Okay, seriously. She wasn’t THAT bad. Was she? Granted, it’s been some years since I’ve played Final Fantasy X, so I can’t really recall. Maybe I should fire it up again in order to confirm or deny.
In any case, welcome to Cheesy Voice Acting Week. I now realize what an unwieldy title that is, but it’s a bit late to change things at this point. I can’t really predict WHAT we’ll be bringing you in terms of content for the next seven days, but I can say with reasonable confidence that it’ll have something to do with… cheesy voice acting. Lord knows there’s plenty of it to sample from.
How am I, you ask? Doing fairly well, thanks for asking. A little tired, having worked all day. But I’m in that odd limbo stage where my body is tired, but my mind – brilliant piece of engineering that it is – remains wide awake. I’m also quite hungry, but I can’t do anything about that, because AS ALWAYS I have no damned food in this apartment.
Wait, you didn’t ask? Well fine, then. I’ll just leave. Enjoy Cheesy Voice Acting Week, you miserable peons.
Yuna’s voice acting wasn’t so bad, her characterisation is fantastic, but her voice direction is a bit off. IMO they tried to hard to make her sound like her Japanese counterpart, which has her sounding a little stilted and breathless at times. All these mistakes are fixed in X-2.
I remember Hedy Burress explaining that she was trying to match the animation as closely as possible, which is why she had such awkward pauses and phrasing at times. Which is weird, because you’d think they’d be able to try out several permutations in an ADR session. Trying to find the video on youtube… I think it came from the International version bonus dvd… and FAIL. Oh well.
I think the main problem is that Yuna was designed to be a very “Japanese” character. I’m using quotes because Japan doesn’t have a monopoly on demure, repressed, irrationally well-mannered women, but it’s an archetype that we’ve all come to know and love. And I don’t think it plays well with a western audience that’s used to Jane Austen. Maybe if we all read/saw more Ibsen, we’d all enjoy it a lot more.
Even with knowledge of characters like her, there’s still a lot that needs to be filled in. “Why doesn’t she do this?” Because it wouldn’t even occur to her that that is possible, given the restrictions in the society she’s in. “But it’s so obvious.” Not to everyone around her, except for maybe Tidus, which is why he’s the way he is. He’s the foil.
And there’s other stuff as well, like when she says “The wind, it’s nice.” and the two giggle like schoolgirls, it makes a perverse kind of “so mono no aware it’s retarded” sense within Japanese culture, but it doesn’t work in North America.
Oh wait, none of that has to do with the voice acting. I think. I think my problem with FFX’s voice acting is “who talks like that?” Yes, they’re video game characters, but you listen to the Japanese voice acting and you can go “ok, they’re talking like other people on tv” (except Japanese television is like youtube, all the time), you listen to the English voice acting and you go “… … …huh”.
Non sequitor: Auron had no armpit hair, what’s up with that?
I always assumed Auron was just hot with all that clothing on in the (mostly) tropical climate of Spira. Probably not so much any more, but back when he had a phycial manifestation, I imagine he’d be sweating bullets all the time under all those layers. Shaving probably helped to take a bit of the heat off :D.
Don’t forget, Riddles. YOU came up with the title for this week’s theme!