Board 8 > Persona 4 Golden out now on Steam. $20

(+) Yeah! (+)

meh let me know when it hits 5$

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kateee posted...

literally forgot that Marie exists

Yeah that can happen to everyone

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I liked using Marie in Ultimax.

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kateee posted...

literally forgot that Marie exists

God I wish this were me.

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imagine forgetting the best character

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KamikazePotato posted...

Eeeeew Japanese VO elitists

Original language whenever possible imo

also Japanese voice acting is often better

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MZero posted...

Original language whenever possible imo

I'll agree with that sentiment when it comes to movies and TV, but there's something to be said about immersing yourself in a game with a language you understand


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i would say more consistent rather than better

prefer English if equal quality but sometimes...yeesh

like I love like the entire cast in Tales of Symphonia

but also even in that, skits aren't even voiced in English so i would just end up playing with JP voices half the time

i mean that was a pretty lazy port but still

Dubs forever

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kateee posted...

i would say more consistent rather than better

Actually yes this is more accurate

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Yeah, I'll often feel like the best English voices are about as good as the best Japanese voices, but the worst English voices are way worse than the worst Japanese voices.

I also feel like dubs of JRPGs often have much worse voice acting than Western games do.
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worth noting is that P4G on Steam has Denuvo as its DRM.
why, nobody knows.

it just does.

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Good Dub > Sub > Bad Dub

None of you who didn't grow up in Japan can tell the difference between good and bad Japanese voice-overs, barring extreme exceptions.

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KamikazePotato posted...

Good Dub > Sub > Bad Dub

None of you who didn't grow up in Japan can tell the difference between good and bad Japanese voice-overs, barring extreme exceptions.

Can you tell Pavarotti is a good singer if you don't know Italian

Can you tell Pan's Labyrinth had good acting if you don't know Spanish

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KamikazePotato posted...

Good Dub > Sub > Bad Dub

None of you who didn't grow up in Japan can tell the difference between good and bad Japanese voice-overs, barring extreme exceptions.

watch Soul Eater subbed and tell me this again
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KamikazePotato posted...

None of you who didn't grow up in Japan can tell the difference between good and bad Japanese voice-overs, barring extreme exceptions.

This isn't true at all!

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Watching live action acting is a significantly different experience because facial expressions are added to the mix. Singing is different because the main requisite for good singing is 'this sounds good yes/no' - the actual lyrics don't matter as much.

Media where understanding the emphasis and nuance of the words being spoken, and HOW they're being spoken, benefits insanely from listening to it in the language you grew up with and its objectively wrong to say otherwise. There are counterexamples but in large part the fascination some people have with listening to Japanese audio comes down to two things:

1. Weebs
2. The dialogue/writing in what they're experiencing is questionable and therefore easier to roll with in a different language

A lot of anime falls under #2, so over time weebs have come to put Japanese VAs on a pedestal instead of asking for better writing.

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Have you never noticed painfully awkward lip-flap matching in English dubs? Like, if you play something such as Kingdom Hearts: Re Chain of Memories or 358/2 Days (PS4/PS3 versions) you'll notice characters you just pause at random points in the middle of a sentence to match the way lips are moving, and it's 100% awkward. You don't get that with the Japanese voices, because the lip flaps were designed to go with the Japanese dialogue.
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Lip flaps are a separate issue that can unfortunately cause occasional problems, although modern-day dubs are generally very good at working around them.

Random pauses in the middle of sentence are not a lip flaps, issue though. Japanese media just does that constantly. I'm pretty sure they're randomly pausing in the middle of the sentences from a native person's point of view as well!

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Uh, no. I'm talking about when the Japanese version and English versions will pause at the same point timing wise (usually for dramatic impact in Japanese) but the pause in English won't make much sense, because that's not a dramatic point to pause in the English version of the sentence.

And more importantly, any English dub that keeps the dramatic pausing is a bad dub. That's not how English-speakers talk. Scrub that right out if you want me to take you seriously (good dubs do this).
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I have no problem at all with english dubs, but the idea that we can't tell quality voice acting or bad voice acting in a foreign language production is just nuts.

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KamikazePotato posted...

Watching live action acting is a significantly different experience because facial expressions are added to the mix. Singing is different because the main requisite for good singing is 'this sounds good yes/no' - the actual lyrics don't matter as much.

The main requisite for voice acting is also "does this sound good". People don't just walk in there and talk, they get training just like singers and any other actor. Of course, there are situations where it would be harder to understand due to cultural nuances and such but as a whole you can tell if acting is good or bad regardless of language

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Mac Arrowny posted...

Uh, no. I'm talking about when the Japanese version and English versions will pause at the same point timing wise (usually for dramatic impact in Japanese) but the pause in English won't make much sense, because that's not a dramatic point to pause in the English version of the sentence.

I haven't seen an example of this in a while honestly. Not since the PS2 Square JRPG days.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

I have no problem at all with english dubs, but the idea that we can't tell quality voice acting or bad voice acting in a foreign language production is just nuts.

If it's REALLY bad you can tell. If it's REALLY good you can probably tell. Everything in-between is a wash.

MZero posted...

The main requisite for voice acting is also "does this sound good".

Absolute hard disagree. If this were the case, voice direction wouldn't be so vital.

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KamikazePotato posted...

Absolute hard disagree. If this were the case, voice direction wouldn't be so vital.

Voice direction is the main thing that makes it sound good.

KamikazePotato posted...

I haven't seen an example of this in a while honestly. Not since the PS2 Square JRPG days

Xenoblade 2's cutscenes are a recent example.
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I completely disagree on the "you can't recognize good voice acting if you didn't grow up speaking X language" take btw. This is just one example but emotion transcends language and it's extremely easy to tell the difference between a JP voice actor pouring out their soul vs. a poor dub actor who's reading a script.

Of course, examples like that are becoming increasingly rare as western voice actors get better and better, but it's truly absurd to say you need complete fluency to be able to ID bad line reads. Granted you may need to be a bit beyond the "this is all complete gibberish to me" point in the language barrier but I'd wager a solid chunk of this board is already past that with how much anime/Japanese games the average user has consumed!

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Xenoblade 2 set off my 'this is going to be a bunch of bad anime writing' sensors from a million paces away so I avoided it. Glad to see my instincts are still sharp.

Xiahou Shake posted...

it's extremely easy to tell the difference between a JP voice actor pouring out their soul vs. a poor dub actor who's reading a script.

I said this was the case already

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KamikazePotato posted...

Xenoblade 2 set off my 'this is going to be a bunch of bad anime writing' sensors from a million paces away so I avoided it. Glad to see my instincts are still sharp.

I said this was the case already

What are you getting at then? The whole point of people going with the Japanese voices is that the English dub for P4G has some bad performances.
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Xenoblade 2 was a game I had to stop playing because of the bad dub/sub situation. If you choose English, you have to deal with wretched acting and aforementioned lip-flap issues. If you choose Japanese with subs, you've got sensory dissonance where the names you're hearing don't match what you're reading, and tons and tons of dialogue outside the cutscenes that goes completely unsubbed

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Mac Arrowny posted...

What are you getting at then? The whole point of people going with the Japanese voices is that the English dub for P4G has some bad performances.

Was in response to:

MZero posted...

also Japanese voice acting is often better

This specifically I strongly disagree with and think this notion is a symptom of what I discussed before. You can tell when a Japanese performance is REALLY good or REALLY bad, but the in-between is a blur and often gets elevated above Dubs because of weebery and the 'I don't have to hear this shitty dialogue in my native tongue' factor. This is also a subject I care a good bit about though because every person in real life I've met who is staunchly pro-sub has also been a colossal asshole who ticks every checkmark of what you would expect an elitist anime fan to be like, so I tend to push back on the discourse when I see it on the internet.

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DeepsPraw posted...

Xenoblade 2 was a game I had to stop playing because of the bad dub/sub situation. If you choose English, you have to deal with wretched acting and aforementioned lip-flap issues. If you choose Japanese with subs, you've got sensory dissonance where the names you're hearing don't match what you're reading, and tons and tons of dialogue outside the cutscenes that goes completely unsubbed

i mean the rest of the words aren't the same so why does it matter that much if the names aren't either

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KamikazePotato posted...

This is also a subject I care a good bit about though because every person in real life I've met who is staunchly pro-sub has also been a colossal asshole who ticks every checkmark of what you would expect an elitist anime fan to be like, so I tend to push back on the discourse when I see it on the internet.

To be fair you are leaning towards being this in reverse ATM.

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Sub elitists are annoying, especially because dubbing quality is normally pretty high nowadays. Xeno 2 is the exception, not the rule, and even there some of the dub acting, like Malos's or Nia's, was still very good
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Don't really see any evidence of that. The anime fandom is the only one where saying 'you're missing out on nuances if you don't grow up with a language' is controversial.

Like I recently switched off of an anime dub because it sucked. I'm not a purist one way or the other. I just don't put Japan on a pedestal.

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What I found with XB2 was that most of the UK VAs were good and the American VAs less so. But again, the stilted cutscene direction was the main issue.

And again, why are you saying nowadays? We're talking about persona 4g specifically
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KamikazePotato posted...

Don't really see any evidence of that. The anime fandom is the only one where saying 'you're missing out on nuances if you don't grow up with a language' is controversial.

Like I recently switched off of an anime dub because it sucked. I'm not a purist one way or the other. I just don't put Japan on a pedestal.

I've found on the internet that the biggest sub purists are ESL speakers.
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KamikazePotato posted...

Was in response to:

This specifically I strongly disagree with and think this notion is a symptom of what I discussed before. You can tell when a Japanese performance is REALLY good or REALLY bad, but the in-between is a blur and often gets elevated above Dubs because of weebery and the 'I don't have to hear this shitty dialogue in my native tongue' factor. This is also a subject I care a good bit about though because every person in real life I've met who is staunchly pro-sub has also been a colossal asshole who ticks every checkmark of what you would expect an elitist anime fan to be like, so I tend to push back on the discourse when I see it on the internet.

Well I'm bilingual in both English and Japanese so it's definitely not that!

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Mac Arrowny posted...

What I found with XB2 was that most of the UK VAs were good and the American VAs less so. But again, the stilted cutscene direction was the main issue.

And again, why are you saying nowadays? We're talking about persona 4g specifically

None of the VAs were American. Those doing American accents were still UK VAs, just putting on an accent.
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Excuse me, Xenoblade 2's dub has Nia which makes up for everything else

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A lot of the American VAs were actually American, just Americans who live in the UK.
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as someone who generally prefers decent dubs over subs

i could not handle xenoblade 2's dub

but also i probably will never play xenoblade 1 subbed because i'm so used to the english voices there

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What are the examples of really bad Japanese voice acting? People say you can tell the difference but they only ever use that in a positive sense...!

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Leonhart4 posted...

What are the examples of really bad Japanese voice acting? People say you can tell the difference but they only ever use that in a positive sense...!

There were some iffy voices in Raging Loop. Obviously a low budget game.

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What about actual high profile games or anime? I'm not just asking for situations where the dub is just as good or possibly better, for the record.

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Probably the most noteable would be for VN adaptations where the culture of the indsutsry means you always get the original VA no matter what unless they're, like, dead.

Daru in Steins;Gate is the most grating to me personally.

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Leonhart4 posted...

What are the examples of really bad Japanese voice acting? People say you can tell the difference but they only ever use that in a positive sense...!

The Soul Eater anime main character is a big one.
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Japanese voice acting to me only has like 3 main tones. The characters that sound like yakuza members, the high pitched cute one and the really quiet shy one.

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Leonhart4 posted...

What about actual high profile games or anime? I'm not just asking for situations where the dub is just as good or possibly better, for the record.

I never liked Wakka's voice in Japanese (which is a bit weird cause his VA is good in other stuff). Kimarhi's voice... isn't bad but doesn't suit him at all. Oh and Mika sucked too

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KamikazePotato posted...

None of you who didn't grow up in Japan can tell the difference between good and bad Japanese voice-overs, barring extreme exceptions.

the fuck is this

I dont need to understand the nuances of a language to know I f its good or not. Hell, you can lie to me and say it's Japanese and have it all be gibberish Klingon. Doesn't mean I can't recognize overracting, missing tone, etc.

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Leonhart4 posted...

What are the examples of really bad Japanese voice acting? People say you can tell the difference but they only ever use that in a positive sense...!

Does dubbed Japanese media count? Because they often have a lot less attention payed to them than locally produced stuff and you can tell when they actors are phoning it in.

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