SIMONE MAXWELL: Woo-hoo! So, last Friday we got to see Trowa do his famous spinning leap in a pike position, and we got to see that great cel you have where we not only get to see both of Trowa's eyes, but you also get to find out where Heero keeps his gun hidden--which is to say, tucked down the back of his pants!
KQ: It's an all-natural holster. [laughter]
SM: Here's a question for you. Do you think Lady Une is unaware of the fact that she seems to have a split personality?
KQ: Yeah, seems to be that way.
SM: Then how do explain how in one of the previous episodes, where she's talking to the one guy, and she's like, "Oh, you're really young," and she takes his glasses off and kind of holds them up to her nose and says, "You can call me Lady Une"? How do you explain that, then, if she's not aware of...[accusingly] You can't explain it, can you?!
KQ: [imitating Tom Servo] "How do you explain headcheese?" [laughter]
SM: And what about that new candidate for The Worst Line To Come Out Of Gundam Wing: [shouts] "Silence nowwwwwwwwwwww!" [laughter]
KQ: So I was curious, on the midnight version, maybe they say a naughty word there or something--but no, it's the same line on the midnight version. [shouts] "Silence nowwwwwwwwwwww!" [back to normal] Not an example of natural-sounding English. [laughter]
SM: Well, maybe he was under a lot of stress. Maybe his underpants are too tight! [laughter]
KQ: They could've gone the route they went in Star Blazers, where Captain Avatar...
SM: [shouting like Captain Avatar] "Beeeee quiet!!" [back to normal] And then his eyeballs jiggle for, like, 20 seconds! But, see, they couldn't say "Beeeee quiet!" because Star Blazers has a copyright on that phrase, I bet. A little "c" in a circle after it...
KQ: That's with five "e"s in "Beeeee," though. They could've used it with six "e"s just fine--but they liked having a dozen "w"s better, in [shouts] "Silence nowwwwwwwwwwww!" [laughter] [back to normal] What else could they have said?
SM: Well, "shut your pie-hole" has four syllables, not three. But the Cartoon Network does seem inordinately fond of the phrase "shut your pie-hole." [laughter] No criticism there, guys--you're just awfully fond of it; you use it an awful lot!
KQ: He could've said "shut your mouth"...
SM: Or [shouts] "Shut uuuuuuuuuuuup!" [laughter]
KQ: Yeah! Although maybe with [shouts] "Silence nowwwwwwwwwwwww!" [back to normal] they were trying to be formal...formal and stilted...[laughter]
SM: Formal and stilted at the same time...
KQ: ...that's Gundam Wing! [laughter] Y'know, sometimes when a studio sells a show, it supplies a script that's already in rough English. Like with the English Gatchaman scripts that Tatsunoko gave Sandy Frank [when doing Battle of the Planets], where there were lines like "We are not milksops to be beaten so easily, you know!"--maybe it was like that with Gundam Wing, and they gave it to the English crew, who said, "Okay, we'll take out 'milksops,' and there you go!"
SM: "There you go, heh-heh!" Didn't you say earlier that, at least in some places, it sounds like the script has been translated but not necessarily rewritten?
KQ: Yeah. And I can appreciate wanting to make it as accurate as possible to the original...
SM: Yeah. I mean, we'd scream if it wasn't!
KQ: But you want...
SM: You want it to sound natural, too.
KQ: You want there to be...it's like when you write a story; you don't want there to be any roadblocks between the story you're telling and your audience taking it all in. And if your audience suddenly hears this goofy, stilted line, then they're going to go, "Whoa! That's weird!" There's not going to be that natural flow of sitting, watching the TV with your jaw slightly agape [laughter], and the TV just playing to you and you take in the story. A weird, stilted line diverts your attention; you stop following the story and think, "Whoa, why did they say it like that?"
SM: It's almost like they saw these whole, huge chunks of dialogue, and threw up their hands and said, "Well, we can't do anything with this!"
KQ: "Well, let's just go with it!"
SM: "We'll just go with it. Nobody's going to notice."
KQ: "We'll just make sure that this 50-word sentence has the same number of syllables as the number of mouth flaps, and that's what's important."
SM: And what's up with Sally Po's voice changing? I think they have a totally different voice actress now.
KQ: Suddenly she sounds like Cher. [laughter]
SM: [singing like Cher] "Do you believe in love after..." [back to normal] That's funny--she kind of looks like Cher, when you think about it.
KQ: Sayyy...
SM: Say! [laughter] It's Cher! She's been reincarnated--no, she's probably still alive...
KQ: She is alive! She was on the Oscars show.
SM: No, I mean, when Gundam Wing takes place, she's still alive! [laughter] She's been cryogenically preserved, and they thawed her out. She dyed her hair...Her new voice suits me all right. Because I didn't really much care for the voice she had before. She sounded a little too cupcakey, and I just don't view Sally as somebody who has that stewardess kind of voice that she kind of had before.
KQ: And meanwhile, speaking of voices, thanks go to Stephanie Shaver, who wrote with the URL for a Web site called Voice Chasers. It's by a group of several people who sit down and try to identify who voices are performed by. They've done this for animated shows, and commercials--like, voice-overs--and then they have write-ups on the actors, a picture where available, and talk about different voice jobs that they've done as well as live-action roles. And it's a huge site--the scope is really impressive--and they have a list of exactly who does the main Gundam Wing voices!
SM: That's terrific! Isn't it a shame that we can't give these people proper credit where it's due?
KQ: The voice actors?
SM: Yeah. I mean, the Japanese are, again, way ahead of us in that respect. They love their voice actors.
KQ: Yeah. In Japan, the credits say "Heero Yuy," and then the voice actor's name, and each of the roles credited like that. Whereas in North America, it's like, "Oh, here's all these people alphabetically, and you get to guess who they are." Which is unfortunate. And like we said right at the beginning, as far as doofy accents go, the voice actors do what they're directed to do. It's not like the voice actor goes in there and says, "Say, I think this guy should talk like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle!" "Oh, that's really good--why don't you do that." It's usually not like that; the voice director is the guy who interprets how he thinks these guys should sound, and they do what they're told. Oh, and it turns out that the guy who does Quatre's voice isn't the guy who does the new Jonny Quest's voice.
SM: Oh, he isn't?
KQ: No, he's not. He is someone different, but they sound very much alike! So check out Voice Chasers--it's really cool! I was very impressed. They're at www.voicechasers.org .
SM: Oh, org?
KQ: Yeah, so they're respectable! [laughter] And we thank Stephanie for writing with that!
SM: We bow down to you!
KQ: And then the person that wrote and said...
SM: "You suck!"
KQ: No! Well, okay, there was that, but then someone else--their e-mail address has "deadbug" in it--wrote and finished by saying, "I am spent!" Genius! Genius!
SM: We can't out-do that! We aren't worthy!
KQ: So thanks to everyone for writing--even the one who said we suck! Although we knew all along that I suck; I eat spaghetti with a straw every chance I get...!
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 3 "What Were They Thinking?!" (on Bad Accents from Star Blazers to Giant Robo, Tomino's Monkeywrench, Photoshopping Heero's Shorts, the Quest for Two-Flap Swear Words, Duo Gets His Gun, and Gundam Wing Episode 2)
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 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 April 8, 2000. Last updated November 23, 2004.