KAGENAMI Q: ...Okay, so you thought of another example of bad dubbing, and you're going to pick on Star Blazers some more?
SIMONE MAXWELL: I'm going to pick on Star Blazers, because my example is the dub of Arrivederci Yamato.
KQ: Oh, so it's Yamato and not Star Blazers.
SM: Well, it's the same difference, more or less.
KQ: But they're different voice-actors.
SM: Yeah, but don't you forget how badly how they were...
KQ: Arrivederci was the worst!
SM: Don't you remember it in the final scene, when Wildstar kind of pronounces, "I'm my own sacrifice!"
KQ: [unctuously] "I'm my own grandpa!"
SM: It was so bad, we were looking for something to throw at the TV!
KQ: I was trying to chew my leg off to get away from most of that! It was sooo bad...and to do that to such a good movie...
SM: Well, I don't know about you, but I never liked Arrivederci. It's depressing. Everybody dies!
KQ: At the time it was really...it has emotion you don't see in a lot of anime. Its animation isn't very sophisticated today, but at the time...
SM: Well, it's not really the animation or the story I'm knocking here; it's the fact that the voice-acting in the American version really shat. And the thing is, it didn't have to. I mean, they could have done it more subtly...
KQ: It's kind of telling that, as far as I know, they have not done dubbed versions of New Voyage, or of Be Forever, or of Final Yamato. I don't think there were any future Yamato dubs. And in Arrivederci they used Star Blazers names for the characters.
SM: I remember we both thought that was a little weird.
KQ: I don't know whether they thought they were going to sell it to Westchester [Films] or what...I dunno. Okay, and back to...[imitating Star Blazers eyecatch voice-over]..."and now back to Star Blazers!" [back to normal voice] In defense of Amy Howard [Nova's voice-actress], I don't think she did a bad job.
SM: No, I'm not saying...
KQ: I thought she did a very realistic job.
SM: I'm not necessarily picking on any particular voice actor.
KQ: Voice actors do what they're directed to do.
SM: Sure.
KQ: But I was thinking about, "Well, weren't there some realistic voices on there?", and I thought she did a very realistic job. She has kind of a lower note to her voice--a lower tone to her voice--that, when you look at Force Five and stuff like that at the time, where they had these, y'know, [in a squeaky voice] perky, high voices, [back to normal voice], she didn't have that.
SM: June Foray in Battle of the Planets!
KQ: That was Janet Waldo, silly! We can only wish it was June Foray in Battle of the Planets... [laughter]
SM: Well, there's another example--the Giant Robo voice-acting. Although I guess you really can't compare that, because I think they deliberately did it campy. I mean, nobody really talks like Tetsugyu--[in a Tetsugyu voice] "Welcome, brotherrrr!"--[back to normal] nobody really talks like that. But when they weren't being over-the-top like that, I thought they did a good job.
KQ: Well, it's kind of a parallel to [laughs, realizing that Gundam Wing still hasn't come up] Star Blazers, in that they're told to do this cartoony. But when there were emotional moments, they did well. They pulled it off. They were able to preserve the emotion and the seriousness of different moments, because they...
SM: [laughs] Like in the last one! [imitates somebody dying] "The money...is...in...the...ugggh!"
KQ: What?
SM: When everybody's dying in the last one!
KQ: That's Arrivederci.
SM: No, that's Giant Robo!
KQ: Ohhh...!
SM: The last chapter of Giant Robo, when everybody is dying! Like, the Pepe Le Pew-voice guy...[laughter]
KQ: Oh, that Kenji guy? Kenji Murasame?
SM: Yeah. [in the unfortunate voice of the English-dubbed Kenji Murasame] "The oper-a-ci-one is a success!" [back to normal voice] I know Bill [Mimbu] was really whacked-out about that. They had a really annoying habit of changing voice-actors in that whole series, which I suppose is...
KQ: And you know nobody in the original Japanese talked with an outrageous, broad French accent. So why was that done when it was dubbed into English? Have we really come that far, when Giant Robo resorts back to that sort of thing? Just because they feel it's in the spirit of camp?
SM: I don't know what the hell they were thinking. I really don't. Hey, we should title this section "What Were They Thinking?!"
KQ: Well, okay, then there's Gundam Wing. Now that we got to hear the "surfer dude"--was he really that much of a surfer dude?
SM: Well, it's funny--the accent comes and goes. It almost sounds like it's not deliberate. It's almost like they told the guy, "Talk with a surfer dude accent," but then in the process of juggling all the words he forgot to use the surfer dude accent sometimes. It's like I've noticed with my own dad--he grew up in Brooklyn, New York, but no longer really has a New York accent except when he's very angry, under a lot of stress, or drunk.
KQ: That's it! The voice actor's drunk! [laughter] Well, yesterday's episode wasn't as painful as I thought it might be...
SM: No. You can start to see, you can say to yourself, "Oh, man, this is going to have some pretty complex plot." Because a lot of the stuff that Zechs was saying, you can see him referring to one side at one point and another side at the other point, and you can see him talking to Treize one way and thinking on his own another way. And you can kind of go, "Whoa, this dude is obviously not somebody to be fucked around with." So you can see that there's some plot going to be happening in this, and you're, "Wow, man, this looks like it's going to pretty complex, and I had better pay close attention." I tell you what, if I had not already seen this, and if I was coming into it cold, I'd be like, "I'm not sure I want to pay attention to this, because this looks like it's going to be really complicated," which is what happened in every other Gundam show that I've ever tried to watch. You know, I honestly tried at one time to become a fan of the original Gundam. I actually sat down with that exhaustive character guide that what's-her-bagel wrote for the old C/FO Newsletter, and after about 10 minutes I went, "I can't keep track of all these people!"
KQ: That was Jane McGuire.
SM: Yeah. And it wasn't that badly done. It was pretty well done.
KQ: It was helpful. But I think you're better off watching the three movies than the series. They kind of condense...
SM: And that's one thing I really wanted to mention in my column [for HOOT on Gundam Wing] and I forgot--instead of plowing through 800 hours of the series, it's a lot easier to just pick up the three movies. I did that, and it didn't hurt me too bad, so...
KQ: Unfortunately, the first Gundam series is something that in retrospect doesn't look as good today as it did then. But it was really ground-breaking then!
SM: And they're still doing things that way. I think it's a testament to it that they're still doing heavily character-driven things where it's a lot of give-and-take between the characters, as opposed to "We have these giant robots and they're really cool," and that's the end of it.
KQ: Yoshiyuki Tomino's stuff, though, after a while...well, like with L Gaim, for instance, you'll have these characters, and then after five episodes, it's "well, time to bring in another character." It seemed like every few episodes there was a purposeful twist to the plot--a definite shift of direction; "Okay, we have to turn the monkey-wrench again and shift it again." I don't know whether he felt obligated to do that, or that's just the way he...
SM: Maybe he was under some pressures with that, though, because didn't Mamoru Nagano have something to do with L Gaim aside from the character design?
KQ: I think he just did character design. Five Star Stories was just getting off the ground...but I'm not sure...
SM: I'm just wondering if he was like, "Well, let's make it more complicated," because Five Star Stories is one of the most complicated things...
KQ: Yeah, that's true.
SM: But, I mean, c'mon--Tomino also went ahead and did Brain Powerd, and do we really have to thank him for that?! [laughter]
KQ: I liked Xabungle very much. I really liked Xabungle...
SM: But you like okra, too, so...! [laughter]
KQ: But Ideon--I thought, "Oh, Ideon will be really good." NO! Ideon was NOT GOOD!
SM: Didn't Ideon have a really good pedigree, too?
KQ: Oh, it had a hell of a pedigree!
SM: Just like Brain Powerd does?
KQ: Well, Ideon was Tomino's first show after Gundam, and...
SM: And everybody thought, "Oh, it'll be great!"
KQ: It was this big, grand epic...
SM: And it shat!
KQ: Oh, it was terrible.
SM: It blew dead bears! [laughter]
KQ: Now, what about yesterday's episode? Duo's voice--I guess I'm getting used to it.
SM: I'm starting to get used to it too, but I still think the accent is going to come and go, and it's still going to bother me. I'm not sure, now that I've heard Wufei say five more whole words, that that's that voice actor I thought it was. It really sounded like--and this is a problem you're going to get in a series with a lot of incidental characters, like Gundam Wing--that one of the other guys in that scene sounded like the Anubis guy, and then Wufei didn't sound like the Anubis guy. So I don't know whether they swapped voices out on us or what, but just from that commercial, I thought it was the Anubis guy. But I may be wrong; I don't know. But, see, we haven't heard Wufei say that much yet. He doesn't talk that much anyway. And I'd like to point out that his name really ought to be pronounced "oo-fei" and not "woo-fei"! Maybe I'm just being anal-retentive, but, y'know...
KQ: Well, the guy that wrote the show's music is Koh Ohtani, not Yasuo Uragami! Koh Ohtani is getting shafted!
SM: Yeah, you can be anal about that; I'll be anal about the characters' names...
KQ: We can all have our personal analities!
SM: And I'm sorry that Relena is so stupid that she forgets about the custom of blowing out the candles on a birthday cake. [laughter] I mean, I have these brain-farts occasionally myself, but...! [laughter]
KQ: I thought the "Little Prince" thing was extremely awkward. They could have handled it better. They could have phrased it a little more naturally. I mean, if it's that he's coming in on a meteor that's his own little planet, and so there's an analogy to "The Little Prince" that way, then they could have explained that...That's the only guess I can come up with, as to how to tie that together.
SM: I would never call Heero "the Little Prince." Because he'd kill you!
KQ: Well, she has this idea of him, though. She has this romantic idea of him.
SM: And he really wants to kill her!
KQ: Who doesn't? [laughter] So, what did you think of it, past that?
SM: There was a lot of setting-up happening. I liked the way it ended, with Heero face-down in the water...sure, I've seen it, but it's neat to see on American TV--a cartoon character lying face-down in the water, man! [laughter]
KQ: Well, it's too bad he didn't bleed...
SM: Yeah. See, that's why I think it's really worthwhile to watch the midnight ones.
KQ: I was thrilled in the midnight version of the first episode, where they let him say...
KQ and SM: "I'll kill you!"
KQ: I was so happy!
SM: Yes! Yes!
KQ: And they also let him swear--he said, "Damn it." That's not much of a swear, but still...So, last night I sat up and watched the midnight version of the second episode, and they let him bleed. And it's not like he bleeds a lot--he just has this little trickle...
SM: Yeah, just like a little tasteful trickle of blood...
KQ: But yet they went so far in altering the afternoon version to not only somehow Photoshop over that little trickle of blood, but when Duo shoots him the second time, across the thigh, Duo shoots a little patch off of...
SM: Off Heero's shorts?
KQ: Uh-huh.
SM: And they Photoshopped that out?
KQ: They Photoshopped that out. And then Heero lands on the ground and he still has that visible hole in them. But not in the afternoon version--they Photoshopped that out too; that hole and little bloody spot on his leg were taken completely out. They went so far as to alter the image!
SM: Well, they must have had Bandai's permission to do that.
KQ: In the midnight version, they had Duo swear--"Damn it"...
SM: [mock-horrified] "Damn it"...?!
KQ: He says, "Damn it, he knows the tolerance of the Gundaniam..."-whatever the line was. And then I went back and looked at the afternoon version, and he says, "Aw man, he knows the tolerance of the Gundaniam..." Of course, "aw man" has the same number of syllables as "damn it."
SM: They're being anal about the lip-flaps.
KQ: So it's something we haven't seen done before in anime dubs--it's a different dub in certain places, and altering the image between versions, to make it more...But yet the afternoon version has no problem with someone slicing things up with a giant robot.
SM: But that's more removed. It's not happening to people; it's happening with robots. We don't really have giant robots in this world. It would be like, you know, on The Dukes of Hazzard, if they crash their cars into each other, that's okay. If they get out of their cars and start beating the crap out of each other, physically, personally, that's not okay. I'm not saying that Gundam Wing is anything like The Dukes of Hazzard...
KQ: [laughter] Thank you!
SM: ...but I think that's a pretty decent analogy. People probably feel that having robots yoisting on each other is not a bad thing for impressionable junior high school kids to see.
KQ: But you're showing someone grazing someone else with a bullet. There's contact made, but no blood.
SM: Yeah, but see, that happens all the time on the Cartoon Network. I mean, they show Bugs Bunny cartoons...
KQ: Bugs Bunny grazes people with a bullet?!
SM: No, but Elmer Fudd does! At least on the Cartoon Network, when Elmer Fudd shoots Bugs, they aren't, like, "Oh, nothing really happened here, kids..."
KQ: I don't really see the harm in seeing a little trickle of blood, as there originally was, when he gets grazed by the bullet, but...
SM: You and I don't see it, but with our culture the way it is, with kids hauling guns to school, people are hyper-sensitive about it right now. So of course they're going to be sensitive. They have to--I mean, that show is on right when kids are getting home from school.
KQ: Duo is still pointing a gun at someone and pulling the trigger. You would think they'd think that would be what's harmful to show--that the act would be harmful to show.
SM: Well, maybe they figure in the context of what's going on, it's not. Maybe they figure, "He's wearing a uniform, so it's okay."
KQ: "God says it's okay!" [laughter]
SM: I can't explain that, but what I think I can explain is why certain things are getting cut out and Photoshopped over--it's because of the culture we're in these days, when kids are taking guns to school.
KQ: If swear words are going to be kept to the midnight version, I wish they'd go a little further and say "shit." Then again, shit's only one syllable, isn't it? [laughter] Now, you think that the guy that does Tansit's voice is the narrator?
SM: Yeah, I'm almost certain the narrator is the guy that does Tansit's voice. The guy that does Tansit's voice is a big-ass announcer guy. Really, that's him! Listen to him!
KQ: I really don't think it's Tansit...
SM: I think it is Tansit! [in Tansit voice] "Oh boy, Space Ghost, I got a new job! I don't need you anymore, Space Ghost!" [laughter] The show is definitely holding my interest; in spite of the fact that I've seen it before, it's holding my interest. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens, day by day.
KQ: It's going to be interesting to compare the changes that are made between the afternoon and evening versions, too.
SM: Yeah, I think so.
Go to Chapter 2 "Five Good-Looking Japanese Boys From All Walks Of Life!" (on Romper Room on Speed, Heero and Trowa and Sylvester and Daffy, the Princess Mononoke Press Guide, 'Handing It' To Paul Lynde, and More Praise For Gundam Wing Episode 1)
Go to Chapter 4 "'Dickweed' Would Gladden My Heart" (on Duo's Vintage Vocabulary, Heero's Mysterious Dripping, "Instructor Noin" Meets "Inspector Gadget," and Gundam Wing Episode 3)
Go to Chapter 5 "There Should Be About 57 Dots Between the 'Umm' and the 'Okay'..." (on the appeal of Noin, how Sid & Marty Krofft swayed Wufei, crunchy fruity rebels, fear of Freeza, and Gundam Wing episodes 4, 5 and 6)
Go to Chapter 6 "The Hell With the New Possibilities--She Wants To Plook Heero!" (on the World's Smallest Violin, the Unfortunately-Named General That-Part-Of-Your-Nose, Ringo Starr Meets Turn A Gundam, Memories of Pleading For Heero's Medical Prognosis, and Gundam Wing Episodes 6 and 7)
Go to Chapter 7 "Why Don't You Gundams And The Colonies Get A Frickin' Room?" (on Zechs Failing Shop Class, Quatre Raberba Jonny Quest Winner, Simultaneous Possession By Dr. Evil, Heero's Difficulties With Modern Technology, Pagan's Surfing For Smut, and Gundam Wing Episode 17)
Go to Chapter 7.5 "Silence Nowwwwwwwwwwww!" (on Heero's Holster, Explaining Headcheese, Sally and Cher Po, the Gundam Wing Voice Actors Revealed, Kudos For Correspondents, and Gundam Wing Episode 20)
Go to Chapter 8 "God Forbid Little Kids Get Ideas..." (on the Great Houdini vs. the God of Death, Keeping Duo from Damaging Impressionable Young Minds, Oz Fashion Don'ts, Duo's True-Life Nature Adventure, a Left Turn into Trigun, and Gundam Wing Episode 23)
Go to Chapter 9 "Stay Away From Those Oz Burritos!" (on the Gundam Wing Language Rules, the Great Destroyer Vs. Great Mazinger, Trowa Markets the Oz Viewmaster, the Omnipresent Mr. B Natural, and Gundam Wing Episode 24)
Go to Chapter 10 "I Don't Usually Use 'Clown' In That Context..." (on Epyon's Sex Appeal, Duo Hitting the [Soy] Sauce, Wasabi Wars, Catherine Gets a Trowagotchi, Evoking Bozo, More Language Rules, and Gundam Wing Episodes 36 and 37)
Go to Chapter 11 "Ralphie Does Not Want To Sit On Santa's Lap Any More..." (on Howdy Doody's Enduring Fashion Influence, the Real Reason the Cartoon Network Wanted Gundam Wing, Duo's Cheeks, Epyon Vs. Sam The Snowman, Feeling Bad For Freeza, Singing the Praises of "Pants," and Gundam Wing Episode 39)
Go to Chapter 12 "He's Not Having Mental Problems--He's Having an Epyon Moment!" (on Push-Up Bras of the Future, More Things To Put In Heero's Pants, Soulmates Zechs and Shatner, Epyon and Secretariat's Love Child, the Nice People at McFarlane Toys, Bandai-ing Dolls About, and Gundam Wing Episode 41)
Return to MIND EDUCATION: Kagenami Q's Gundam Wing Doujinshi Reference Digs
This page was created March 8, 2000. Last updated November 23, 2004.