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Primus wrote:

Cardcaptor Takato wrote:

This seems really presemptious for NA fans who only speak English to be telling the Japanese they're wrong about how to pronounce their own character's name.

The problem with this is that some of these pronunciations aren't even found in the Japanese version of the show. "Lacoose" certainly isn't on the loose in Gundam SEED. Fukuda's had 22 years to set the record straight in his own native language and that is not how he's had the seiyuu say it.

What on earth are you talking about?
Yes, they're saying ラクス in the Japanese version which, when considering it's supposed to be some kind of Western name when anglicized, would naturally come out pronounced like your so-called ""Lacoose"" or something along those lines.
Sure, it's not like it's ラクース or anything, but unless you want to call her "Lax" or "Lux" in English, which is definitely not intended, then ""Lacoose"" is the best approximation you're gonna get unless you want to go full Japanese and pronounce it Lakusu. (Which would also be wrong since it's not intended to be a Japanese name to begin with.)

So either you have no idea what you're talking about, or you didn't think this argument out.

How did "Lacus" become more complicated than "Eureka"?
Thanks a lot, Sunrise. Now I'm curious to hear how it's pronounced in other languages.

GNPixie wrote:

Written translation is one thing and arguably a spot where you may have a point with but vocal and spoken translation is another and where a lot of that argument falls apart. Nobody speaking native English would pronounce some of those names that the Remaster got wrong if they weren't being told to by someone who isn't completely fluent in English.

So you want official clarification from Sunrise but you will dismiss any clarification from them because Sunrise is Japanese? And why is Stephanie Sheh's statement she received clear instructions from Sunrise directly how to pronounce the names not good enough for you?

BalmungHHQ wrote:

Primus wrote:

Cardcaptor Takato wrote:

This seems really presemptious for NA fans who only speak English to be telling the Japanese they're wrong about how to pronounce their own character's name.

The problem with this is that some of these pronunciations aren't even found in the Japanese version of the show. "Lacoose" certainly isn't on the loose in Gundam SEED. Fukuda's had 22 years to set the record straight in his own native language and that is not how he's had the seiyuu say it.

What on earth are you talking about?
Yes, they're saying ラクス in the Japanese version which, when considering it's supposed to be some kind of Western name when anglicized, would naturally come out pronounced like your so-called ""Lacoose"" or something along those lines.
Sure, it's not like it's ラクース or anything, but unless you want to call her "Lax" or "Lux" in English, which is definitely not intended, then ""Lacoose"" is the best approximation you're gonna get unless you want to go full Japanese and pronounce it Lakusu. (Which would also be wrong since it's not intended to be a Japanese name to begin with.)

So either you have no idea what you're talking about, or you didn't think this argument out.

I don't understand your point, you agree that Lacoose is more akin to ラクース not ラクス, so how is it the best approximation? It's blatantly being mispronounced. They can't even comfortably pronounce it in English. Not to mention the pronunciation invokes a certain vulgar slang in English that was definitely not intended. It's giving Quattro Bageena.

Kusakabe wrote:

I don't understand your point, you agree that Lacoose is more akin to ラクース not ラクス, so how is it the best approximation? It's blatantly being mispronounced. They can't even comfortably pronounce it in English.

Like I explained, it is the best approximation because straying away from the intent and going solely on the kana alone results in the only probable options being "Lax", "Lux", or "Lakusu" (or those three but starting with an R instead of L), which are all obviously not the intent. And since Sunrise made sure their team knew that the anglicized pronunciation is ""Lacoose"" anyway (which is the only reasonable way to pronounce it to begin with, given the other options), it just makes sense to go with that. It's all about preserving ク as the point in the pronunciation not to be accented away in English. It's not hard to understand.

I don't know why you people are so dead set on wanting that pronunciation to be "wrong" when it is literally the right way to say the name in English if you just take a moment to think about it.

==

Unrelated to that specific reply, I just wanna say... As a newer fan to the Gundam SEED universe, who got into the series fairly recently and ranked it as my solid second-favorite Gundam universe, I'm immensely disappointed in the attitudes my fellow fans have had in response to this movie's dub.
I love many things about the SEED world and one of those things is the performances of the current English voice cast. They all did an amazing job, and I'm glad I got to experience this story & world for the first time through their performances. It should be celebrated that they're (mostly) all returning to their roles for this film.
But nope, any and all discussion about it has to be railroaded into complaints about a years-old change in cast...

Like, honestly at the core of it, I understand how the older fans must feel if they were fans of the older Bandai Entertainment dub. (I remember hearing that many at the time weren't, but that's beside the point now.) Or even as just a fan of the work of Ocean Studios and their pool of actors. I do believe they need more respect in the current state of the industry. But this? This immature whining that takes away from what should be a cool discussion over a cast announcement with actors returning to their roles and cool new additions to the cast? This is just not it...

Seriously, why are so many of you acting so rude and stubborn about this whole thing now?

For comparison, the Universal Century Gundam stories changed their cast to NYAV Post a long time ago, and I didn't exactly see many people clamoring for Advent of the Red Comet or Cucuruz Doan's Island to go to Ocean Studios, even though the original series was done there. At least not to the extent of the responses here.
If the UC stories, the literal central continuity of the Gundam world, can have fans so passively accept the change in casting that came with the 2010's, why is the SEED series getting so much ridiculous whining, especially now after this has been the established cast for years? There should never have been any expectation that it would use any cast other than the current one! The whole thing feels so hypocritical to me, and, like I said, makes me upset at the attitudes of my supposed "fellow SEED fans".

If you were earnestly a fan of this series, you would be encouraging others to check it out in whatever form they'd like and find their own appreciation for it. But instead you surround discussion of the movie and its dub with consistent whining and negativity.
I'm glad I got into SEED when I did, because if I were on the outside looking in, seeing this kind of discourse surround the movie would just make the whole thing seem unappealing.
I guess it's just another piece of ammunition for the "SEED is bad because X, Y, Z" online narrative to continue to be perpetuated...

BalmungHHQ wrote:

I don't know why you people are so dead set on wanting that pronunciation to be "wrong" when it is literally the right way to say the name in English if you just take a moment to think about it.

I'd say the same thing to 'you people' lol

Cardcaptor Takato wrote:

If name mispronunciations are the big unforgivable deal breaker for you with this new dub, I have bad news for you about most anime dubs.

I wrote off this dub when the HD remaster's recast was announced. I knew if this movie was ever actually finished that the voices I grew up with weren't going to be in it. I'm far more familiar with the Japanese cast than I am with the HD remaster's.

I'm saying that defending the name pronunciation as being dictated by the Japanese doesn't change the fact that at least to my ears, that isn't how it's vocalized in the Japanese version either. Does this really sound like how Rie Tanaka (to this day) and the rest of the seiyuu have said her name? To me, it sounds closer to "Lah-kiss" than "Lacoose." The Twitter thread I linked to mentioned being at the movie's LA premiere and noticed the disconnect between the seiyuu's pronunciation of her name versus how Sheh/the English interpreters said it.

Even if it was objectively how the Japanese version said the name, changing long established things will always be jarring to people. Imagine if Toei demanded "Super Sigh-uhn" as the official pronunciation in every Dragon Ball production going forward. That's closer to how it's actually pronounced in the Japanese version, but you've got decades of people familiar with "Sayin." You can't expect everyone to deal with it.

Somer-_- wrote:

I agree with pretty much everything you said and thanks for putting in the effort on the info gathering! I'll just add that Beley didn't reprise her role as Sesshomaru's mother from the Inuyasha sequel even though Viz was putting in an obvious effort to get as many of the original VA's as they could.

I had forgotten about that. Yashahime wasn't dubbed by Ocean. Bang Zoom sub-contracted two studios in Vancouver and Victoria to get the original show's cast members back. Another studio, especially just for one actor, might've been asking for too much. The simuldub nature meant there's no way to know how prolific her character would be. It doesn't matter anyway, because it's not like a dub of Freedom with the original cast was ever on the table.

BalmungHHQ wrote:

(I remember hearing that many at the time weren't, but that's beside the point now.)

This implies popular sentiment can't change or that the consensus of a few people online in 2004 reflected the opinions of everyone. Even today, online opinions seldom represent the views of everyone. If you dig up old Dragon Ball forums/newsgroups, you'll find plenty of negative comments about Funimation's Dragon Ball Z dub. People used to trash the Teen Titans cartoon on ToonZone back in the day. Regardless of being blinded by nostalgia, those aren't the prevailing sentiments anymore.

BalmungHHQ wrote:

For comparison, the Universal Century Gundam stories changed their cast to NYAV Post a long time ago, and I didn't exactly see many people clamoring for Advent of the Red Comet or Cucuruz Doan's Island to go to Ocean Studios, even though the original series was done there. At least not to the extent of the responses here.

I've seen people upset that Brad Swaile hasn't voiced Amuro since Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3, but you're right in saying that subject hasn't dominated conversations. There are a couple of explanations for that.

The obvious one: is vintage U.C. Gundam as popular in the Anglosphere as the more modern spinoffs? The implication I've gotten over the years is that doesn't seem to be the case and certainly wasn't in the '00s. SEED's dub was on TV in more countries than the original show's. I think that popularity gap might've also manifested itself in how the sequel series were treated. Destiny's dub was recorded in Vancouver with everyone reprising their roles. Zeta Gundam's dub used lower cost actors in Calgary, giving new voices to every returning character. Bandai Entertainment also debuted Zeta in boxsets, which wasn't common practice back then and implies they wanted to get through it quickly. Ultimately, they stopped dubbing vintage U.C. after Zeta, which kind of says everything.

So, you're likely dealing with a smaller group of people to begin with, but that changeover with Zeta also meant that those characters didn't have consistent voices very early on. Some will know that Brad Swaile wasn't actually Amuro's first English voice anyway, even if Sunrise wants to pretend the movie trilogy dub never happened. In comparison, with the exception of two largely forgotten video games, there was only one group of people who had voiced the SEED characters for 15 years.

Hello!

I am glad that the Gundam Seed movie is getting a dub. I prefer the original dub from Ocean but I am looking forward to seeing what this dub cast will do. However I hope that the Funimation dub for Gundam Seed and Gundam Seed Destiny if there is one will be put on Crunchyroll. It makes little sense to have the movie dubbed without having a legal way of watching the entire series dubbed on a legal streaming site.

Primus wrote:

This implies popular sentiment can't change or that the consensus of a few people online in 2004 reflected the opinions of everyone. Even today, online opinions seldom represent the views of everyone. If you dig up old Dragon Ball forums/newsgroups, you'll find plenty of negative comments about Funimation's Dragon Ball Z dub. People used to trash the Teen Titans cartoon on ToonZone back in the day. Regardless of being blinded by nostalgia, those aren't the prevailing sentiments anymore.

Very true. In the end, mid-00's reception to things mean very little today. Despite any kind critical response from a vocal minority, things have a tendency to find their fans. I've been in similar situations with other dubs myself.
Overall, I do actually think it's a good thing that the work done by Ocean Studios and their talent pool is gaining more respect and appreciation now than it may have had at the time, both for SEED and their other dubs. They've done good work.

I just wish that the appreciation in this particular case didn't end up being expressed by directing negativity and nitpicks towards the current cast/dub in general, is all. Anime smile + sweatdrop

RevyHenriettaRider wrote:

Hello!

I am glad that the Gundam Seed movie is getting a dub. I prefer the original dub from Ocean but I am looking forward to seeing what this dub cast will do. However I hope that the Funimation dub for Gundam Seed and Gundam Seed Destiny if there is one will be put on Crunchyroll. It makes little sense to have the movie dubbed without having a legal way of watching the entire series dubbed on a legal streaming site.

The new dub made for the HD Remasters can be seen on the Blu-ray releases for the series! Both SEED and Destiny have been available for a couple of years now, and blind-buying those Blu-rays a while back is how I was introduced to SEED and became such a big fan.
I know it's kind of frustrating that the dub isn't streaming anywhere at the moment, but it's consistently available for anyone willing to own the show. So if you're interested, I definitely recommend picking them up when/if you're able.

Quote:

Even if it was objectively how the Japanese version said the name, changing long established things will always be jarring to people. Imagine if Toei demanded "Super Sigh-uhn" as the official pronunciation in every Dragon Ball production going forward. That's closer to how it's actually pronounced in the Japanese version, but you've got decades of people familiar with "Sayin." You can't expect everyone to deal with it.

Besides the hardcore dub only watchers who despise Masako Nozawa and Shunsuke Kikuchi's score, most DBZ fans hate Funmation's localization choices so this is probably not the best example to use. And DBZ is also a show where the dub has been through dozens of recasts and revisions over the years and this is not even counting the Kai dub. Just the Ocean dub of DBZ alone had three voice actors for Goku and they got some characters' names wrong like Kururin, Roshi, and Buruma. And this is the same studio who did the original Gundam SEED dub. So clearly Ocean wasn't above recasting actors and getting things wrong either.

BalmungHHQ wrote:

I just wish that the appreciation in this particular case didn't end up being expressed by directing negativity and nitpicks towards the current cast/dub in general, is all. Anime smile + sweatdrop

I can understand the frustration, but that comes with the territory of a wholesale cast changeover. It was easy for people to ignore the HD remasters as that's ultimately just old content, but this is new material. New material that retained nearly every seiyuu, with other foreign versions likely doing the same. It doesn't help that Freedom is a movie meant to exploit nostalgia, making the difference even more jarring for those actually nostalgic for SEED in English.

It also says something about how poorly pushed the HD remaster's dub has been. At the moment, it's only marginally less accessible than the original dub. They're both exclusive to disc. We're now years removed from its debut and Destiny's re-dub still hasn't gotten any official streaming release. How exactly did they expect to get new fans or have the old ones become accustomed to the new voices? A Blu-Ray release in the modern world isn't the most accessible of things anymore.

Cardcaptor Takato wrote:

Besides the hardcore dub only watchers who despise Masako Nozawa and Shunsuke Kikuchi's score, most DBZ fans hate Funmation's localization choices so this is probably not the best example to use. And DBZ is also a show where the dub has been through dozens of recasts and revisions over the years and this is not even counting the Kai dub. Just the Ocean dub of DBZ alone had three voice actors for Goku and they got some characters' names wrong like Kururin, Roshi, and Buruma. And this is the same studio who did the original Gundam SEED dub. So clearly Ocean wasn't above recasting actors and getting things wrong either.

That may be the prevailing sentiment on Kanzenshuu, but I strongly doubt that's the overall opinion of casual Dragon Ball fans in the Anglosphere. This is one of those things where the online zeitgeist likely doesn't match the overall sentiment. If you were to go off of Dragon Ball message boards, those cropped versions of Z Funimation were pumping out should've flopped. There's a reason why Battle of Gods, Resurrection F and Broly were all theatrically released dubbed-only in the U.S./Canada and had zero problems making lots of money. Super's simulcast undoubtedly familiarized a big chunk of fans with the Japanese version, but that doesn't mean everyone's on board.

I'm fully aware Dragon Ball dubs use inaccurate pronunciations for a lot of terms. They continue to be grandfathered into localizations for familiarity's sake. Doing that suggests they know it would cause confusion. The recasts that happened throughout Vancouver Z were due to issues with individual actors. They weren't unceremoniously replaced wholesale after 15 years because the production didn't want to pay them (that happened with DB and GT going to Calgary, plus you know, Funimation's Z dub) or whatever fueled Sunrise's desire to not bother with Gundam SEED reprisals.

Ok so are you complaining about the Gundam SEED pronunciations because they're not "familiar" to you or is it because they're wrong? Because you can't on the one hand justify Ocean's much more extreme dubbing alterations and recasting choices in their own Dragon Ball while complaining the new SEED dub is some great blasphemy because they say Lacus in a funny way. You're being disingenuous now. Just say the new dub isn't for you because of your personal preferences. The Internet's obsession with proving everything is not for them is morally and objectively wrong is weird. But I am moving on instead of arguing in circles here.

Cardcaptor Takato wrote:

Ok so are you complaining about the Gundam SEED pronunciations because they're not "familiar" to you or is it because they're wrong? Because you can't on the one hand justify Ocean's much more extreme dubbing alterations and recasting choices in their own Dragon Ball while complaining the new SEED dub is some great blasphemy because they say Lacus in a funny way. You're being disingenuous now. Just say the new dub isn't for you because of your personal preferences. The Internet's obsession with proving everything is not for them is morally and objectively wrong is weird. But I am moving on instead of arguing in circles here.

And also, didn’t back in the 2000s when SEED was new, almost EVERYONE ranted on how the Ocean group cast suck so much and that the Japanese voices were better? B_Rabbit843 and AlCap1987 were right about people should not bash the nyav post cast just because you like the ocean cast a lot.

Cardcaptor Takato wrote:

Ok so are you complaining about the Gundam SEED pronunciations because they're not "familiar" to you or is it because they're wrong? Because you can't on the one hand justify Ocean's much more extreme dubbing alterations and recasting choices in their own Dragon Ball while complaining the new SEED dub is some great blasphemy because they say Lacus in a funny way. You're being disingenuous now. Just say the new dub isn't for you because of your personal preferences. The Internet's obsession with proving everything is not for them is morally and objectively wrong is weird. But I am moving on instead of arguing in circles here.

Why not both? People are miffed because that pronunciation is pretty different from what they expect to hear. The explanation that it's a mandate from Japan (which I don't doubt) doesn't make that any less jarring, especially as, at least to my and a few other people's ears, it doesn't match the way the name is vocalized in the Japanese version.

I didn't justify any changes to Dragon Ball in this conversation. I said that if Toei mandated more accurate terminology, they'd upset people. That's not a controversial opinion. Look through the comments on this trailer and you'll find more people mocking "Super Sigh-un" than acknowledging that it's closer to its original pronunciation. It's not exclusive to the stuff Ocean worked on either. Dan Kanemtsu got all kinds of hate for his Studio Khara/Hideaki Anno approved translation of Evangelion because it wasn't what people were used to.

mgree0032 wrote:

And also, didn’t back in the 2000s when SEED was new, almost EVERYONE ranted on how the Ocean group cast suck so much

The opinions of a few people online in 2004 clearly didn't reflect everyone if years later you still have people upset the recast happened.

That said, I kind of doubt your statement reflected popular sentiment back then either. Everyone ranted about how the dub sucked so much? People have been hyping up Mark Oliver's performance for as long as I can remember. You'll regularly find Ed, Edd and Eddy memes about the cast. There's that long standing rumour (?) about Matt Hill getting kicked in the groin to attempt to simulate the infamous Kira cry. This was all before the bitterness regarding the HD remaster happened. I'm not claiming the dub was perceived as some infallible masterwork upon release (or even now), but dubs that everyone believes "suck so much" are usually forgotten or become topics of mockery. Instead, there's a decent amount of people who clearly looked fondly on this.

X-Men '97 got Lenore Zann back for Rogue - more than a decade after she left the industry to be a politician in Canada Shocked

Primus wrote:

Dan Kanemtsu got all kinds of hate for his Studio Khara/Hideaki Anno approved translation of Evangelion because it wasn't what people were used to.

Anno's insistence on call them First Children, Second Children, Third Children.... Laughing

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