UCLA’s Asia Pacific Arts online magazine (which former aO writer Bryan Hartzheim occasionally writers for, though he didn’t do this one) features an interview with the dub actors, writers, and director. Normally I don’t find much very interesting in these kinds of interviews; people just talk about what makes their roles fun or different or whatever and that’s kind of it.

But this time mentions something really interesting: the dub for Blood+ was apparently on a “fast track,” and the writing was all done while the show was still in production in Japan, which means that the dub writers didn’t actually know what was going to happen in the series.

Interestingly, they also talk about fansubs– and very positively:

I think it’s great as long as they can enjoy the show…. So if this brings something to them and if they can feel like part of the show doing that, go for it! You see, it gets it out there and I don’t think it detracts from what we end up doing because we bring something different to it.

…Of course, these guys are doing a show that’s airing on Cartoon Network, and one that wasn’t aired until long after the original series finished…

Still, interesting read.

Josh Grelle as Simon; Monica Rial as Boota, and the rest of the cast list to date is still here.

I don’t really care about dub casting crap, but Japanator’s GodLen challenged me to a race– and me just out of the shower no less –so my competitiveness took over.

Kamina: Brett Weaver
Yoko: Tiffany Grant
Viral: Vic Mignogna
Leeron: Mark X. Laskowski
Kittan: Jason Douglas
Kiyoh: Monica Rial
Kinon: Brittney Karbowski
Kiyal: Kira Vincent Davis
Rossiu: Chris Patton
Gimmy: Greg Ayres
Darry: Hillary Haag

This all comes from a guessing game on Anime on DVD’s forums, with ADV’s Janice Williams confirming correct answers.

Which is why there’s no Simon or Boota, the other two options available for guessing. (Why no Nia? Got me– I assume they haven’t picked her yet.) I’ll check back in in the morning to see if they’ve been guessed yet.

Side note: Mignogna as Viral? Uh…

When I sat in on the Bandai Entertainment panel at New York Comic Con, not too terribly after Bandai announced that it would be producing Kadokawa’s Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu (a.k.a. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya), one of the questions I asked was whether they planned to keep the songs in episode 12 in Japanese, or if they’d re-do them in English.

Now, I distinctly remember being told that they’d probably stay in Japanese, but judging from the preview video posted at the ASOS Brigade today, it looks like they went the English adaptation route for the dub.

I’m impressed with how much Wendee Lee actually sounds like Aya Hirano while singing, but am still utterly disappointed that they changed the lyrics to English, especially because the new lyrics heard in the preview are kinda dumb.

Current Mood:  Annoyed

In the general run of things, I avoid dubs, on the grounds that they virtually always sound retarded to me.But since I started working at aO, where any number of dub fans hang around, I’ve been trying to be a bit more open-minded about them, y’know? So when a friend of mine sent me a link to some clips from the new Rozen Maiden dub saying that it was actually quite good, I checked it out.

…Oh…the misery… Read the rest of this entry »