Why I Personally Dislike Tokusatsu Dubs!
Pretty much, I'll just admit I dislike Tokusatsu dubs and also, in extension any live show that gets dubbed outside its original language. Now for my reasons:
If you're watching Sentai dubs, you're really getting a lot of holes like that costume above. That's right, you should expect a huge error margin maybe 90% error in dubs or even 99.9% error and when you start knowing what the real plot is, you'll probably feel shame like you're not wearing anything at all. A good example that you could try to check out is how many times Maskman dubs really skip out the IMPORTANT role of Igam as a woman disguised as a man is one reason why sooner or later, you can't understand how the events unfolded in the whole series.
Those dubs hurt my ears most of the time. Most dubbers of these shows are what I'd call really bland and really, really are no substitute for the real deal of the voice of the actors. Some are pretty good but some really lack and I mean lack the expression to really make it go well. IMO Reiko Chiba dubbing Kimberly in MMPR wasn't even impressive for me compared to her acting as Mei in Zyuranger or Amy Jo Johnson acting as Kimberly in MMPR. Even the bad acting in some Power Rangers seasons don't hurt my ears compared to most Tokustasu dubs!
As said, it would be be at best to start learning to adapt to reading subtitles so you can really enjoy the real deal because for me, dubbing live shows with another language makes it sound so FAAAAAAKE. Period.
If you're watching Sentai dubs, you're really getting a lot of holes like that costume above. That's right, you should expect a huge error margin maybe 90% error in dubs or even 99.9% error and when you start knowing what the real plot is, you'll probably feel shame like you're not wearing anything at all. A good example that you could try to check out is how many times Maskman dubs really skip out the IMPORTANT role of Igam as a woman disguised as a man is one reason why sooner or later, you can't understand how the events unfolded in the whole series.
Those dubs hurt my ears most of the time. Most dubbers of these shows are what I'd call really bland and really, really are no substitute for the real deal of the voice of the actors. Some are pretty good but some really lack and I mean lack the expression to really make it go well. IMO Reiko Chiba dubbing Kimberly in MMPR wasn't even impressive for me compared to her acting as Mei in Zyuranger or Amy Jo Johnson acting as Kimberly in MMPR. Even the bad acting in some Power Rangers seasons don't hurt my ears compared to most Tokustasu dubs!
As said, it would be be at best to start learning to adapt to reading subtitles so you can really enjoy the real deal because for me, dubbing live shows with another language makes it sound so FAAAAAAKE. Period.
I am French, and in France we had a few Super Sentai dubbed in French before having the Power Rangers adaptation.
ReplyDeleteWe had Bioman, as well as Maskman and Liveman (oddly renamed Bioman 2 and 3 though they are different, it was just for the sake of surfing on the wave of Bioman's success and selling more toys o_O). These series were broadcasted fully.
However we had only 20 episodes of Flashman, 29 from Turboranger, 5 from Fiveman (yes, only 5!) and half of Jetman but with some episodes censored and with a French dub parodying the evil guys, making them stupidier in order to make kids laugh more because of the violence of the series (I find it ironic, because when I see what TV shows today I think it’s much more violent but anyway…).
Bioman had some voices totally out of phase. On the screen, when you see the heroes shouting or saying something with determination, it seems the French voice is toned down or a bit “away”, as if someone was talking to you on Skype. It doesn’t match the tone of the Japanese actors. Mika and Jun are supposed to be baddass but their French voices make them sound like fragile girls. The heroes also had French names instead (Shirou becomes Jacky, Shingo becomes Fred, Ryuta becomes Bob, Hikaru becomes Sikou, only Mika and Jun retain their names.) Their nicknames (Red One, Green two, etc) are dubbed as Red Force, Green Force, etc. The villains have ridiculous voices.
Also it had two different opening songs, one sung by Michel Barouille in 1985 and which is close to the original except the lyrics are in French (and I find the instrumentation better than the original actually). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmEQO367b4E Then when the series was aired on TF1, it got replaced by a cheesy opening by famous anime French singer guy Bernard Minet^^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfQ1D_9bJp8
Maskman was renamed Bioman 2: Maskman, and had a strange opening song which is a ballad sung by two little girls along with Bernard Minet (Dis-Moi Bioman, a surrealistic song Oo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_jde_vhOlY ). The heroes’names were westernized, Takeru becoming Mickael, Kenta becoming Kent, Akira becoming Allan, Haruka becoming Helena and Momoko becoming Barbara. The French dub used terms already used in Bioman, which doesn’t make sense, and the heroes are also called Biomen, Red Force, Black Force, etc.
Liveman, renamed Bioman 3: Liveman, was more ok in termes of dubbing. AlsoThey kept the Japanese names of the heroes, though they changed the nicknames (Red Falcon becomes Aero Condor, Yellow Lion becomes Lion Meteore, etc) and the dubbing was better. The guy voicing Yusuke is the same comedian who voiced Future Trunks and Adult Gohan in the French dubbing of Dragon Ball Z, and his voice is really good. But the translation misses some important points. And some music tunes were removed and replaced by some others, which destroys the music atmosphere of some episodes (the great song Spark Umi E from Megumi was removed) This time they are not called Bioman but Liveman (except in the opening song sung by Bernard Minet, called “Bioman est de retour” which means Bioman is back) This opening song is also better though still cheesy^^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTw1sowpD_k.
The problem is that western tone and Japanese tone as well as the ways of acting are so different that I think it can have so many problems of lip syncing (the example of Bandora adapted into Rita Repulsa in MMPR speaks well)
It is only in the past recent years that I discovered that Power Rangers was an American adaptation of Super Sentai. The team that made me want to discover again the original ones are a French group called France Five, which is a series of 6 episodes of a French sentai^^ have you heard about them?
For French fans, we prefer mostly Liveman or Jetman when it comes to pre-Zyuranger series, and for post-Zyuranger, we prefer Dairanger, Timeranger, Dekaranger…
Very nice blog by the way! Cheers