Quote Originally Posted by Willemdarke View Post
Maybe I'm deaf, or ignorant, or whatever, but in the Japanese original, all the VA seem to be talking in the same/similar accent, well, with a lack of any accent to be precise. From what I gather that never bothered anyone. I'd rather them stick to British accents if that's the case.
I'm sure Wuk Lamat would have sounded a lot better without that weird, phony "south American" accent she was trying to put on. Ditto for the weird southern USA accents in Shaaloani.
Quote Originally Posted by Petroglyph View Post
I think I've read that the dub JP relies on different regional dialects and accents, and those levels of formality. Which is also what I remember people say they do in anime. It's hard to really pick up unless you know the language really well, because I sure as heck can't. British and American are crazy different; JP might also be more conservative in its linguistic development, IIRC. I think Mancunian is more different from Californian, more than Kansai is different from Tokyo, as an example. Plus I think there's a cultural angle that should be considered. Everyone is exposed to Tokyo dialect in the news and stuff, but if all Americans ever hear is British, I could understand feeling alienated after some time.
Japanese voice actors usually use "Standard Japanese", which is a dialect based on the Kanto (Tokyo and surrounding areas) region's pitch patterns etc. That's probably why they sound like they have a lack of an "accent" in comparison to english VAs. When they do want to have someone with a different accent, it will be a completely different dialect like Osaka-ben (using different slang etc), but the actual "accent" doesn't sound that different (to non natives anyway, unless you studied it).

Definitely leads to different characterisation though. It feels pretty odd when I hear certain characters in the EN dub after playing in JP. In DT specifically I think Wuk Lamat and Erenville sound like completely different people based on their voices. Wuk Lamat's way of speaking in japanese makes her sound a lot more rough around the edges and not a member of the royal family (she borderlines on like someone who could be in a Yakuza game sometimes tbh lol) and Erenville sounds a lot more short(?). Not in a necessarily impolite way, but he doesn't seem to mess around with trying to be extra respectful, he just says it how it is.