savaster
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High & Low
🕑 Added 2023-07-09 12:59:01 +0000 UTChttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXzcyx9V0xw
Several days ago I had a chance to see the official trailer of Disney/Pixar's Elemental (already in theaters in U.S., not yet here in Japan). With any discussions about its PC orientation or box office performance aside, I noted that the voice of Ember (the protagonist fire character) is set assertively low. Since she is small and has a slim torso, it won't be surprising if she were chirping like a bird, but here she is instead sounding assertively low and husky.
I have noted this difference in voice performance between U.S. (i.e. English) and Japan - and I recall an example in the anime classic Gunslinger Girl (note: the first series, not the second). Japanese actresses for GG pitched their voices pretty high, while the English counterparts act at a fairly low key, sometimes revealing their actual physical build and age. While both versions were acted out very well, in the former the characters felt frail and sometimes helpless, while in the latter they sounded more confident and passively aggressive, occasionally with streaks of concealed rage.
I guess this difference actually goes beyond voice acting and I assume it has cultural/sociological roots - one way to easy demonstrate is to switch your GPS voice navigation modes between different languages. And my mom back in the days used to tease me for the "old lady in my car," since I always kept my mode at American English.
And I never mean to imply which way is good or bad - after all, the important thing, I think, to keep sticking to and demonstrating your true elements. :-)
Comments
Didrik Svahn
Now I don’t know if this is the same issue/thing. But I have heard that in several dubs of anime shows the characters sounds a bit off. Just because they don’t have that tone which they had in the sub version. One noticeable example of that is of the show Girls Und Panzer, where the characters sounds too old for being school girls
melangalade
damn that bitch was very scary. a full blown psychopath. it's not very common for women to do that, but yeah, exactly, her reasoning was that she will be taken more seriously, and I think she succeeded.
savaster
Aha. And I remember from a documentary that Elizabeth Holmes, the fraudster in the Theranos scandal was reported to keep her voice almost unnaturally low in business settings - maybe that was needed to appear she knew what she was doing and to lure investors. And thanks I am looking forward to watching Elemental. In the teaser video it's funny that Ember first cringes over how ripped Wade (the water guy) was but then is apparently disappointed when he shifts form and reveals he's actually on the chubby side. Very normal reactions from a girl but either way the man loses :)
Dragon-Tear
Think in western culture, highly pitched voices tend to be interpreted as not serious or unimportant. The analogy with the chirping bird is fitting since chirping is something that happens in the background and is disregarded. Therefore women characters who carry a powerful message etc. tend to be on the lower end pitchwise. It's not the pitch alone that makes a voice sound very feminine (or masculine) however. Hope you get to watch Elementals btw. I enjoyed it :)
