If you've ever read a book with dialogue, you've probably imagined the speaker's voice. Well, at least I can say that's true for me. The same goes with manga. I look at a character, read the speech bubble, and I can "hear" the character's voice.
Then I watch the anime that the manga is based on.
Sometimes, I'm thrown off by the voice actors. I tend to think "that character isn't supposed to sound like that!" Although, in other cases, a character's voice can be so close to what I imagined that it's freaky.
I haven't read many manga series. In fact, I can name all the ones I read before watching the anime. They are Fushigi Yugi, Fullmetal Alchemist, The Seven Deadly Sins, and Blue Exorcist. I'll give a (hopefully) quick rundown of the first three, since I haven't seen any clips of Blue Exorcist yet. Also, please note that I'm referring to characters' Japanese voice actors, not the English dub ones.
If my memory serves me correctly, I read the entirety of Fushigi Yugi before ever watching the anime. Since the series is 18 volumes, I had a pretty solid idea of what the main characters sounded like. Once I saw the anime, I was actually pretty disappointed by the actors who voiced the main couple, Miaka and Tamahome. They sounded outright annoying compared to what I had imagined. As more characters were introduced, I realized that my perceptions were very different from the vision of the people who were making this anime. Until they introduced Chichiri. From the moment he spoke his first verbal tic, my eyes opened wide in amazement. His voice was exactly what I thought it would be.
I know that in the two anime continuities of Fullmetal Alchemist, the voice cast is, like 90% different. I've only seen FMA-1, but I know which characters retained their actors for the second series. I'll focus on a few of those, such as main characters Edward and Alphonse. I wasn't really sure what to imagine for Ed's voice. I knew that in the dub, he was voiced by a man, but I thought that Ed should sound more... prepubescent. When I saw the anime, I didn't know what to think. Ed was voiced by a woman who could deepen her voice enough to sound like a teenage boy. Nothing like I had perceived, but it still worked. Al's voice was perfectly spot-on though. The one that bothered me was Bradley. His voice was completely different than what I thought it would be. It sounded too familiar... like I had heard it before. Then it hit me: the actor had also played the third Hokage from Naruto.
When I saw clips for The Seven Deadly Sins, my ideas for the characters' voices were shattered. Meliodas's voice was a bit too low for me. Diane's was too high. Hawk sounded too girly. Ban's voice sounded too... I don't even know. The only one that sounded remotely similar to what I had pictures was Elizabeth. Well, maybe I'd get used to the voice-acting choices if I actually saw the anime. Until then I'll still hear the voices I had imagined whenever I read the manga.
Conversely, when I watch an anime first, and if the characters' voices are distinct, I can hear those voices while reading the manga. This was most unfortunate in the case of Sailor Moon. Whenever Luna spoke, I could hear that Julie Andrews impersonator from the original English dub. Sure, Luna still has a distinct voice in the original Japanese version, but somehow, even after a decade or so, I can still here that English voice actress say, "Serena, you must transform!" like a distressed grandmother.
So, who here has read a manga and then seen an anime that was inspired by it? Which did you experience first-- the manga or the anime? How did that affect your listening experience? Are there characters whose voices sound exactly like you imagined? What about ones that were completely off? Just let me know if you heard the original vocal track or a dub.
I have a bit of a problem. For those of you in the Sketch Marathon, you might know what it is. While sketching 365 characters isn't a problem (challenge, yes, but not a problem... yet), I have to figure out 365 characters that I want to sketch.
I've written down a list of series to sketch characters from, although I haven't figured out which ones to sketch from each series. Who do I include? Who do I exclude?
I'm going to draw more characters from the series that I really, really like as opposed to the ones that I only kinda like. Still, my list of series is kind of pitiful since some of those that I'm really into, I haven't finished. I'm trying to group these drawings by series, so I don't want to sketch characters from a series that I haven't finished, only to find, after the fact, that I wanted to draw that one character that they hadn't introduced yet.
And even if I do finish all those series, do I have enough characters to carry me through to the end of the year?
I never thought I'd say this anytime soon, but do you people have any anime you could recommend to me? I'd prefer short series (30 episodes or less) without anything... graphic. It's OK if you mention series that I already watch/watched/want to watch anyway-- there might be sequels and OVAs.
I leave you now with a final thought. ♪
Do you know the anime
Do you know your anime
Well gotta know the anime (oh-ey) ♬
Oops. Now that song is probably stuck in your head. Please select one of the following responses: (1) I'm sorry. (2) You're welcome.
Hey, all.
If you remember, I posted a list of Challenge ideas that people could host. Well, KyraChan decided to take one of those ideas in a different direction. Instead of creating a traditional Challenge, she has created a World in which any Otakuite-- no matter what their specialty is-- will submit a fan work with a poem. Click to find out more.
Now I'm off to sign up.
I was thinking about all kinds of ideas for characters, drawings, and World posts. I want to get them all down before I forget. Warning: This could get long, so I'm breaking it up into a bunch of pages.
Character/story ideas...
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