Official Rebuild Dub Thread

[penguintruth]

From the clips, it does seem that Tiffany Grant has toned down her Asuka a bit, but I don't know if that's her or just Rebuild 2.0 Asuka, who is a bit toned down, anyway. But there's still something unnatural about her voice. She sounds, I don't know, maybe a little old? Eh, I'd have to hear more of it. I can probably adjust to it.

It's more and more clear to me how worn Allison Keith has become over the years. Not that I ever cared much for her Misato. But her acting has improved.

Mari's voice isn't doing it for me the way Maaya Sakamoto does.

I really enjoy Colleen Clinkenbeard's Ritsuko.

As far as translation vs localization, please. It's not the dub writers' jobs to completely reinterpret the dialogue. The show has been written. They just need to make the English translation fit the mouth flaps and good enough acting will sell anything. I'm not looking for Funimation's "version" of Evangelion, because they aren't creative enough to come up with dialogue for the show. They're not creating this material, they're doing second-hand work. If they want to make their own cartoons, they should start animating some, otherwise, they should shut up and translate. If you have to rewrite a lot of material to sell a show, you shouldn't have licensed it to begin with. They have a moral obligation to the art to be as faithful as possible.

"Oh, we don't want an overly literal translation" is just an excuse for piss-poor voice actors. A good actor can sell any line.

Fortunately, I haven't noticed too many "creative" flourishes in these clips. Maybe a few little changes, but nothing to get angry about (meaning my little rant up there was kinda just me getting something off my chest).

Of course, the problem with the NGE TV series dub was terrible, terrible acting from most parties, but the script remained fairly faithful, as far as I could tell.

[Warren Peace]

I'll give you one clear cut case for localization over "translation": the word "hai". If we're going by the strictest standard of translation, every instance of that would be written as "yes" (or maybe "affirmative"). However, most translators "take liberties" and translate the word dozens of different ways when the situation calls for it ("yes, sir" "yes, ma'am", "you got it" "right away"). It takes into account how the conversation would be expressed in our language. A military officer isn't going to simply say "yes" in response to an order. There are a lot of other, more complex situations like this, that are about more than filling in mouth flaps. It's not always a 1:1 ratio. Sometimes "taking liberties" IS the most faithful thing you can do.

Also, I'm really liking Mari's dub in clip 7. It confirms something I suspected: they hired her to bring the crazy. She seems fully capable of that. I think Beast Mode will impress. Though I'm a bit disappointed they didn't translate the last line as "sassy bastard"

[Jessemon]

In fact, she incorporates NO German whatsoever.

Gah, that should be a crime. I guess I'll stick to subs then. It helps keep NGE and Rebuild separate in my head anyways. The only reason (besides Asuka) that I'd watch the dub anyways is so that I could pay more attention to the visuals.

I'll give you one clear cut case for localization over "translation": the word "hai". If we're going by the strictest standard of translation, every instance of that would be written as "yes" (or maybe "affirmative"). However, most translators "take liberties" and translate the word dozens of different ways when the situation calls for it ("yes, sir" "yes, ma'am", "you got it" "right away"). It takes into account how the conversation would be expressed in our language. A military officer isn't going to simply say "yes" in response to an order. There are a lot of other, more complex situations like this, that are about more than filling in mouth flaps. It's not always a 1:1 ratio. Sometimes "taking liberties" IS the most faithful thing you can do.

Agreed. Probably the most famous example of this is the King James Bible.

[BornIn1142]

Someone here might be interested in this:

Trina Nishimura recently appeared on an episode of That Anime Show, a podcast by and about English dubbing industry professionals. J. Michael Tatum is actually one of the hosts.

I haven't had the chance to listen to it yet, so I don't know if the subject of Rebuild comes up. Just a fair warning though, TAS usually consists of a lot of informal goofing around and random threads of conversation.

[Hatsumi92]

So my DVD arrived and I pretty much watched it straight away (I have the Japanese release but I really wanted to hear the dub) and man, everyone who returned is so much better this time around. Shinji's VA, Spike Spencer, shows much more emotion in this movie than I saw in NGE, it really is a huge huge huge improvement and I really liked the NGE dub.

You all can go into Asuka and Mari, Mari by the way is pretty much perfect in my opinion, but I was wanting to go into Shinji. The main complaint I had with Spike Spencer throughout the NGE series and EoE was his scream. His scream was nowhere near Megumi Ogata's amazing scream, but in this performance he's really damn good. I expected the ending scene to be a tad awkward, believing his scream will be the same, but it's perfect. It's not as good as Megumi Ogata's, but man it's up there.

This dub overall has to be the best of this year so far. It is flat out the best Evangelion dub ever though.

[Seen]

So my DVD arrived and I pretty much watched it straight away (I have the Japanese release but I really wanted to hear the dub) and man, everyone who returned is so much better this time around. Shinji's VA, Spike Spencer, shows much more emotion in this movie than I saw in NGE, it really is a huge huge huge improvement and I really liked the NGE dub.

You all can go into Asuka and Mari, Mari by the way is pretty much perfect in my opinion, but I was wanting to go into Shinji. The main complaint I had with Spike Spencer throughout the NGE series and EoE was his scream. His scream was nowhere near Megumi Ogata's amazing scream, but in this performance he's really damn good. I expected the ending scene to be a tad awkward, believing his scream will be the same, but it's perfect. It's not as good as Megumi Ogata's, but man it's up there.

This dub overall has to be the best of this year so far. It is flat out the best Evangelion dub ever though.

How was Rei? I'm really wondering how she sounded during the "A.T. feild, full power. To make sure that Shinji never has to pilot the Eva again. So..." line. Is it possible to write down what it was reworded to as well? Sorry. It's one of my favorite lines in the movie.

[Hatsumi92]

How was Rei? I'm really wondering how she sounded during the "A.T. feild, full power. To make sure that Shinji never has to pilot the Eva again. So..." line. Is it possible to write down what it was reworded to as well? Sorry. It's one of my favorite lines in the movie.

I'm not very sure how to describe it, but she was showing a whole lot of emotion for Shinji's safety. It wasn't the monotone Rei you're usually used to and at first I thought it was an error, but I'm pretty sure she's supposed to be tapping in to her emotional side throughout the movie.

The way it's reworded is pretty much how you worded it too.

[COACH]

Her tone in the Japanese version of that scene was even a bit different than normal. I kind of like it.

[penguintruth]

I got my Blu-Ray today and was doing some checking on certain scenes of the dub.

Spike Spencer's Shinji is so much better now than in the TV series, or even in the first Rebuild movie. He still lacks the quiet subtlety Megumi Ogata's Shinji has in Shinji's usual attitude, but there are a lot of screaming scenes that Spencer nails almost as well as Ogata. Especially towards the end, where he absolutely nails "I WANT Rei. GIVE HER BACK." I find that there's a lot less of that shrill, obnoxious whine to his Shinji now. It's not a fantastic performance, he still seems a bit exaggerated, but he's decent.

Tiffany Grant's Asuka is certainly toned down now and I feel like her acting skills have improved, too. Again, I'm not blown away like I often am with the Japanese VA, but she's made strides. Sometimes she sounds a little unnatural as a fourteen year old girl, and her screams seem a little off, so she ends up still a little too exaggerated. But she's not terrible by any means, just not what I prefer.

The voice of Mari is something I find a little too blase, though. She doesn't quite have the gravity and enthusiasm that Maaya Sakamoto brought to the character, that wildness at the end of the film. She's just kind of there. But then, so is the character.

The best performances seem to come from the minor players. Colleen Clinkenbeard, J Michael Tatum, John Swasey, Justin Cook, all really do a great job.

Overall, it's a decent dub, but not a great one. Still leagues better than the TV series dub, though. I've been rewatching the TV series recently, so it's much more clear now.

Funimation didn't dub the deleted scenes, though.

[Warren Peace]

Something else to keep in mind is that Rebuild's performers have a much broader sense of these characters than the original dub's cast. NGE's western team had to interpret their roles episode by episode. Rebuild's cast knows everything about the original story, and has seen somebody dub it once already. AWL's voice in Episode 3 is pretty funny -- she seems to have decided that Rei is a spunky loner. How could she have known any differently?

[gatotsu911]

Something else to keep in mind is that Rebuild's performers have a much broader sense of these characters than the original dub's cast. NGE's western team had to interpret their roles episode by episode. Rebuild's cast knows everything about the original story, and has seen somebody dub it once already. AWL's voice in Episode 3 is pretty funny -- she seems to have decided that Rei is a spunky loner. How could she have known any differently?

ADV dubbed the original series two episodes at a time, but yeah, you can track the progression of the actors throughout the series and see how their performances become more nuanced and fine-tuned as the characters are developed more. It should be noted, though, that the Japanese voice actors' situations were not all that different; I was reading/watching something not too long ago which quoted Yuko Miyamura as saying that basically, when she started working on the series she thought it was just going to be a big fun giant robot show, and she was shocked and kind of upset when it took the dark and dramatic turn that it did. I mean you have to keep in mind that basically Gainax grabbed a bunch of voice actors who had just done Sailor Moon, brought them onto what they thought was going to be a good old fashioned mecha show with boobs and explosions and the works, and then all of a sudden asked them to portray some of the most emotionally complex characters in the history of anime. If you listen to, say, Megumi Ogata's voice acting in episode 1 versus, say, episode 24 (or maybe for a better example, Evangelion 1.0), it's hugely different; there are whole layers and dimensions that she's added on to her portrayal of the character that did not exist in those early episodes. It's nowhere near as obvious as the English cast, of course, partly because they didn't have nearly as much direct supervision from Anno informing their portrayal of the characters, partly because they were even newer to voice acting at the time, and partly because we all speak English, so subtle changes in intonation and tone will be far more obvious to our ears in our mother tongue than in a foreign one. To me one of the joys of watching the series is observing the actors, in both Japanese and English, evolve along with the characters. At the beginning, it's just sort of your average anime voice acting (or, in the case of the dub, average hammy 90s dubbing), and by the end it's so much more.

In regards to Spike Spencer in Rebuild, I would point out that part of the reason he sounds different in Rebuild is not merely because of his experience and familiarity with the character (though that certainly is a part of it), but also because he's working under a different ADR director, Mike McFarland, who is driving the Rebuild dub in a notably different than Matt Greenfield and Amanda Winn Lee did the originals. In the original dub, I think many of the actors, but especially Spike Spencer, kind of went in their own directions with their roles, trying to make them their own rather than merely emulating those that had gone before them - this is, I think, why their performances are so divisive, but I'm not going to leap into the endless void that is value judgments and personal taste right now. I'll just say that in the original series Spencer kind of put his own spin on the character, whereas this time around I think he's being encouraged to play the role more similarly to Ogata, just as all the other actors are being more heavily pressured to emulate their Japanese counterparts this time around. For some people this is clearly great news, though I myself have mixed feelings about it.

[penguintruth]

It's interesting you should say that, gatotsu911, because that's somewhat the impression I get from the English dub cast commentary on the 2.22 Blu-Ray. When McFarland talks to John Swasey, Gendo's VA, Swasey talks about trying to stay as faithful to the original as possible (but without simply imitating the original voices) and McFarland seems to agree with him.

I'd also add that of the whole cast, Swasey's Gendo is the voice that sounds the most like the original Japanese VA (at least, to me).

Though there are other times in the commentary I think McFarland doesn't have as great a grasp of some of the characters as I would like. The first person he talks to is Spike Spencer and the two of them openly refer to TV series Shinji as "whiny", which I wholeheartedly disagree with. Spencer seems to have some pretty simplistic views of the characters and story.

(Tiffany Grant seems to think that the TV series wasn't big until it was dubbed into English... but at the same time, she's easily the most interesting interview in the commentary.)

[Electric Sachiel]

Not sure if anyone has posted this yet but here goes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPEqplLtwa0

"Point-blank, shithead!"

edit: It's in the trailer thread! You crazy people!

Honestly if theres anybody that seems to sound alright with their performances it would have to be the three originals. Spike Spencer, Tiffany Grant and Allison Keith. This clip shows Keith doing what she does best...but that new actress lending her voice to Mari.....

Honestly Sadamoto pawns this english mari dub actress so hard it aint funny. Her delivery is so damn dry and underwhelming it shocks me. Honestly i can find some fandubs on youtube that sound better. Her battle cries and grunts are also delivered in a very dry manner. For shame....new Mari dub actress....

[penguintruth]

She's an okay Mari, but she lacks the gravity, the punch that Sakamoto gives her. It's almost like they were trying to compensate for this by having her swear.

[Electric Sachiel]

She's an okay Mari, but she lacks the gravity, the punch that Sakamoto gives her. It's almost like they were trying to compensate for this by having her swear.

Totally agree! Thats why i said before that her performance seems underwhelming. Seems almost as if she's unsure of herself at times when delivering the dialogue or making those battle cry sounds in the cockpit. This is especially evident when Mari drops her pallet rifles, and grabs the new Thunder lance. Honestly, this new Mari dub actress kind of reminds me of the SUCK that was the orignal NGE. She could be potentially worse actually.....

[Warren Peace]

Are you basing that on the, like, two cumulative minutes we've seen of her performance?

[gatotsu911]

I'd also add that of the whole cast, Swasey's Gendo is the voice that sounds the most like the original Japanese VA (at least, to me).

I dunno if Swasey is the actor to which this most applies, but he's certainly the one for whom it's most obvious; compare his performance in Rebuild to his performance in the Director's Cut episodes, where he was trying his damndest to imitate Tristan MacAvery's (excellent) performance; this time he's putting much more effort into imitating Fumihiko Tachiki, and in doing so almost sounds like a completely different actor. I'd like to see him find a comfortable medium between the two - the distant, icy tone of Tachiki's voice with the commanding, intimidating punch of MacAvery's. I know from seeing him in other shows that he's capable of both.

Though there are other times in the commentary I think McFarland doesn't have as great a grasp of some of the characters as I would like. The first person he talks to is Spike Spencer and the two of them openly refer to TV series Shinji as "whiny", which I wholeheartedly disagree with. Spencer seems to have some pretty simplistic views of the characters and story.

Shinji is quite possibly my favorite character in fiction, and even I'll admit that he can be whiny. I mean, he's 14 and severely depressed, of course he's whiny. The series doesn't really cut him a break for it either. I will say that Spencer brought a certain... punch to his TV series performance (in his best moments) that he seems to have toned down this time around, and I'm not totally happy with that; I think it made his performance distinct from Ogata's and expressed a different, but no less legitimate side of the character. Speaking of the commentary track, is it safe to assume that Spencer provides some laugh-out-loud moments?

(Tiffany Grant seems to think that the TV series wasn't big until it was dubbed into English... but at the same time, she's easily the most interesting interview in the commentary.)

Seeing as Grant is probably the most knowledgeable of all the cast members when it comes to Eva (she's friends with Carl Horn, for goodness' sakes!) this doesn't surprise me. (Once again, it's a shame they didn't get Tristan MacAvery back, because he really seemed to have put some thought into the series as well.) It's also not terribly surprising that she would emphasize ADV's role in the series popularity (for obvious reasons), though in all fairness there is some truth to that: the series didn't really take off in the West until the VHS releases started, and the dub was one of the first ever to be so much as halfway decent. (Flawed as it may be - and I'm exceedingly aware that you in particular are no fan of it - you have to admit it was miles ahead of its contemporaries.)

By the way, on the subject of the commentaries, do they get Allison Keith? She was always one of my favorite VAs in the original series, and yet she seems startlingly elusive compared to most voice actors - the only time I've ever seen or heard her speaking outside of character is during the one Platinum commentary she did with Tiffany Grant. It'd be a real treat if she made an appearance for this commentary as well.


EDIT:
Looks like Funimation's uploaded yet another clip, for all those curious; this time, it's ZA BEASTO. Enjoy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqvBIngma0M&feature=channel_video_title

[penguintruth]

IShinji is quite possibly my favorite character in fiction, and even I'll admit that he can be whiny. I mean, he's 14 and severely depressed, of course he's whiny. The series doesn't really cut him a break for it either. I will say that Spencer brought a certain... punch to his TV series performance (in his best moments) that he seems to have toned down this time around, and I'm not totally happy with that; I think it made his performance distinct from Ogata's and expressed a different, but no less legitimate side of the character. Speaking of the commentary track, is it safe to assume that Spencer provides some laugh-out-loud moments?

I never appreciated how Spencer always exaggerated Shinji from being this insecure kid, kind of meek and weak, into this cartoonish whiny coward. His toning it down this time is what's made him tolerable for me. I don't remember laughing at anything he said. I could tell he was trying to be funny, but it wasn't impressing me.

It's also not terribly surprising that she would emphasize ADV's role in the series popularity (for obvious reasons), though in all fairness there is some truth to that: the series didn't really take off in the West until the VHS releases started, and the dub was one of the first ever to be so much as halfway decent. (Flawed as it may be - and I'm exceedingly aware that you in particular are no fan of it - you have to admit it was miles ahead of its contemporaries.)

It was definitely decent for its time, especially compared to some of the Manga Entertainment and AnimEigo English dubs. But I emphasize "for its time".

By the way, on the subject of the commentaries, do they get Allison Keith? She was always one of my favorite VAs in the original series, and yet she seems startlingly elusive compared to most voice actors - the only time I've ever seen or heard her speaking outside of character is during the one Platinum commentary she did with Tiffany Grant. It'd be a real treat if she made an appearance for this commentary as well.

Actually, yes, Allison Keith did have her time with Mike McFarland (the "commentary" was little more than one-on-ones during the movie, and not really any commentary as the scenes played, much like the FMA movie's dub commentary). I don't recall that much about her talk except that she seems very nurturing-sounding (she is a mother, so I'm not surprised) and talked about getting fan mail from soldiers overseas.

[Jayfive]

Funi clip 8 is up - Zeruwel batlle from 01 rejecting the dummy through Za beasto up to Rei making with the big kaboom.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h62sd0MDvbM

Again some nice work from Nishimura there.

[Sailor Star Dust]

Wow, dub!Mari was pretty impressive during the Beast Mode sequence , so kudos to her. But in general there is something about the quality of her voice that doesn't seem to fit Mari; not sure what it is.

Rei's voice was impressive during this sequence as well. And you can certainly tell by hearing the voices that they're treating to match the Japanese counterparts as close as possible...which is part of how dubbing should be anyway.

The abrupt cut before the explosion sound effect was weird though (who's editing Funi's stuff?!).

Late reply is late:

I don't think Rei is supposed to sound emotionless. She has emotions, they're just heavily suppressed.

Yes, I know. My point is Rei's supposed to have a soft, sometimes uncertain (uncertainty about herself or other people when conversing with them--partly due to lack of knowledge about herself) quality to her voice that the dub!Rei doesn't really bring out. To my ears, dub Rei sometimes comes across as too gruff (instead of soft-spoken), for lack of a better term.

And I still feel Funimation having dub Shinji and Rei refer to each other on a first-name basis is a terrible mistake in case they become closer in the last two films, but what can you do. Basically, if they actually refer to each other by their first names instead of "Ikari-kun" and "Ayanami"--especially for a dramatic moment or what have you, how is Funimation's dub going to work around that? Just ignore that? But that would remove the emotional impact if so...