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On Tue, 29 Jan 2002 17:21:16  
 John DeMoranville wrote:
>At 12:01 PM 1/29/2002, Joseph Riggs wrote:
>>What's the deal with the English VA credits on anime titles?  Last night, I
>>noticed that the voice of Duero in Vandread sounded like Jet and Roger Black
>>(Cowboy Bebop and Big O, respectively), and checked the voice listings for
>>Vandread and Cowboy Bebop.  Unfortunately, instead of having a list of who
>>did which character's voice (as one would find in a standard credits), the
>>end credits just had the entire English voice cast in an amalgamated group
>>with no indication as to who did what.  Anyone know why that is?  It seems to
>>defeat the purpose of credits if you can't tell who did what.
>>
>>Incidentally, it DOES appear that the English voice cast for Bebop is in
>>Vandread, but I can't say that I like the dub nearly as much as I like
>>Bebop's dub (I almost always watch titles subbed, but I do like to hear the
>>better dubs every now and then).  Some of the Vandread voices are good, while
>>others make me wince.
>
>Usually anime voice acting is non-SAG(Screen Actor's Guild) work. Because 
>of the rules non-SAG roles are not allowed to be credited with their 
>respective actors. Usually the actors also use stage names when they are 
>doing non-SAG work. This leads me to believe that when the Cowboy Bebop 
>movie comes out it will have a different cast for the English dub. Since 
>Columbia/Tri-Star has the rights to the movie I highly suspect the job of 
>dubbing will be a SAG production and won't use any non-SAG actors. Most 
>likely the Bebop actors are a apart of SAG but under different names, and 
>if they got the job and people realized that they were actually the same 
>actors who did the non-SAG work for the TV series, they would probably 
>thrown out of the Screen Actors Guild. I hope this makes sense.

That's annoying.  I remember hearing about Tenchi having problems with that 
way back when, and how the VAs all went under assumed names at the time 
(leading to some confusion with new fans when they see different names in 
episode credits, but hear the same voices).  I would also suspect that 
there's a certain amount of willful ignorance on the part of the SAG due to 
the ease with which someone who wanted to could figure out who is doing 
what.
 
Its a pity that it makes it more difficult to figure out who is doing what, 
though.  Since you don't see faces to go along with the voices you hear, 
credits are even more important in an animated show than they are in a 
live-action one.  Fans can still learn who's playing which parts, but it 
takes a little more work to do so.
 

junior