese speakers is generally more "indirect" than English. Not to mention that probably the only reason I can even nitpick on this as a characterization issue is because I obsessively track any supplementary info and canon that I can find relating to Pao-Lin, all of which points to Pao-Lin being somewhat naive about certain things as the result of tunnel vision where the only things in her sight are fighting and food. That's why I would say that the dub rendering of this line feels OOC for her.
But I've been mired in this canon and in speculation about Pao-Lin's character for so long that I've forgotten how she might come off to those who only know her from the actual series (either dub or sub). I've long been self-conscious that in trying to build a versatile, engaging character that I can roleplay with, I've gotten away from her core -- that with the way I play her, she might be interesting to thread with but she's ultimately unrecognizable as "Pao-Lin Huang". It's difficult for me to personally gauge this because as of this post (and as far as I can tell), no one has played her as extensively as I have, so I can't compare my portrayal with others and say "Oh, yeah, I did that too, I must be on the right track" or "Hm, that's different from mine, are they wrong or am I the one who missed something...?" (Or rather, I can't really do this with confidence because there's simply not a sufficient enough sample size.) My Luceti castmates and most of my canon-familiar RP partners have had no issues with my playing, but the pieces haven't completely fallen into place with Pao-Lin for me personally.
That's getting off-track from discussing the T&B dub, though, so I shall shut up and save the Pao-meta for a later post (possibly over in![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
soraspace). In the meantime, the rest of my dub thoughts at the moment are much, much shorter than these mini-essays on a mad scientist and a kid of the dragon.
***
"Hey, buddy, you got smoke comin' outta your ass!" and "I only brake for Blue Rose!" were the best lines to come out of the dub script for episode 14.
***
I wonder if Micgogna also voiced the Lady Killer from episode 16? It fits the pattern of "surprisingly entertaining performance from a two-bit character who meets an untimely demise" he seems to be falling into for this series.
***
Wingert still keeps tripping up on pronouncing "Kaede", news at 11. But the gods bless him anyway.
***
"[Maverick]'s like the patron saint of Heroes." YOU TAKE THAT BACK, KOTETSU --
***
Never have the words "repent, sinner" sounded more like a come-on than when spoken by O'Brien's Lunatic.
***
In the Flamingly Gay Episode of Gayness and Homodachis, the script writers slightly altered one of Barnaby's lines right before he gets Kotetsusmacked.
Well-played, writers. Well-played.
EPISODE 20:
Related to nothing in this episode (I don't think), but the script seems to have stopped adding in dialogue where there wasn't any in the original. I think the last time they might have done it was episode 14, but I could be misremembering. At any rate, things are moving merrily along into the fiasco that is Kotetsu's framing.
And yes, the dub changed Kotetsu's original flub of "Heaven helps those who help themselves" to, well, "Heaven help me." I laughed.
EPISODES 21 THROUGH 24:
EPISODE 21
Not a dub note specifically, but I only just noticed on this watchthrough that the portrait shot for the H-01 Wild Tiger on HeroTV has him/it flashing the victory sign. Whose bright idea was that?
Also, Kotetsu, your towel really was not that cool. Just face the facts already.
EPISODE 22
Apparently I never plurked about this episode. Hm.
EPISODE 23
"I am going to bitchslap someone for this." Nathan gets some epic line rewrites for this episode and the next one (see also: "Oh snap!" once Kaede takes down Rotwang and thus somehow deactivates the explosive collars, causing them to unsnap from the Heroes' necks).
Saito isn't nearly as obnoxious here as he is in the original, which I've talked about in other entries, but it's no big deal. I still laughed at his "Your car does, indeed, suck" line to Ben.
EPISODE 24
OKAY I ACTUALLY DO HAVE SOMEWHAT SUBSTANTIAL THOUGHTS ON STUFF IN THIS.
The more minor thinkeration is regarding Rotwang, whose dub performance I feel deserves repeated mention. He really shows his true batshit colors in this episode, but even while hamming it up he's still more menacing in the dub than in the sub. Someone on Plurk made the remark that in the dub, he comes off about as crazy as Jake and thus could potentially hold his own as a villain in his own right, instead of in the original Japanese where he seemed more like Maverick's silly villain sidekick. "He's a legit comic book villain, instead of a Comic Book Villain Trope." I would not complain if they got Micgogna to voice Robin Baxter in the first movie, man. (This is putting aside the general notion of giving this guy work when apparently he's kind of a jerk and creep OOC. I'm speaking just in terms of his talent.)
But of course, we can't be talking about episode 24 without also touching on That Scene With the Tears and the Fried Rice. I have seen this scene multiple times already and I still end up internally screaming at it whenever I watch it. So yes, to anyone who feared that the dub might potentially butcher this scene: your fears are unfounded. Wingert and Lowenthal pass with flying colors, and the dub script kept the fried rice and the eyelashes and Kotetsu going on a drinking binge because omg Barnaby said my name!!!
That's not to say that there aren't differences in execution between the sub and dub, because there are, and your mileage may vary on how much this affects your enjoyment of the scene. Lowenthal doesn't hit Morita-levels of intensity during the fried rice line (I will eat my Figuarts Zero Pao-Lin figure if Morita wasn't actually literally in tears while recording), but that doesn't matter as much because Lowenthal, instead, maintains an emotionally tense baseline throughout. So while Morita's fried rice line is like a suckerfeelspunch, Lowenthal's is just another feelspunch atop a pile of feelspunches that started right when Barnaby discovered Kotetsu's battered body. (In contrast, I would argue that Morita!Barnaby's breakdown -- or at least the external expression of it -- starts really showing through the cracks at around 21:16, when he has to tell Kotetsu a second time to shut the fuck up.) Either way, it fucking hurts. Additionally, dub!Barnaby's more informal tone, which I've dinged as a mild-ish negative before, actually really helps in this instance, because it conveys how the walls between Barnaby and Kotetsu have really crumbled by this point.
They also mildly changed Blue Rose's motivational speech in this episode, and I think it works slightly better than the original.
It's really just more nitpicking over nuance and emphasis, though, and possibly also running up against the language barrier. Again, not a huge deal.
Aaaaand apparently I had no commentary on Episode 25! Oops.
...and, uh, if it matters to you: yeah, there are spoilers in here.
VERDICT: Watch the sub first for the ~true~ experience. The dub's just sprinkles on top that you may or may not like.
EPISODE 1:
I WATCHED THE FIRST T&B DUB EP AND I LIKED IT
HOPE THE OTHER FANS DON'T MIND IT
IT FELT SO WRONG
IT FELT SO RIGHT
DON'T MEAN I'M IN LOVE TONIGHT okay I'm done with this stupid parody
In all seriousness, I'm really pleased overall and am very excited to watch the next episode (and not just because I'll actually get Pao-Lin dub lines from it)! Though I still have reservations about the main duo, whoops. But Wingert's Kotetsu and Lowenthal's Barnaby aren't bad -- they're just different from Hirata and Morita. Wingert in particular has some pretty good delivery, and he even added in Kotetsu humming as he's looking around for Apollon Media's building that I don't think was in the original Japanese. But he just sounds so much younger than Hirata that I feel like the dichotomy of the old and uncool hero vs. the young and hip hero is less pronounced in the dub. Lowenthal's Barnaby, from the few lines he had in this episodes, comes off more as a smug jock than as as a smooth, self-assured pretty boy.
I have no real quibbles with the rest of the voices heard in the episode, although I confess some trepidation at what's-his-name keeping up Fire Emblem's affected manner of speaking for longer lines. (I'm so amused that he actually says that Bison has "junk in the trunk".) I was pleasantly surprised to find that I liked Kaede's voice. I was a bit worried she'd come off as annoying, but no, she was spot-on here.
My goodness, though, every time a dub episode comes out I'm probably going to lose an hour and a half of my day to it. Half an hour to watch the dub, then another half hour to rewatch the sub, then probably another half hour spent rewatching certain sections of either the dub or the sub and fangirling/fanbitching about it.
EPISODE 2:
Episode two is the first time we get actual lines from Laura Bailey's Pao-Lin, and, well...the most I can definitively say about her rendition at this point is that at least she doesn't sound like Cheria, which is good because then things would be reeeaaall awkward with Pao-Lin and Hubert in Lucetiverse. But my reaction upon hearing the first line from Dub-Lin not to be confused with that city in Ireland was: "...that voice doesn't sound like it should be coming from Pao-Lin." Which was pretty much the reaction I had to Wingert's Tiger (and I'll discuss him later in this entry), so it might just be me needing time to get used to it. Bailey makes Pao-Lin sound older than Ise does, but Japanese lady tones, particularly in anime, are in a league of their own, which makes for double the trouble when trying to find a good dub match for them. I'll have to wait until I get more lines from her to really say anything else. Unfortunately, I'll be waiting for a while, because she doesn't get actual dialogue again until her spotlight episode in episode 9...
The other voices, save for the main duo, are all pretty golden for me. Ivan is all kinds of adorable, I continue to be surprised that I really like Kaede's actress, Tony's pretty cute, Mr. Legend sounds great (and also familiar, but I can't place where he's from), and holy crap Willingham's Rock Bison, I can't even with him. I'm really enamored by his dub rendition and I'm not sure why. (Maybe Willingham brought a little of his Roy Mustang swag into even a buttmonkey role like poor Rock Bison?) Seriously, I was more-or-less indifferent to Bison while watching the original series, but within the first two episodes of the dub (hell, even just the first episode) I kind of loved him a little. That's some talent going on there, let me tell you. I'm not ashamed to say that I cackled at his reaction when he literally got fired into action from his sponsor's cannon launcher thing -- he just sounded so freaked out. Then there's Jamieson Price as Maverick, which keeps causing all sorts of on-the-verge-of-mental-blue-screen-WHUT reactions in my brain because even though I can tell the difference between the voices, there are enough similarities that I can't help but think of Malik when listening to Maverick talk. I won't lie, though -- I'm looking forward to how Price is going to handle Maverick's later scenes, because dat man can act. (For that matter, I want to hear Tara Platt as Agnes gleefully pwning Maverick with media in the last episode. It'll be tough to match Kaida in that, but...!)
Wingert continues to shine in Kotetsu's childish/goofy moments. The highlight of the episode in that regard is the scene where Kotetsu gives Barnaby his cutesy nickname, then proceeds to mock Barnaby's objections to it. Definitely comedy gold, and you could tell Wingert was really having fun with it (I think he's having fun with this aspect of Kotetsu's character in general). But we also get to see him try on Kotetsu's serious side in the second half of this episode. Overall, I found the performance uneven. I'm guessing he was trying to be energetic and encouraging, but he mostly came off as a bit flippant to me. He did, however, have his moments (such as when he was seeing off Tony) where he attained the appropriate gravitas. So he has the capacity for pulling off a more serious Kotetsu, at least. It's just a matter of him actually employing it at the right time.
I'm warming up to Lowenthal as Barnaby. But I think I'm starting to pinpoint what, exactly, is bugging me about his dub rendition, and it's not entirely Lowenthal's fault as a voice actor. I was watching the sub side-by-side with the dub, and noticed very early on in the episode that the English script modified one of Barnaby's lines.
JAPANESE
"Ikimasu yo, ojisan." (Let's go, old man.)
ENGLISH
"You gonna talk all day, old man?"
Here's the thing you have to know about Barnaby in the original Japanese: he speaks very formally and politely. When he's acting the part of being HeroTV's hottest new star, and not flipping his shit about Ouroboros or finding out that his memories have been fucked with, Barnaby uses keigo, which is basically what you learn as a beginning Japanese student so that you're much less likely to offend native speakers. That's why he contrasts especially well with the brash, manchildish Kotetsu. It's part of his charm as a Hero to his fans that he's so "cool" and polite. He clearly disdains Kotetsu at first, but it's one that's couched in calm, distant formality. Basically, he returns Kotetsu's enmity, but he doesn't stoop to Kotetsu's level to express that.
Are you starting to see what the problem might be here with the dub script?
I can't speak on a line-by-line basis of the rest of dub!Barnaby's dialogue yet, partially because I haven't got that far in my side-by-side rewatch and partially because my offhand Japanese knowledge is rusty, but -- the issue with the particular line I've singled out for this is that it seems to close that distance between Barnaby and Kotetsu. Actually, you could argue that the insulting aspect in the dub is practically the opposite of what it was in the original Japanese. Dub!Barnaby chooses not to address his professional senior with the appropriately formal, respectful tone, instead talking to him like he would a peer (or hell, a junior) that he doesn't particularly care for. The rendering of this line skips past the formal aspect of Barnaby's celebrity persona and goes straight for the rudeness that it sometimes hides, which is I think at the heart of my thought that Lowenthal's Barnaby comes off as a jock-type instead of a supermodel-type, as Morita seemed to play him. And you know what? I think that's still a legit interpretation of that part of Barnaby's character, especially considering that in America we prize the macho jock over the effeminate supermodel (though that's not to say that the two can't converge in varying degrees or anything). But it definitely changes the tone of the Kotetsu/Barnaby dynamic. As I mentioned in my post about the first episode, the dichotomy of character types for the main duo seems less pronounced in the dub, but at the time I was basing my objections solely on the similarity vocal tones. Now we have a potential textual reason for it.
I've already disclaimed that I'm not a native Japanese speaker or even particularly proficient in Japanese, but I feel like I should emphasize that fact because of all of my translation babbling. I'm perfectly willing to acknowledge that I might be missing some nuances for Barnaby in the original Japanese that would explain the English adaptation for him. I'm also aware that there might be lip-sync issues as well, and likely translation snafus with even the fansubs (there's at least one documented case of it involving Pao-Lin listed on TVTropes, even).
EDIT: This is not to say that I think all of the translation/adaptation choices (whether for Barnaby or someone else) were bad! In fact there've been a few that I liked.
EPISODE ONE
-I mentioned it in my other entry, but it bears repeating -- Nathan's comment on Antonio's "junk in the trunk."
-The scene where Kotetsu meets Lloyds for the first time. In the original, Lloyds misread one of the kanji for Kotetsu's name (pronouncing it "Toratetsu"). In the dub, Lloyds just straight-up confessed that he had no idea how to pronounce Kotetsu's name at all, which sadly makes sense for the quasi-American setting of Sternbild.
EPISODE TWO:
-Right before Origami Cyclone nearly bowls over Wild Tiger in his rush to photobomb Blue Rose's appearance as HeroTV goes live. Barnaby says that it's time for him and Tiger to show up as well, but in the original Tiger protests that he's not done chewing out Barnaby for his less-than-heroic view of the Hero business. In the dub, Tiger instead sneers: "You sure? You don't want to touch up your makeup?" (Interesting how it shifts the focus from Kotetsu playing the role of a scolding father to being, well, kind of a jerk just on principle.)
-Okay, this one is less me liking it and more just noticing the difference in tone once again for Tiger. As him and Barnaby are racing to confront the walking statue, Tiger says "I'll show you what being a Hero is all about!" in the original Japanese. The dub has him instead snap out the Pre-Asskicking One-Liner of "I'm gonna have to drop a line on this little guy!" (Though it's preceded with "I'll show you how to bring this thing down!") (Also noticing that the dub seems to have added lines for Tiger as he's trying to target the statue not too long afterwards...actually they've added a number of lines for him, like when he's rushing out of Saito's lab to get ready to see Kaede's ice skating performance, or when he's trying to convince her that, yes, he's going to be there to see her.)
-Agnes warning Tiger against destroying the Stone Lion statue. In the original she mentions the damage fines; in the dub she outright says "You break it, you buy it."
EPISODE 3:
I can't tell if it's me getting used to the voices or if it's the actors getting used to their roles, but the performances in this episode seemed a lot better than in the first two (which were already pretty good, despite my nitpicks). The arguments between Kotetsu and Barnaby as well as Kotetsu and Agnes were pretty spectacular. My main gripe is with Fire Emblem's VA and his way of affecting Nathan's flamboyant tone, but I think I can deal with it if he can pull off serious!Nathan. The dub rewrite of his lines (regarding his thoughts about Barnaby) for this episode was pretty epic, though. "Oh, yes, he's going places! I only hope my place is one of them." (Compared with the original: "He's got a pretty face, so he's got to be popular with the ladies too.") Whoever was in charge of doing the translation and adaptation for this series sure had a ball with it (perhaps too much of one, considering how they've chosen to render Barnaby's lines, but I've already talked about that before). See also: Kotetsu calling Barnaby "homie" when he was pretending to ask Barnaby to hang out on their supposed day off. Arguably that's the highlight of this episode, but then again, I've yet to see the infamous "that's a building" scene in dub form, so hopefully I'll report back here whenever I get around to that.
(replying to a comment on this post:) Yeah, it's definitely a more-than-competent dub, and I'm really excited watching it because in a way it's sort of like fanfic -- it's interesting seeing how things get reinterpreted, you know? But my other main issue is that, although the actors certainly seem to be having fun with their roles, it sometimes feels like they don't go far enough with the emotions (and I've heard other people say that this is typical of English dubs as a general rule). Sky High is earnest, but not earnest enough, in comparison with Go Inoue's rendition; Mario the announcer is pretty dramatic, but sometimes not dramatic enough. So I'm both anticipating and dreading how Lowenthal's going to handle Barnaby's breakdown scenes.
EPISODE 4:
The funny thing is that this episode was never high on my list of favorite T&B episodes, despite Karina and I sharing quite a lot of similarities in terms of our aspirations and life situations. I'm not entirely sure why.
Well, anyway, Wahlgren really brought her A-game for this episode. She's got Karina's teenage personality down pat and is quite the accomplished singer! Additionally, I'm getting more comfortable with the idea of Wingert's Kotetsu -- he was pretty good here fo both his serious and goofy moments. The mental jury continues to be out to lunch on Barnadub, but it's occurred to me that this may be a side effect of both Lowenthal's interpretation of the character as well as where Barnaby's character is in terms of the overall narrative. I don't think I really started warming up to Barnaby until maybe...shit, I don't even remember, but he definitely didn't strike me as a potentially interesting character at the beginning of the series. So it's entirely possible I'll be singing an entirely different tune come the Jake arc or something. Fire Emblem gets more substantial line time; still can't decide what I feel about him. Hopefully episode 6 will clear that up.
On a non-voice note, I'm curious whether this localized version is mix-and-matching DVD edits to the animation. Barnaby's ~quality~ giraffe impression is still present in this episode, but the ouroboros symbol is gone from the Stern dollar that Karina has and the piano keys were also fixed from the original aired episode, which were changes made for the DVD releases. Chu?
EPISODE 5:
During the botched surprise robbery birthday party in the original Japanese, Barnaby tries to intimidate the criminal into compliance by name-checking himself: "I'm Barnaby Brooks Jr. Have you heard of that name?" The dub changes that to: "I'm Barnaby Brooks Jr., and this is Wild Tiger. I assume you've heard of us?"
"Wild Tiger" is not only in his civvies, but he also doesn't have his eyemask on.
In effect, Barnadub has just outed his partner to a criminal.
Uh.
Yeah.
To be fair, this isn't She's a Man in Japan levels of discontinuity, but I'm scratching my head over why it was even changed in the first place. It makes more sense for Barnaby to exclude Wild Tiger completely, since at this point he doesn't think much of the other man. Not to mention that Barnaby has enough star power on his own to back up his threat. He doesn't need to bring Tiger into it. Is this meant to be a red herring for the second half of the series, where Kotetsu's only hope of redemption from being falsely accused of murder (barring the Daughter Ex Machina that undoes Maverick's brainwashing of the other Heroes) is running into people who are familiar with what he looks like in and out of uniform?
In more amusing changes, I think the dub possibly managed to make one of the lines in this episode of gay even gayer. Behold, Kotetsu trying to rationalize surprising the very conservative Barnaby with a birthday party:
JAPANESE
"When you surprise people [who don't usually like surprises] with parties, they get teary, say 'Thank you!', and shake your hand!"*
*I would cite the Japanese if I could actually make it out.
ENGLISH
"When Bunny finds out we went to all this trouble for him, he's gonna be like 'Thank you!' He's gonna hug all of us!"
In other adaptation notes:
- Was the Apollon Media secretary named Florence in canon? Her name's not mentioned in the original Japanese episode, and a quick check of both the first Official Hero Book as well as the first Hero TV Fan book doesn't turn up even a production sketch for her, never mind a name.
- Interesting that Keith addresses Kotetsu as "Mr. Wild", as opposed to "Mr. Tiger," which is what I think myself and most fandom use.
And then in voice notes:
- Liam O'Brien as Yuri doesn't have as deep of a tone as Yusa's, but it's not bad, just different. His real test is how he performs as Lunatic.
- Holy fuck, who is even doing the voice for the fangirl mom at the beginning of the episode. It sounds like one of the VAs was doing a parody performance off the record, but then the director recorded it and was like Throw It In.
- We finally get to hear some substantial dialogue from Patrick Seitz's Sky High, and I am...unsure on him. I can't tell how much of that unsureness is due to script wording and how much of it is actually Seitz's performance as Sky High. (Though he does sound quite distraught enough over not being able to say his lines. Poor Keith, he worked so hard on his lines.) My thoughts on Bentley's Nathan continue to be mixed, and Willingham as Antonio and Wahlgren as Karina continue to be favorite performances of mine. I feel like dub!Karina has more of an eyerolly teenager quality than her original Japanese performance, though I don't know if it's just because I lack the appropriate Japanese knowledge and context for the latter. "Uh, no, dummy, you have to get him a real gift?" Work that sass, Karina.
- Dub!Saito on the mic is not nearly obnoxious enough. Someone needs to get Dave Wittenberg hyped up on Red Bull, Monster, and Amp before making him do Saito's mic lines.
- Did bitty!Barnaby's voice sound surprisingly low for anyone else?
- The Pauly Gang's voices were appropriately ridonk.
- Noticed that Tiger's facial expression when imitating Keith after the rehearsal robbery is different between the sub and the dub, which indicates that -- for that scene at least -- they're using DVD footage.
EPISODE 6:
1) My fears about John Eric Bentley have been laid to rest. He hit his stride just in time -- he was (pardon the pun) on fire the moment he spoke Nathan's first lines in the episode. Also, manly Nathan is a yes. I'm looking forward to seeing how he handles serious Nathan in the next episode.
2) They slightly changed the send-off conversation between Kotetsu and Nathan. Basically, as Nathan's dropping off Kotetsu for the night, he asks if Kotetsu wants someone to stay with him (because he noticed Kotetsu was looking kind of down after events from earlier). Of course, this being Nathan, it sounds pretty suggestive as well, but Kotetsu just laughs and declines. Mainly my nitpick with this one is that the dub version isn't as specific as the original version: the original line has Kotetsu saying something along the lines of "I'm going to get a crick in my neck from using your arm as a pillow", whereas the dub has him just saying "You're not my type, you're too tall." I find this abbreviation strange in light of the dub's tendency to overexplain things via adding lines, but ultimately I'm just splitting hairs. Either rendition of the scene is pretty golden, and I love for what it reveals about both Nathan's and Kotetsu's characters.
3) I continue to be impressed not only with the main talent, but also the side voices for many of the nameless characters. In particular from this episode: the criminals at the beginning and Barnaby's photographer. The roles are throwaway; the performances are not.
EPISODES 7 & 8:
I'm not surprised Lowenthal pulls off angry!Bunny effectively -- we are talking about the dude who played Asch the Bloody, after all. Meanwhile, Bentley continues to sail merrily along as Fire Emblem, and holy shit O'Brien as Lunatic is like audiosex hnnnngh. Damn, damn, hot damn.
Comments on the script...Kotetsu, did you seriously just refer to yourself as a "young buck"? LMFAO. Also, was that a Dinosaurs reference I heard? "Gotta love me!" And I still continue to love Blue Rose's appearance in episode 7. "Oh, good, you're wearing black -- that means you won't have to change for your funeral!" To hell with her haters, man.
Next week is Dragon Kid the babysitting Hero. 8DDDDDDDDDD
EPISODES 9 & 10:
Yes, Tiger actually does make a Scarface reference in episode ten when he picks up one of the machine guns that the Ourobots dropped and uses it against them. This fucking script, man.
Speaking of the script!
NATASHA: Well, there's no questioning your results, dear. But you might want to use a little more flair.
PAO-LIN: More flair?
NATASHA: You know, lay on the charm a bit! Get some buzz going.
PAO-LIN: So, keep kicking ass but do it with style, right?
NATASHA: [sighs] Would you please watch your language? We've been over this a million times already! Would it kill you be to be more ladylike?
HEADCANON CONFIRMED. :|b
Actually, in general, Dub-Lin seems to have a bit more 'tude than how I typically play her. (You could say this about pretty much all of the characters, actually...) But I can't tell if that's legitimately something changed for the dub (though certainly it comes through in that line, compared with the original) or if it was always there but I didn't catch it due to the language barrier and lackluster subtitles. There's something to be said about context, though, which is something I've talked about before regarding her (how she acts around adults versus people her own age), not to mention she's 13 in this episode and 15/16 by the time she drops into Luceti. But I have always tended to play her as softer, nicer, and more childlike (childish?) in general. Dub-Lin, in contrast, definitely feels more like a teenager. Which...she is, technically, so perhaps I should just shut the fuck up right now. But she's always come off as more innocent in the original and especially in the supplementary material. I'm also wondering if part of it is just the different voices: Ise sometimes lends a certain huskiness to Pao-Lin's voice (that I like) that I'm not noticing in Bailey's performance. In fact, Bailey's Pao-Lin sounds a lot like Wahlgren's Karina, which is where I guess part of my problem with the voice comes in. The huskiness simultaneously makes Pao-Lin sound older and more like a young boy, which is the main conceit of her character concept. And I feel like that got lost with this casting choice. (See also: My previous rants on the dub casting for Kotetsu and Barnaby.) To be honest, I wasn't impressed with Bailey's acting in the episode in general, either, but I may just be speaking as a super-finicky Pao-Lin RPer, so ignore at will.
(It absolutely does not help that I associate Bailey with Cheria Barnes, which, well...if you're not familiar with Graces, that picture alone should tell you that she and Pao-Lin are very different characters.)
TL;DR I have to think more on how I'm going to be incorporating the dub. Bailey's voice might end up being the basis of my mental Pao-voice, though I'd probably merge it with Ise's performance. I'd also be willing to introduce just the tiniest bit of snark and sass into Pao-Lin's character, but unless later episodes give me some really spectacular reasons to change my mind, I'll probably essentially stick with a more child-like Pao-Lin. Given the dearth of Pao-Lin lines in subsequent episodes, though, I'm not forseeing that I would warm up to it all that much in later episodes (as I have been with Wingert's Kotetsu, surprisingly enough...it's gotten to the point where sometimes I do actually mentally hear Kotetsu as Wingert, instead of Hirata -- so surreal). On the other hand, I fell in love with Willingham's Antonio by the first episode, so packing that much charm and personality into a few lines is possible.
EDIT: It occurs to me that there may be a contradiction in my headcanon if I was thinking that Pao-Lin had noticeable problem with a potty mouth but was overall still childlike and innocent. Again, need to think more on this.
Meanwhile, over in episode ten, Stephanie Sheh as Kriem is great, as is Steve Blum as Jake.
EPISODES 11 & 12:
Blum as Jake is uncanny. It's like they suddenly endowed the original Japanese seiyuu with the ability to speak fluent English. And then told him to make Jake sound even more off his rocker.
Strangely, despite having less than ten lines across the two episodes, Bailey feels like she's starting to settle into Pao-Lin's character better.
Seitz is getting better as Sky High as well, but he doesn't feel as "iconic" in the role, if that makes sense. The voice tone is good, the delivery still needs work. Though I can't decide how much of this can be blamed on Seitz himself and how much can be blamed on the script adaptation. Episode 15, don't let me down!
The scene with Barnaby chewing out Kotetsu for not trusting him in episode 12 (when Kotetsu barged into the warehouse to arrest "Jake") was also rendered really well.
I almost kinda like Sheh's Kriem better than Neya's????? (Don't cut me.)
EPISODES 13 THROUGH 19:
Rotwang, the creator of the killer android Cis and later of the H-01 androids that the Heroes face in the endgame of T&B, was never a particularly interesting or compelling character for me (except in the sense that I headcanon that Pao-Lin has more of a personal grudge against him than against Maverick). His character design was clownish, his voice wasn't much better (and this is the guy who voiced Roger Smith from The Big O in Japanese!), and he didn't get exactly a unique or nuanced portrayal in the canon before meeting his untimely end. He was only interesting for peeling back a few more layers on Barnaby's past -- more specifically, on what Barnaby's parents did before they were killed.
Enter the T&B dub. Color me shocked that Rotwang actually comes off as legitimately menacing, despite his cartoonish face. I suppose it helps that we have an official English pronunciation for his name now (approximately ROHT-vahng, as opposed to...something more unfortunate-sounding), but it's amazing the difference that a different delivery and tone can make. It's still clear that Rotwang's not all there, but the insanity is at a mild simmer rather than a wild boil. There also seems to be some sort of vague accent to his sentences: not a culture-specific one as far as I can tell, but just a different lilt that adds an unsettling otherness to an otherwise cliche, flat character.
"Wow," says I. "I am seriously impressed by dub!Rotwang. In fact, I think I like him better than the original! I'm really looking forward to seeing how the actor will handle him in the endgame. In fact, who the hell is this guy's actor, anyway?"
...
...
...
...
...
...VIC MICGOGNA?!
VIC
MOTHERFUCKING
MICGOGNA?!
ARE YOU EVEN FOR SERIOUS
I
I JUST
WOW
WOOOOOOW
Even better: Micgogna also voiced Chuckman in the dub, and pulled off a good job there as well despite the scant material to work with. Hello, my mind has been blown for the day.
No, wait, it gets even better than that. I remember there was a huge uproar in the fandom when dub casting was still being announced for this series because many folks were afraid that Micgogna would be given one of the two main roles. Some went so far as to insist that Micgogna be given no roles whatsoever because of his consistently unsavory IRL/OOC behavior. In the end, it looks like there was a compromise: he might have gotten two roles in the series, but both are Doomed Henchmen roles, meaning that those in the intersection of T&B fans and Vic-haters can at least have the satisfaction of hearing/seeing him (or the characters he voiced, anyway) meet untimely ends.
Whatever your personal opinions of the man, though, you really have to give him credit for at least his performance as Rotwang. Because damn. And again, damn.
(The word is out on Cis, though -- I've yet to find a credit for her. Then again, I didn't look harder than Wikipedia.)
***
Speaking of! Seitz has admirably redeemed himself as Keith in my eyes with episode 15, as I was hoping. He still will never match Go (as Lowenthal will never match Morita), but hearing him do Keith's depressing monologue in the middle of the episode...yup, that was a stiletto heel to the feels, no doubt. On the opposite end of the emotional spectrum, viewers were treated to hearing Keith go "Hey. How you doin'?" to Cis while greeting her with a bishie-sparkle smile the second time he met with her. Thanks to voicetwinnage, you may also picture Dhaos from Tales of Phantasia and/or Frederic Chopin from Eternal Sonata doing the same thing. You're welcome.
I had few issues with Bailey-Lin here (in fact I rather liked her for the few lines that she had), but I had to nitpick both her delivery and the script's rendering of Pao-Lin's most memorable line from this episode, a line that also received a bit of contention in fandom even with fansubs. It's when the Girls' Team is proceeding to give Keith advice on how to approach Cis.
ROMAJI: "Boku dattara, hometemorau to ureshii ka na."
SUB: "If I was her, I would like it if a boy said something nice to me."
DUB: "Complement her! Girls like it when you tell them they look nice."
The objection to the fansub's version of the line is that it specifically mentions a boy when that reference wasn't present in the original. (This became relevant, I think, when the 5th drama CD came out with a Pao-Lin -> Karina shiptease.) Technically, there's space for it to be inferred, given the topic at hand, but to me it makes more sense for Pao-Lin's character if she were simply speaking from her own experience as a human with a heart (to reference something she says later in the series). So, a more accurate translation might be: "If I were her, it'd make me happy if someone complimented me."
On the other hand, the dub seems to imply that Pao-Lin actually pays attention to things like romance and relationships, when I don't think that's true at all. I could see the argument that she possibly picked up on that kind of thing from spending time with Karina after they bonded together better during the events of the 5th drama CD, but the dub line still jibes weirdly given her body language when she says it:

Yes, I made a GIF of this. It's adorable, okay okay.
That's not the body language of someone confidently dispensing love advice -- that's someone shyly offering up her two cents on a topic she knows next to nothing about, a price that is paid from the stores of her own general experience as a person and not because she has any actual firsthand experience or the equivalent of academic experience in the field. (...I may or not be elaborating a little.) The "boku dattara" of the original Japanese makes this clear, and it's a nuance missing from the dub.
On the other hand, you could argue that it's simply a language difference, that after all the Japanese language as used by native Japanese speakers is generally more "indirect" than English. Not to mention that probably the only reason I can even nitpick on this as a characterization issue is because I obsessively track any supplementary info and canon that I can find relating to Pao-Lin, all of which points to Pao-Lin being somewhat naive about certain things as the result of tunnel vision where the only things in her sight are fighting and food. That's why I would say that the dub rendering of this line feels OOC for her.
But I've been mired in this canon and in speculation about Pao-Lin's character for so long that I've forgotten how she might come off to those who only know her from the actual series (either dub or sub). I've long been self-conscious that in trying to build a versatile, engaging character that I can roleplay with, I've gotten away from her core -- that with the way I play her, she might be interesting to thread with but she's ultimately unrecognizable as "Pao-Lin Huang". It's difficult for me to personally gauge this because as of this post (and as far as I can tell), no one has played her as extensively as I have, so I can't compare my portrayal with others and say "Oh, yeah, I did that too, I must be on the right track" or "Hm, that's different from mine, are they wrong or am I the one who missed something...?" (Or rather, I can't really do this with confidence because there's simply not a sufficient enough sample size.) My Luceti castmates and most of my canon-familiar RP partners have had no issues with my playing, but the pieces haven't completely fallen into place with Pao-Lin for me personally.
That's getting off-track from discussing the T&B dub, though, so I shall shut up and save the Pao-meta for a later post (possibly over in
soraspace). In the meantime, the rest of my dub thoughts at the moment are much, much shorter than these mini-essays on a mad scientist and a kid of the dragon.***
"Hey, buddy, you got smoke comin' outta your ass!" and "I only brake for Blue Rose!" were the best lines to come out of the dub script for episode 14.
***
I wonder if Micgogna also voiced the Lady Killer from episode 16? It fits the pattern of "surprisingly entertaining performance from a two-bit character who meets an untimely demise" he seems to be falling into for this series.
***
Wingert still keeps tripping up on pronouncing "Kaede", news at 11. But the gods bless him anyway.
***
"[Maverick]'s like the patron saint of Heroes." YOU TAKE THAT BACK, KOTETSU --
***
Never have the words "repent, sinner" sounded more like a come-on than when spoken by O'Brien's Lunatic.
***
In the Flamingly Gay Episode of Gayness and Homodachis, the script writers slightly altered one of Barnaby's lines right before he gets Kotetsusmacked.
SUB: "I tried my best to let you handle things once in a while."
DUB: "Letting you get some arrests was one thing, but I'm tired of carrying you." [emphasis mine]
Well-played, writers. Well-played.
EPISODE 20:
Related to nothing in this episode (I don't think), but the script seems to have stopped adding in dialogue where there wasn't any in the original. I think the last time they might have done it was episode 14, but I could be misremembering. At any rate, things are moving merrily along into the fiasco that is Kotetsu's framing.
And yes, the dub changed Kotetsu's original flub of "Heaven helps those who help themselves" to, well, "Heaven help me." I laughed.
EPISODES 21 THROUGH 24:
EPISODE 21
Not a dub note specifically, but I only just noticed on this watchthrough that the portrait shot for the H-01 Wild Tiger on HeroTV has him/it flashing the victory sign. Whose bright idea was that?
Also, Kotetsu, your towel really was not that cool. Just face the facts already.
EPISODE 22
Apparently I never plurked about this episode. Hm.
EPISODE 23
"I am going to bitchslap someone for this." Nathan gets some epic line rewrites for this episode and the next one (see also: "Oh snap!" once Kaede takes down Rotwang and thus somehow deactivates the explosive collars, causing them to unsnap from the Heroes' necks).
Saito isn't nearly as obnoxious here as he is in the original, which I've talked about in other entries, but it's no big deal. I still laughed at his "Your car does, indeed, suck" line to Ben.
EPISODE 24
OKAY I ACTUALLY DO HAVE SOMEWHAT SUBSTANTIAL THOUGHTS ON STUFF IN THIS.
The more minor thinkeration is regarding Rotwang, whose dub performance I feel deserves repeated mention. He really shows his true batshit colors in this episode, but even while hamming it up he's still more menacing in the dub than in the sub. Someone on Plurk made the remark that in the dub, he comes off about as crazy as Jake and thus could potentially hold his own as a villain in his own right, instead of in the original Japanese where he seemed more like Maverick's silly villain sidekick. "He's a legit comic book villain, instead of a Comic Book Villain Trope." I would not complain if they got Micgogna to voice Robin Baxter in the first movie, man. (This is putting aside the general notion of giving this guy work when apparently he's kind of a jerk and creep OOC. I'm speaking just in terms of his talent.)
But of course, we can't be talking about episode 24 without also touching on That Scene With the Tears and the Fried Rice. I have seen this scene multiple times already and I still end up internally screaming at it whenever I watch it. So yes, to anyone who feared that the dub might potentially butcher this scene: your fears are unfounded. Wingert and Lowenthal pass with flying colors, and the dub script kept the fried rice and the eyelashes and Kotetsu going on a drinking binge because omg Barnaby said my name!!!
That's not to say that there aren't differences in execution between the sub and dub, because there are, and your mileage may vary on how much this affects your enjoyment of the scene. Lowenthal doesn't hit Morita-levels of intensity during the fried rice line (I will eat my Figuarts Zero Pao-Lin figure if Morita wasn't actually literally in tears while recording), but that doesn't matter as much because Lowenthal, instead, maintains an emotionally tense baseline throughout. So while Morita's fried rice line is like a suckerfeelspunch, Lowenthal's is just another feelspunch atop a pile of feelspunches that started right when Barnaby discovered Kotetsu's battered body. (In contrast, I would argue that Morita!Barnaby's breakdown -- or at least the external expression of it -- starts really showing through the cracks at around 21:16, when he has to tell Kotetsu a second time to shut the fuck up.) Either way, it fucking hurts. Additionally, dub!Barnaby's more informal tone, which I've dinged as a mild-ish negative before, actually really helps in this instance, because it conveys how the walls between Barnaby and Kotetsu have really crumbled by this point.
They also mildly changed Blue Rose's motivational speech in this episode, and I think it works slightly better than the original.
SUB: "I believe in everyone. I believe in Tiger and Barnaby. [. . .] Everyone! Those two will never lose. We know them. There's no reason for us to make a choice! As a Hero, I'll trust my friends until the very end. That's what I've decided."
DUB: "I decided that I believe in my friends. Tiger and Barnaby? I believe in them, too. [. . .] Listen, guys -- we have to believe they can win this. We know how strong they can be. So we have to be just as strong! You're all my friends, and I'd trust any of you with my life. That's being a Hero."
It's really just more nitpicking over nuance and emphasis, though, and possibly also running up against the language barrier. Again, not a huge deal.
Aaaaand apparently I had no commentary on Episode 25! Oops.