Voice acting so bad

[LunarEmerald]

A while back, YoshiP commented that the Japanese don't like the Japanese voices either. They only sound better because you aren't native in Japanese and can't tell the difference.

[IndigoHawk]

A while back, YoshiP commented that the Japanese don't like the Japanese voices either. They only sound better because you aren't native in Japanese and can't tell the difference.

Exactly. It's the same how an exotic accent sounds sexy and interesting to foreigners but is nothing special where everyone has that accent.

[Yasuhiro]

A while back, YoshiP commented that the Japanese don't like the Japanese voices either. They only sound better because you aren't native in Japanese and can't tell the difference.

Don't know why this comment is getting so many likes.
What if you're someone who can speak fluently in both English and Japanese and you find one better than the other? What's your response to that?

[Pells]

Don't know why this comment is getting so many likes.
What if you're someone who can speak fluently in both English and Japanese and you find one better than the other? What's your response to that?

My response is: If there are any who are fluent in both, I'd like for them to post about what they prefer and why. It'd be interesting to hear from them, but my guess is they'd be kind of meh on both, just slightly less on one, and probably varying over what is preferred based on specific passages and speakers.

Not entirely unlike favoring gruel over white toast for breakfast because it's a cold day.

[Colorful]

A while back, YoshiP commented that the Japanese don't like the Japanese voices either. They only sound better because you aren't native in Japanese and can't tell the difference.

Maybe some don't like them due to personal preference, but a lot of them are established voice actors, at least that's what a IMDb tells me.

It must boil down to either a poor script, or incredibly poor directing then. If you take a look at the JP cast they're almost all high profile, been in several games and anime, if they were bad I don't imagine they would have been hired, even the English cast has a lot of high profile names. To name an example of what I believe to be poor directing (spoilers for 3.1+), there's the voice of Y'shtola's new VA, Robyn Addison. She sounds fairly... robotic? Not sure how to describe it, but I've asked several friends and they agree, she does have her moments but it's mostly like someone's reading their lines for the first time while being recorded, now compare that to her role of Sera in Dragon Age: Inquisition. I never had any problems with Sera's voice acting, I felt as if it was great and matched the character perfectly whereas Y'shtola's performance is done so poorly I almost switched back to the Japanese voices (luckily a few like Krile, Alphinaud and Tataru really stand out).

[ProvidenceBreaker]

A while back, YoshiP commented that the Japanese don't like the Japanese voices either. They only sound better because you aren't native in Japanese and can't tell the difference.

I find that hard to believe when you have award wining talent like Shuichi Ikeda, Rina Satou and Rie Tanaka involved. The English cast are literally whos that will have no legacy to speak of.

[Ranulf]

A while back, YoshiP commented that the Japanese don't like the Japanese voices either. They only sound better because you aren't native in Japanese and can't tell the difference.

Pretty sure I can hear lack of emotion and cheesy accents regardless of the language it's spoken in.

[Gaddes]

Pretty sure I can hear lack of emotion and cheesy accents regardless of the language it's spoken in.

Not really, no. But this is generally the common assumption people have, that somehow they know the quality of another language's performance even though they aren't familiar with intonations and accents/dialects... but what might sound good to an english speaker might be over-the-top crazy theatrical to someone who speaks japanese. If I were to base my opinion of the japanese audio purely off of how it sounds, I'd say it doesn't sound like it has as much tonal variation as some english delivery, but again, I do not speak japanese and thus do not know what a legitimately well-acted line sounds like. If you're fluent in both, then that's fine; you should know what good acting should sound like. But otherwise, better to stick to passing judgement on languages you're familiar with.

As for the newer English cast, overall it's passable, save for the horrible changes to Merwylb and Urianger (why would you ever get rid of Gideon Emery??)

[Moqi]

Not really, no. But this is generally the common assumption people have, that somehow they know the quality of another language's performance even though they aren't familiar with intonations and accents/dialects... but what might sound good to an english speaker might be over-the-top crazy theatrical to someone who speaks japanese.

qft. Most people who loooove the japanese voice acting could be listening to gibberish for all they know and still say it's awesome.