Time to look at a major list as we come to the Top Ten Best Magical Girls, to make this list, you need to have a few qualities, you must promote benevolence, have a memorable look and stand out among others within a team should they be part of one; a cute mascot helps to. Without further delay lets begin.
Honorable Mentions
Any Student from Aikatsu
The cast of Aikatsu certainly are memorable with their revolving door wardrobes but none of the cast standout on their own.
Ichigo Momomiya from Tokyo Mew Mew
The pink haired Catgirl was one of the major Magical Girls that bridged the gap between Sailor Moon and Pretty Cure, sadly the show is a casualty of 4Kids and never recovered.
Nanoha Takamachi from Magical Lyrical Nanoha
It's difficult to really call this show a proper Magical Girl show as it's closer to Mai-Hime rather than the norm, while that's not a bad thing it just makes this show a little too serious.
10. Yui Kasuga from Corrector Yui
The Magical Computer Fairy is the most forgettable on this top ten but as a Magical Girl she suits her role better than many of the higher ups on this list.
9. Akane Isshiki from Vividred Operation
Akane suffers from Miracle Rookie syndrome so isn't as high up as she should be but she's on this list anyway for her awesome fusion forms which are some of the best in the Genre.
8. Meimi Haneoka from Saint Tail
The result of a Reformed Thief and a Stage Magician creating the Magical Girl equivalent of Robin Hood with the additions of being blessed by god as her best friend is a nun. Horribly underrated but she's a little too close to a certain higher up Magical Girl on this list.
7. Momo from Minky Momo
One of the so called originals of the genre, Minky Momo's task was always solving problems rather than fighting the forces of evil, doing so in an older form created by Magic. Would be higher except that during her era there were several shows like hers competing for ratings.
6. Miyuki Hoshizora from Smile Precure
There are enough Precures now in the franchise to compete with Power Rangers for numbers so finding one to fill this list wasn't easy until I came to Smile Precure, arguably the best team of the franchise and leading them was Cure Happy Miyuki Hoshizora who should really be the poster child for the franchise.
5. Usagi Tsukino from Sailor Moon
The most famous Magical Girl of all time but not the best as anyone with a long memory remembers how Sailor Moon used to be which is a whiny teenager, which the Crystal series seem to forget. Nevertheless Sailor Moon has achieved more than most Magical Girls in the same position.
4. Momoko Hanasaki from Wedding Peach
Yeah, Sailor Moon's closest rival is better than Sailor Moon herself, surprised? Well I'll explain, Wedding Peach is still the only Magical Girl show to fully promote love as a core part of the genre without losing it's focus, it knows what it is and it's headed by the perfect character in Momoko.
3. Honey Kisaragi from Cutey Honey
Cutey Honey invented the Transformation Sequence, an element that all Magical Girl shows have relied on since this show's creation, and to think this show was created by Go Nagai, an artist more famous for Devilman and one of the main people behind the ultra violent 80s era.
2. Amu Hinamori from Shugo Chara
If you want a character that's just right for it's audience and suits the attitudes of the current era then look no further than Peach Pit's pink heroine Amu Hinamori, with this girl you get a choice in style that will suit all types of interests as well as a storyline that suits a slightly older audience.
1. Sakura Kinomoto from Card Captor Sakura
But the most perfect Magical Girl ever created is Clamp's Card Captor Sakura, she's not perfect so her achievements are more believable when she accomplishes them, she has a revolving door wardrobe actually made for her by her stalker, I mean best friend Tomoyo, and you get more out of an episode as it replaces transformation sequences with Magical Incantations which suit the show more and you have a cute mascot that becomes awesome later. I have my reservations about the way Clamp operate but Card Captor Sakura is their best.
It seems inevitable I would review this eventually given that it's come up a few times, so lets dive into Sailor Moon's only decent rival, Wedding Peach.
The Angel World is under attack by devils so it's up to the Goddess Aphrodite to call upon the Love Angels to stop them, this brings us to Momoko and her friends who get selected to perform this task whose families happen to be part of the Wedding business in Photography, Dress Making and Flowers respectively. This proves to be convenient as Momoko, Yuri & Hinagiku don their Wedding Gowns and become the Love Angels, although at full power they switch the Gowns for mini-skirts of power and the rest pretty much sells itself.
This anime is very cheesy but surprisingly successful during it's run and still stands as Sailor Moon's only decent rival, mainly because the show was a lot simpler and easier to digest as the cast stayed fairly small and the story was very easy to follow and while it took a lot of pages from the book of Moon, it still felt fresh and original, mainly because of how well the costumes were designed for the Angels; a lot of shojo works, especially Magical Girl shows are often defined by the costumes it's lead characters wear and having not just one but two iconic costumes instantly makes the show more marketable, a trick later picked up by future shows and even shows of today.
Sailor Moon will always be on top in the Magical Girl stable but how it's descendants follow is more defined by what the first rival does and a show like Wedding Peach has enough content to deliver but makes enough mistakes to know what doesn't work which proves more useful than what you can learn from Sailor Moon.
As for the dub.............................Yeah it's one of the worst dubs ever, don't even try and watch it, just stick to the Japanese.
Final Verdict: Ignore the dub and you should be fine, Wedding Peach does serve as a guilty pleasure but it's not as embarrassing as you might be thinking, give it a try you might be surprised.
This has been on my to do list for a while but after careful consideration I have now picked my top ten guilty pleasure anime.
Dishonorable Mentions
Digimon, Pokemon & Sailor Moon
They all used to be guilty pleasures but are now appreciated classics, Sailor Moon as of it's new series has gone all contemporary, while the other two still run on decent money despite being over 15 years old.
10. Cutey Honey
Better known as the mother of all transformation sequences, Cutey Honey is on here for it's shameless attempts at adult fanservice, it's cheesy dialogue and sentai background, yet it still looks better than most Magical Girl shows in the last ten years.
9. Ultimate Girls & Hyperdoll
Sticking with sentai heritage, Ultimate Girls was an attempt to spoof the Ultraman series and make fun of ecchi shows in general, it never misses a moment to constantly rip off the girls clothes and make them fight the most dodgy looking monsters. Hyperdoll is an older series but follows a similar concept of skimpy clothes and crappy monsters. However both have amazingly catchy theme songs and the whole premise is so laughable that you can't help but enjoy it.
8. Debutante Detective Corps
Anyone who has followed me from day one knows that this show was the first series I ever reviewed, a minor OVA series about five stupidly rich girls forming a detective group to try and stop bad guys wanting to kidnap them and demand their money. It's laughable the amount of effort that went into this OVA and stands the test of time as a heckle worthy anime for the lazy afternoons.
7. Fighting Video Game Anime
Fighting Games have terrible stories and not one of them has ever managed to be good in anime form despite having enough of a diverse cast to allow it to be good. Anime like Powerstone, Virtua Fighter, Fatal Fury, Street Fighter II, Tekken, Variable Geo and Darkstalkers all have to share this position on this list, but say what you like about it, it's still very entertaining to watch these failures.
6. Angelic Layer
It's interesting to see CLAMP try a shonen series but ultimately still feels like a shojo, nevertheless the fighting dollies of Angelic Layer is still a million times better than some of the rubbish CLAMP have dug up over the years.
5. Those Who Hunt Elves
Anyone using the tagline, "Stripping Elves for Fun & Profit" will get serious looks of confusion from so many people, made even more weirder when the characters are a school girl, a martial artist, a Hollywood actress and a T74 Tank that later gets possessed by a cat spirit, all of whom are led by an elf woman who ends up turning into a dog. Despite all that it's wonderfully good fun to watch.
4. Love Hina
It's become a popular bashing subject between anime fans and I can see why but read much closely it still manages to be a decent love story, this is made more clear in the Manga whereas the anime feels cheap in comparison and lets face it, everyone always cheers when watching Naru get punched.
3. Rio Rainbow Gate
This show was written to be completely bashed by anime fans but it's attempts at being serious when Rio herself does her best by using the heart of the cards setup makes this such an enjoyment to watch if only to see how absurd the premise can get, the fact that this was made by Tecmo of Dead or Alive fame is plain to see as its never shy with it's fanservice.
2. Wedding Peach
The term "Sailor Moon ripoff" was common place in the 90s when many Magical Girl shows wanted to claim some of it's popularity, the most high profile being Wedding Peach, about a group of three girls who transform into their Wedding Gowns before going into their mini-skirts of power during a fight scene. It's a cheesy ripoff, the dub is one of the worst in anime history and feels like something Precure would come up with (which surprisingly they haven't). Saying that, it had a decent soundtrack, it ran at a higher quality than Sailor Moon and you just can't help but appreciate the ambitious attempt this anime tried to accomplish that it so nearly became a worthy rival.
1. Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch
Oh god, oh god, oh god. Yes another terrible magical girl show but it's so laughably stupid that it's become a hidden cult classic, it's also the only anime that manages to use it's whole color palette for both it's villains and mermaids and finally we have the songs. Even shows about Magical Pop Idols such as Aikatsu and the Pretty Rhythm franchise could never compete with Mermaid Melody's cheesy pop, for a long time it served the internet's meme community until the next bad anime took over.
Last year I did my Top Ten list on Worst dubbed anime performances, this sort of follows on from that but this time lets look at the character performances that really sucked. I'll also name the Voice Actor behind each character.
Please note that this list isn't a reflection of the Voice Actor themselves as most of them would have done better work.
Now lets begin.
Dishonorable Mentions
James from Pokemon voiced by Ted Lewis
Ted Lewis is better known for Giovanni and Tracey, however he didn't get a very good shot at James in the first few episodes of the original series as his acting range doesn't suit comic relief too well but seeing as the casting was replaced quickly he misses this list.
Hikaru Shidou from Magic Knight Rayearth voiced by Julie Maddalena
I just found the voice irritating, which thankfully was resolved in the OVA through change of casting. Saying that it's not a big enough criticism to go on the list.
Gourry Gabriev from Slayers voiced by Eric Stuart
Eric Stuart didn't start his portrayal of Gourry very well but because he improved over time he's escaped this list.
10. Italy from Hetalia voiced by Todd Haberkorn
Pulling off an accent is tough especially when you have to cover such a broad range of them and poor Todd Haberkorn cannot do Italian.
9. Tenma Tsukamoto from School Rumble voiced by Luci Christian
Luci Christian has done loads of voices really well, so what does she bring to Tenma from School Rumble, her Kaname Chidori voice. This does not suit Tenma seeing as her Japanese voice is much lighter in tone, I usually don't mind a change in tone between translations but Tenma's voice put me off the dub.
8. Kintaro Oe from Golden Boy voiced by Doug Smith
Another case of change for the worst, as Kintaro's voice became stupid for the dub, a poor direction to go for the character. I've already mentioned how bad the dub was anyway, I won't go through it anymore.
7. Ryoko from Tenchi Muyo OVA voiced by Mona Marshall
When Tenchi Muyo's cast returned, Ryoko's original dub voice didn't and instead they picked Mona Marshall, a voice better suited for tomboys and young boys rather than a sassy space pirate. That was not a smart choice, this led to Tenchi Muyo's downfall and since then the series has not been popular in the west.
6. Anthy Himemiya from Utena voiced by Sharon Becker
Utena is a notoriously bad dub to begin with but made worst when you come to an important character like Anthy. In short, she's too quiet and too flat sounding yet her design is meant to be striking enough to be backed up by an equally thought inspiring voice and yet it didn't happen and like the rest of the series, fell flat.
5. Angel Daisy from Wedding Peach voiced by Heather Kafka
Wedding Peach sadly was another train wreck of a dub and poor Angel Daisy suffered as a result, completely wrong voice casting was the blame for this one. If the dub is going to be bad anyway at least make the characters sound right.
4. Canal Volfield from Lost Universe voiced by Jessica Schwartz
Lost Universe is part of ADV Films forgotten dubs series, which remain forgotten for a reason but by virtue of Nozomi entertainment some of them came back. Sadly the old dub remained and Canal's voice is not only irritating but the entire performance is flat. Made even worst when you consider that Jessica Schwartz does have good range when putting on an accent.
3. Sai Nanohana from Jubei-Chan voiced by Byron Close
The Jubei-Chan dub lacked emotion which is something a lot of actors failed to accomplish in this series but nothing could top Sai Nanohana's voice, the performance was so bad that the series stopped being threatening and just became laughable.
2. Yuma Tsukumo from Yu-Gi-Oh Zexal voiced by Eli Jay
I've not known any performance to be the epiphany of failure like Yuma Tsukumo, this is the lowest Yu-Gi-Oh have ever sunk.
1. Miaka Yuuki from Fushigi Yugi voiced by Bridget Hoffman
Bridget Hoffman is a veteran actress and is really good at some roles but all it took to ruin Miaka Yuuki was the very first lines of dialogue, that took 40 seconds, it doesn't get any better from there. Just goes to show that there are just some roles you can't always get right.
After a small dose of writer’s block I’m back with a really juicy top ten, in fact I have a double feature this time with the top ten best & worst dub voice acting.
Before I begin these top ten lists are a judgement of voice acting & scripting not the full dub itself so I cannot use cuts & edits as an argument for poor dubbing nor can I use the excuse of the anime being bad. One of my dishonorable mentions will sum it up better. So now I start with the list of the ten worst dub voice acting.
Our voices shatter your speakers
Dishonorable Mentions
One Piece (4Kids): As bad as the dub was, most of the criticism aimed at the 4Kids One Piece dub was to do with the horrific cuts & editing, when your left without cuts the actors aren’t that bad at voicing the characters, and I’m probably the only person in the world who thinks a Brooklyn accent suits Sanji.
The Wallflower: This series doesn’t have a volume button, everyone shouts louder than a Dora the Explorer episode, but a great script managed to save it.
Virtua Fighter: Dub acting was pretty bad but then again so was the anime and I cannot use bad anime as an excuse.
10. Wedding Peach
Wedding Peach needed some tender loving care and it never got it, one decent lead voice but the other two leads don’t back it up well, especially Angel Daisy where she is a tough bruiser type girl with the voice of Velma on laughing gas; the script isn’t any better with inserted Americanisms that so plagued early ADV dubs.
9. Yumeria
A series where one word is mentioned so many times that the impact is lost before the series even begins. The trailer for Yumeria never helped them to begin with, it was like Love Hina but Keitaro is being punched every minute of the series rather than every ten minutes.
8. Sister Princess
The voices of the numerous female characters are creepy and in a series where it is such a big plot point to have an extended harem, I don’t feel comfortable watching it.
7. Disgaea
The anime had some of the most irritating voices I’ve ever heard. Now I don’t know how significant the verbal tic “Dood” is supposed to be in the franchise but I do know that I don’t want to hear it ever again.
6. Yu-Gi-Oh Zexal
I only watched two episodes of this series and I wanted to rip out my ears. Was the fallout with 4Kids so bad that they felt the need to punish us with such a horrible dub of Zexal? Seriously I used to give the 4Kids voices free passes because despite working for a company that destroys the integrity of anime, it was never the fault of the voice actors, they were just doing their job but even they must of thought that the acting they were doing in Zexal was terrible.
5. Jubei-Chan
I believe I mentioned this one in my review; Jubei-Chan has some of the most emotionless voice acting I’ve ever heard, the amount of scenes I went through which needed some emotion was many and only once did they get it right. It also felt as though all the actors were exhausting themselves with the long winded explanations they had to give.
4. Goldenboy
This is one of my favorite anime of all time but the dub is one big mistake, a character eager to learn in every job he does, who is also very intelligent, a bit of a pervert as well, but big-hearted and yet they give him the stupidest voice in dubbing history. To further emphasize this, his original voice in the Japanese is brilliant.
3. Street Fighter II Victory
This anime had two dub attempts to get it right and failed them both. The scripting is a mess, both voice casts were two dimensional in their performances and even those who did get it right never stayed any longer than one episode. I’ll say again, two attempts!
2. Any Anime ADR Directed or ADR Written by Gary Dehan
ADR stands for Automated Dialogue Replacement, and it’s up to the ADR Director to make sure the dubbing goes smoothly without any problems. Gary Dehan worked in the early ADV Films era and he lent his talents to a number of their earliest dubs.
But his list of work is the likes of the Tekken Movie, the Sonic Movie, Sakura Wars TV, Sakura Diaries, Legend of Crystania, City Hunter, Shuten Doji, Maps, Variable Geo & Ninja Resurrection and a few low grade anime; all of which are quite bad dubs and some are notoriously bad anime as well but even better shows like Queen Emeraldas & 801 T.T.S Airbats didn’t really do very well either. The problem is the casting wasn’t particularly good, the voice acting in many of them were either two dimensional or emotionless. ADV Films were lucky, they had strong links to Evangelion to keep them afloat but poor runs with low grade anime came back to bite them when they went down.
1. Needless
But Needless is the worst dub I’ve ever had the displeasure of listening to, the script writing was awful, the dialogue was vomit inducing and these are well known professional dub actors as well, with a full list of decent credits among them, a lot of them were also ADVFilm veterans around at their prime and many of the others are current first choice Funimation employees. There are only three decent voices in the whole series. Adam Blade was good, Disc was very well done & Kuchinashi who is a mute and only says two words in the entire series. It comes to something when a mute is the best character in the dub; the rest are either lazy, try too hard, don’t try enough, utterly irritating or plagued by a horrible script.
Not even some of the worst anime in existence can claim to have a worst dub than Needless.
