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U.S. Cast on Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
Siliconera writes "Last night in Hollywood Square-Enix and Sony showed the English version of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children on the big screen. Fans lined up overnight to snag tickets to the premiere event where many of the voice actors/actresses and director Tetsuya Nomura showed up. After seeing the film Rachel Leigh Cook said the movie was "stunning" and she's a 'fan (of Final Fantasy) as of today.' Mena Suvari (Aerith) said 'it was a great experience to be part of something with such a following.' About the movie, director and character creator Tetsuya Nomura said, 'This is a special piece for us and I hope it is for you.'"
In terms of visual effects and animation, sure I can agree to the "stunning" remark, but when it came to the plot, Advent Children fell more along the lines of mind "numbing".
Best. Webhost. Ever. Dreamhost.
She's horrendous in Kingdom Hearts II. I can only hope that she shows a inkling of emotion in AC because if its just as bad as KHII she's going to ruin the whole movie.
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I saw this in Japanese and was just blown away by it. I never played FFVII so was a little lost in the story but the visuals of the movie more than made up for it. It was just so... amazing. I can't wait to be able to see this on the big screen.
"Armed forces abroad are of little value unless there is prudent counsel at home" - Cicero
I was able to see this movie last year with fan-made subtitles, and while the movie itself was pretty damn good visually, story-wise, the dialogue left quite a bit to be desired. So I am curious as to how the official translation will compare to the fan made one. Anyone lucky enough to have seen the english version yet and compare? Or perhaps, understood the Japanese version and can comment on the english fan subs.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
By the way, saw the movie in Japanese a while ago. It's amazing eye candy. Loved it.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
Couldn't we all just agree that her name is Aeris and pretend that we never saw any other spelling?
Advent Children listing for those who want to click around and find out who these people are. Personally, I think it looks like a more or less good cast, and have high hoppes. Despite what the MPAA usually has to say about such things, I'll definitely be picking up this DVD to replace my download.
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wonder if they'll ever show this in the cinemas in sweden, probably not I saw the original version, stunning, croudo really likes to show off
It's good to see the professional voice-actors getting some props alongside the stars in this article (though admittedly this is a gaming blog, not Variety).
As Billy West has noted in the past, when animation goes Hollywood, the professional voice actors who draw a normal-sized paycheck get pushed out in favor of big-name movie stars. But the big names don't do much more than just stand there and read their lines, because they don't know the first thing about breathing life into a character or making the character memorable.
yes I have seen the movie, and while she doesnt have a huge speaking part, she has a bigger one than say 70% of the gang, and to have what is one of the most beloved characters speaking in a flat monotone voice like they dont really give a shit, its a paycheck is a problem.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Is anyone else just happy that Lance Bass isn't voicing Sephiroth?
Crouching Tiger: Hidden Dragon had a remarkably good dub. The voices (mostly) fit the characters, and the syncing was amazing. They just need to put the same effort in all dubs.
Was there ever an official AC subtitle release? I know there was a fan-translated version on the web for a long time, but those can be rather unreliable. I watched part of it and I found the subs the be rather annoying (and I watch a lot of subbed foreign films).
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Apologies if you know this already and I'm missing your point, but "Le rosbif" is a slightly derogatory term for the English that the French use (referring to their lack of adventure in culinary circles). "Limeys" in that case sounds like good translation, a term that means more or less the same thing, but more likely to be familiar to a native English speaker.
Worse was in L'Haine, where the character called "Asterix" is subtitled as "Snoopy". That's just insulting your intelligence.
RLC is a highly underrated actress in my opinion. I love her stuff and thinks she should get more credit.
I even liked Josie with its heavy heavy product placement, even though it was part of the "plot"
The Japanese DVD has English subs. They're okay.
The film, Advent Children, is really short. They introduce the characters, and then they resolve the storyline, and then it is over. There isn't much to the movie, and if you have played FFVII, nothing much is going to surprise you.
Tifa is the real star here. Her battle in the garden is simply amazing - and the cell phone ringtone afterward is a real laugh-out-loud moment.
And I did like how they used Materia.
It's a movie for fans. I can't imagine how they could ever get a real theatrical release from it; there's not enough there for non-fans.
Many of the animes I've heard with english dubs were painful. The ones that were worst, however, were generally when I'd heard the (better) original Japanese voice-acting while watching with subtitles.
I do remember that the voices on Trigun were actually decent.
However, in this - the day of DVD's - one should be able to get a disk with subtitles and voice-tracks in both English and the original Japanese.
I made a bet with my friends that the voice actor of Spike - Steven Blum - was going to be in this one. Yaknow, since he's already in fucking everything. (I about shit my pants when I heard him in Call of Duty's expansion as the voice of Captain Foley.) The stakes were even higher over the probability that the voice of Inuyasha would be incorporated into the movie at least once, but we finally called that one off after we concluded that if that same voice actor were heard anywhere in the entire movie, we wouldn't be watching it anyway.
I just made like, five dollars.
After watching anime for over 20 years and I've come to realize that reading subtitles somehow filters the juvenile dialog of shows crafted for children into something more palatable. On the other hand, when you actually hear the squeaky voiced character scream out "special attacks" and magic spells in english you can't ignore just how ridiculous it all really is.
I'm with you! I watch a decent amount of anime, and somehow I feel myself getting stupider with the dubbed english versions. The original Japanese is usually much higher quality.
My guess is that problems comes from low English budgets combined with the thought that anime = cartoons and cartoons are for kids.
I don't think it has anything to do with education. Watching a movie with subtitles is like trying to drive while staring at the speedometer the whole time. Admittedly when you are watching a foreign language film you have two choices: read subtitles or put up with possibly a poorly performed dub job. Or learn the language. I think most people prefer taking their chances on a dub and not having the suspension of disbelief constantly ruined by needing to look away from the action to read. To suggest that most Americans prefer dubs because they can't read is ridiculous. Most Americans consider film watching a relaxing activity and do not want to have to put effort into watching movies. Hence subtitles are only used on 'art' films where it is given that the viewer will have to do some thinking and would rather hear the original performance (even if they can't understand it).
I find them annoying on most actual video footage, but on animations it's much, much less noticeable. Animations are all dubbed anyways, and even though they try to match the mouth movements to the words, it never works out perfectly. Given that I've (and I'd think most people) come to not care about voice sync in an animation so much.
Now, I'm sure that as technology progresses the mouth animations will get better and soon it will make a difference (though with CGI we could always just rerender with the mouths moving to match the proper language), but for now I'm still cool with the English dubs.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
"there's not enough there for non-fans."
Correction, unless you really like CG for the sake of it, there is absolutely nothing there for non-fans. I watched it with 3 friends and they had absent 'let it end' looks on their faces. These were people that do watch CG/Sci-fi movies for lunch.
There were a few decent fighting sequences, but thats it. Can anyone say they actually enjoyed the final climax of the show with Bahumet/Seph? It was like ohh they're jumping off buildings! OMFG! Not. Boring movie in that there's no investment in any of the characters. If you have to play 40+ hours of the game to feel for the people in the movie, then the director/company failed.
Bye!
It's sad, but the Japanese have an odd xenophobic/xenophilic relationship with foreign cultures. If you knew how often they tried try to use engrish diarog superfluously (e.g. Ahsumo powa, 100%!!!) let alone Japanese buzzwords (e.g. Fire Dragon Cherry Blossom Pedal Wind!), I think ppl would so embarassed they'd claim it's porn if they were caught with it. I watch lots of fansubs b4 commercial releases (don't ask, I won't tell you where to get them), the subbers realize this and generally censor the corn and cheese pouring out of their mouths into something ppl can swallow. If any1's heard old school anime dubs, "I'm going over there because that's where I'm going to do that thing I'm going over there," then you know how damaging direct translation can be. On the otherhand, lips and timeframes not syncing up suck as well. Personally I think ppl should just learn to read properly (i.e. as fast as ppl talk). The movie "Hero" was a lot better hearing chinese voices in a chinese historical setting.
What peeves me off is when they get actual good, expensive actors for a dubbing, and still screw it up. For example, see Princess Mononoke - I mean, most of the characters were decent, but Billy Bob Thorton in the place of the bounty-hunting monk was just absurd. It's not like they couldn't have gotten some lesser known actor whose voice wouldn't have seemed totally absurd coming out of such a face.
It takes me a split second to read one line of subtitles + the fact that it's on the screen rather then below it (like a dashboard). Even if i don't shift my focus from subtitles i can still see the rest of the movie.
Very different from staring at your dashboard, i don't see the road much or notice it at all. The angle difference is much greater and you actually have to move your head to shift visual focus in the car.
Hmmm... Pie...
In addition to the VA's and the studion I'd like to add that the localization/translation team are also very important. The reason many anime fans like myself prefer subs is that a lot of Anime's had extremely poor or vastly changed translations along with horrible voice acting. However there were some rare gems with awesome English dubbing like Cowboy Bebop.
Hmmm... Pie...
While I don't care about being too realistic but randomly flying without any visible force or chi (as used in animes) was annoying. The action seemed too fake.
Hmmm... Pie...
Now, there are some extremely good dubs out there. They don't all suck. However, there is enough dubbed anime that sucks purely because of a botched up dub job to make people like me suspicious of dubbed anime. (Fortunately, with DVDs, I normally get both. In the days of tape, though, you had to make a choice.)
Oh, and there are some cases where you'll just disagree with the localization, but won't necessarily think of it as wrong. For example, Tatewaki Kuno, in Ranma 1/2 (which has a very good dub) is constantly quoting Shakespeare in the dub as opposed to the classical Japanese poetry he spouts in the Japanese version. I understand why they did it, it makes sense (Kuno, a bore and a thug, likes to appear very cultured and well educated)... but I still prefer the subtitled version with the quotes from Japanese poetry.
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I mean, most of the characters were decent, but Billy Bob Thorton in the place of the bounty-hunting monk was just absurd. It's not like they couldn't have gotten some lesser known actor whose voice wouldn't have seemed totally absurd coming out of such a face.
Oh gosh, that annoyed the piss out of me. For the first half of the movie, every time he spoke, I was yanked out of my immersion in the story by his ridiculously mismatched and overly recognizable voice.
But it wasn't just the absurd voice that bothered me. I thought his voice-acting itself was absolutely terrible. Even after I got past the voice, there was the dead, line-reading style of his speech that kept pulling me right back out of the story. Maybe he was going for that "uncaring, emotionless bounty-hunter" effect, but instead he achieved the "I'm just reading these lines for the paycheck" effect. IIRC, I was really pissed that his character didn't die. I was hoping for some payback for the miserable performance.
Personally, I prefer to hear the original language while reading subtitles. But dubs have their place, I think, for two reasons. Well, not reasons... just my preferences. ;)
The one downside with subs is that you almost have to keep your eyes glued to the screen if you want to be sure not to miss anything. When I first watched FF:AC I did so at a time I wasn't likely to be distracted. Good thing too, because some of those subs flash by lighting fast at times. But sometimes you wanna watch a movie and not have to give it your wholly undivided attention. Just be casually entertained rather than a wholly submersive experience.
Another interesting thing about dubs versus subs is that they're never the same. That is, subs tend to be translated slightly differently than the dubs. Subs usually are more precise... more faithful to the original. Dubs seem to be more flexible. For example, idioms tend to be more literally translated in subs, while dubs will substitute a similiar but more familiar western idiom in it's place. As a result, I'll usually watch the sub first, and then watch the dub at some later time. Comparing the two can occasionally provide interesting insights.
That's not right, this is not a troll post! Whoever moderated this as a troll didn't understood the idea being pointed out.
While I vastly prefer subs, the one time I watched my copy of Mononoke dubbed I actually liked Thorton's voice acting, and I thought he fit the character well. Surely I'm not the only one who liked it?
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
It really is not that serious, after watching a few subtitled TV shows or movies, you get used to it. In fact, I am weirded out now when things are not subtitled.
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Ever called a Frenchman a 'frog' because that's what they eat?
Well, guess what they call the English.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Why is parent modded a troll? It's a perfectly fine comment. I may agree with what he said, but even if I didn't, I wouldn't mod this a troll. WTF?
The Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife Are Some Jive Ass Slippers
Cowboy Bebop was pretty much the only Japanese-to-English video dub that I have ever found even remotely acceptable. A vast majority of games are butchered as well.
Most anime and video game dubs suffer from at least one of three problems:
Subtitles are a much better option. They preserve more of the original experience (always a good thing), and even if the actors on the Japanese track are overacting and reading from the cheesiest script in the world, you'll never be able to tell. :)
It's culture. Subtitles probably take a little adjusting to if you haven't seen tha many of them in your life so far. People from the English-speaking zone will have their cultural needs met spoken in their own language, because there's a wealth of English-speaking content being produced. And if something isn't spoken in English, there's a large enough market to warrant dubbing.
However, in small countries like those in Europe, you may have lingual groups of only a few million. The top countries like Germany with a pop of 80 mil dub their stuff too. (You haven't seen James Bond if you haven't seen him speaking German in a Bavarian accent.) And I doubt anyone would propose that Germany's level of education is as poor as that of the US.
These small countries have small markets and poor broadcasting companies, so they resort to subtitles. That's how I learned both to read Finnish and to understand English, by watching shows spoken in English subtitled in Finnish. That's also why my ears bleed when I watch anything dubbed beyond simplest of children's shows.
When I went to the big chain theater to see CTHD the only showing (release day) were subbed. I was unaware there was a theatrical release with the dub. I had no problems with the version I saw.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.