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Get to know the Creative Minds Involved in Anime


Decrytum

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About this post:-  I don’t think it would be too presumptuous of me to say that anyone who is a part of this community is also in some form or another infatuated with this little thing from Nippon (Japan) called Anime. A Reviewer at myanimelist.net said that ‘Anime as a medium allows for the kind of stories to be told that is just not possible with any other medium.’    While for some watching Anime may only be a casual hobby, for some others it may be a source of compelling storytelling and then there may also be folks like me who are so greatly influenced by it that it forms a considerable part of their very personalities. I would never regret the day that I watched my first mainstream anime despite its questionable nature and if anything, I would wish I had seen it sooner than I did. Having seen anime has made me a better person in many, many ways. It was through anime that I learned a lot about life and it was also what introduced me to this community and to the wonderful people that strive to make our anime viewing experience as great as it can be. BUT, in addition to this, it was also through anime that I got to know about these other Amazing people that worked behind the scenes in creating each of ours’ favorite shows, and I must admit, finding very little to no posts/discussions about them or about the Anime Industry here left me a little disappointed. Hence, I have taken it upon my albeit small shoulders to introduce to everyone the people that were involved in the production of Anime and also the people about whom the following post is going to be about.

 

 

~English Dub Voice Actors~

 

 

J Michael Tatum (Wikipedia Page)

 

{Notable Works:- Okabe Rintarou in Steins;Gate, Kraft Lawrence in Spice & Wolf, Sebastian in Black Butler, Issac Dian in Baccano, Erwin Smith in Attack on Titan, France in Hetalia and the list goes on forever.}

 

About Him:- Probably the first Voice Actor that I discovered and also perhaps the one with the most fun panels. One particular youtuber says that she can watch him talk all day long and not be bored. Furthermore, if you want to become a voice actor yourself then his tale of how he himself got into the voice acting business could be the ideal example of what you should do too! 😉

 

If you don’t know who him very well then Start here:- Florida Supercon 2015: Meet J Michael Tatum, the Sassy Voice Actor

 

J-FAX 2017:- Tatums wants to play Shere Khan in the Jungle Book - Knowledge of Steins;Gate, Attack on Titan, Black Butler recommended

 

SacAnime Winter 2017: How Tatum Became a Professional Voice Actor

 

Ohayocon 2014: J Michael Tatum Panel - Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 - Knowledge of Steins;Gate Recommended

 

->Some of the more Recent stuff:-

 

Steins;Gate in 60 Seconds with J Michael Tatum - Sort of like a promo for Steins;Gate 0 English Dub

 

*CDawgVA:- ( Youtube Page )

 

About Him:- He’s a British person with a very similar voice to that of J Michael Tatum. He runs a Youtube channel where he calls fans while masquerading as Tatum and people think they are talking to the actual voice actor. Occasionally, he and J Michael Tatum have get-togethers where they play all kinds of pranks on fans and also on each other.

 

*Moderate level of familiarity with J Michael Tatum required for best experience*

 

Notable Videos:-

 

J Michael Tatum's Interview with Crazy Fan – Viewer Discretion Advised (pun intended)

 

J Michael Tatum's Interview with Crazy Fan BLOOPERS!

 

Playground Insults with CDawgVA and J Michael Tatum  - Try not to laugh!

 

J Michael Tatum and CDawgVA Prank calls Anime Fandom

 

Playground Insults with CDawgVA and J Michael Tatum Round 2  

 

 

 

Crispin Freeman ( Wikipedia Page )

About Him:- He could be regarded as the best voice actor in the business and it might not be an exaggeration at all. He was involved with the Opera as a kid, is classically trained as an opera singer, learned several kinds of acting techniques and done theater too!! His fetishes include talking about How to get into Voice Acting, Mythology, the Anime Industry and Story-telling Animation. He also runs a Voice Acting Mastery podcast for people wishing to become a voice actor and I would recommend checking out his website -http://www.voiceactingmastery.com/  either way because it is really, really very good.

 

{Notable Roles:- Alucard in the Hellsing Franchise, Shizuo Hewajima in the Durarara franchise, Kirei Kotomine in the Fate Franchise}

*Knowledge of the Hellsing Franchise, specifically Hellsing Ultimate is Highly Recommended for Best Experience*

 

If you don't know him very well then start here:- Metrocon 2012: Crispin Freeman Panel - This particular video is also great for understanding the Anime Industry in the US and the Challenges of adapting an anime in English. A Very Informative Panel in general.

 

Hellsing Panel with Funimation – Recommended strictly for people who have at least watched Hellsing Ultimate. This video is also great for learning about the unique production issues involved with Hellsing.

 

Vic Mignogna ( Wikipedia Page )

 

{Notable Works:- Edward Elric in the Fullmetal Alchemist Franchise, Tamaki Suoh in Ouran Highschool Host-Club and a lot of other characters in all kinds of anime shows}

 

About him:- A Veteran Voice actor, a very nice human being and a great singer!

 

English Covers by Vic Mignogna:-

 

Vic Mignogna's Cover of the Brothers Theme from FMA (2002) and Here's the Original for Reference  

 

Edward Elric's Character Song FMA (2002)
 

You can find more covers here

 

~Anime Roundtable

 

 

 

Akiba-Fest: Behind the Voice – Features Crispin Freeman (Alucard, Shizuo, Kirei), Bryce Papenbrook (He’s in Everything, literally and the Main Character too as it turns out), Christine Cabanos (Madoka, Supporting roles in Toradora, Kill la Kill). This one is really great for learning how Veteran actors prepare for their roles and other important aspects of the industry. (Knowledge of Crispin, Bryce, Cabanos, Madoka Magica, Hellsing, Sword Art Online recommended)

 

SacAnime 2013: Men of Voice Acting - Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 – Featuring J Michael Tatum & Bryce Papenbrook.

 

 

 Ouran High-School Host Club

 

Realms-Con: Ouran High-School Host Club Panel but Without the King – Featuring Haruhi Fujioka, Kyoya Ootori, Honey-Senpai, Hikaru (Todd Haberkorn)

 

Florida Supercon: Ouran Panel – Featuring Tamaki Suoh, Kyoya Ootori and Haruhi Fujioka!

 

 

Attack on Titan

 

Titan Talk at Nan Desu Kan 2015 – Featuring Mike Mcfarland (ADR Director), J Michael Tatum (Erwin Smith), Lauren Landa (Spoiler).

 

Meet & Greet with the English Cast (The following can be a bit silly and childish for some people.)

 

Kill la Kill: Meet and Play with the English Cast – Expect Heavy Nudity (pun intended)

 

Durarara: Meet the English Cast – Just about everyone from the English Cast of Durarara!!

 

Sword Art Online: Meet and Play with the English Cast – Features almost all of the SAO Cast.

 

 

 

~Miscellaneous~

 

The Canipa Effect ( Youtube Page )

 

About this group:- One can think of them as the myth-busters of Anime. They discuss the productions of anime shows in Japan and the staff/Animators/Studios involved in making shows. Things like the secret behind the Visuals of Ufotable’s Fate Stay Night Adaptation is discussed and its not what you think!

 

Ufotable: Unlimited Digital Works – Explore how Ufotable goes about producing its anime and what sets it apart from, say, everyone else.

 

The Silent Fall of Studio Madhouse – Surprising, Right!?

 

 What on Earth is A-1 Pictures?? – Learn about A-1 Pictures, the anime studio behind Shigatsu wa kimi no uso, Shinsekai yori, Black Butler, Sword art Online

 

Breaking Down Konosuba's Incredible Animation – Was it really Incredible? Well, according to Canipa, it was.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Decretum
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This one was a very interesting and funny Q & A panel. Michael & Brandon talk in detail about the current scenario for English Dub Productions

at Funimation of popular shows like Steins;Gate 0, Tokyo Ghoul:re, My Hero Academia Season 3, Attack on Titan Season 2 as well as the upcoming Season 3.

They also explain how drastically things have changed ever since Simuldubs have become a thing and how it has made the adaption process even tougher and prone to inconsistencies as well as mistakes.

 

Here's the link:-   (Enjoy!)😉

 

Fan World Con Day 1 - J Michael Tatum and Brandon Mcinnis

 

Additionally, Tatum stated how he is no longer an Adaptive writer for anime licensed by Funimation and will not be adapting future seasons of shows he has previously worked on and just be a voice actor. Notably, while he did write scripts for Attack on Titan Season 1 and Season 2, he will not be writing the scripts for the upcoming Season 3. Similarly, while he was the Adaptive Writer, ADR Director as well as the Lead Actor in Steins;Gate, he is only the lead actor in Steins;Gate 0 and was not involved with writing dialogues for the show. He also expressed his discontentment at he fact that he was not able to be the adaptive writer for Steins;Gate 0 in particular. Apparently, Funimation is trying to reduce production costs to try and make more money by changing certain practices. 😡

 

 

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Thank you for mentioning the Canipa Effect channel, the host seems to have compiled and analysed an impressive amount of information related to anime production.

His video on "Kono Subarashii..." really makes me want to watch it for the animation, even though it would typically not be my cup of tea.

 

On a side note, don't you think your post should be titled "English Voice Actors" since "creative minds involved in anime" would normally refer to japanese directors, animators, producers (etc.) ?

Also the video "Steins;Gate in 60 Seconds" spoils the whole first season, so... spoiler alert !

 

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Okay, as it turns out, this is going to be yet another long post @Paul Naure so please bear with me.

 

On 7/12/2018 at 12:38 AM, Paul Naure said:

Thank you for mentioning the Canipa Effect channel, the host seems to have compiled and analysed an impressive amount of information related to anime production.

His video on "Kono Subarashii..." really makes me want to watch it for the animation, even though it would typically not be my cup of tea.

 

You are Welcome! And, yes, the Canipa Effect folks really appear to have unusually detailed knowledge about japanese anime studios and also about the staff involved in a lot of prominent anime. Their videos were actually what got me interested and also brought me up to speed on how anime production worked on the japanese end. The ‘Ufotable: Unlimited Digital Works’ video was one of their first videos that I watched and also among my favorites incidentally. Ufotable’s Animation is visually second to none, in my opinion, and I too had assumed (like many others) that it was because they had a very high budget which seemed a reasonable assumption at the time given how expensive their blu-ray box sets are. While in reality it had to do with how the studio was structured differently and had a dedicated workforce. Also, the story behind how the studio came to named Ufotable was quite amusing in itself.

 

The ‘Breaking Down Konosuba’s Incredible Animation’ Video, on the other hand, was definitely not what I had expected at all – I thought they were going to do a detailed but critical analysis of the animation but instead they applauded it which was unexpected since I had previously seen a lot of memes and trolling of konosuba’s animation commenting on how bad it was. The parts where they discuss the contributions of Kazunori Ozawa was really something to behold imo.

 

Conversely, however, there's also the case where I don’t currently know of a way to cross-check a lot of the things that Canipa says in their videos which occasionally leads me to wonder whether some of the things they say or claim in their videos is really true or not (just saying).

On 7/12/2018 at 12:38 AM, Paul Naure said:

On a side note, don't you think your post should be titled "English Voice Actors" since "creative minds involved in anime" would normally refer to japanese directors, animators, producers (etc.) ?

Thanks for the Suggestion!

 

Well, the purpose for creating this post was really an attempt to help people know more - as well as encourage discussions - about the staff and companies involved in making the source anime (not just the anime or the release itself) whose dual-audio anime releases we all download here at Kametsu and also to create an outlet to share all these interesting anime-related articles and videos that I discover time and again on the internet. The idea was to be able to include anyone and everyone who has contributed to any particular anime in some form or other, be it Directors, Animation Studios, Japanese Seiyuu, Theme songs & Soundtrack Composers but also the people who dub it into other languages like AniplexUS, Funimation, English Voice Actors. Even people who create Fanfiction or Unofficial English Covers of J-pop songs could potentially be included here ……. but, from what I had observed, I felt that most people here at Kametsu were interested more in the English Dubs of Anime given the relatively less amount of subbed-only anime releases here. And even in the case of dual audio releases I only ever saw mentions of English Dub Voice Actors or of the licensing companies in US but less of the Japanese Seiyuu or staff. (I may be mistaken, though) Now, I can very easily double or even triple the length of the main post should i wish to do so because I know of a lot of articles, websites, videos, interviews, wikias, tropes about the several different elements involved in a typical anime production. For Example, Japanese Seiyuu like Hiroshi Kamiya, Rie Takahashi, Kana Hanazawa, Chiwa Saito, Daisuke Ono, Jouji Nakata, Yuusuke Kobayashi, Yuki Kaji; Creaters & Writers like Tappei Nagatsuki (Re:Zero), Hajime Isayama (Attack on Titan), Gen Urobuchi (Fate/Zero, Madoka Magica), NISIOISIN (Monogatari, Zaregoto), Hideaki Anno (Evangelion), Kinoko Nasu (Nasuverse), Tsugumi Ohba (Death Note); Directors like Goro Taniguchi (Code Geass), Shinichiro Watanabe (Cowboy Bebop, Terror in Resonance); Soundtrack Composers like Yoko Kanno (Cowboy Bebop, Terror in Resonance, Wolf’s Rain), Yuki Kajiura (Kara no Kyoukai, Madoka Magica, Fate/Zero) and yet many more. These are just some of the people I know quite a bit about and also who could potentially end up having their own segment in the above main post.

 

But, listing info on such a large scale in one fell swoop was obviously not possible and I didn’t even know if people cared about these things (I still don't know) or even whether it was appropriate to share these things here rather than making a blog or something else about it (which I may end up doing sometime in the future but right now i am way too preoccupied for that kind of commitment). So, for the first edit I included more links and references to the English Dub Voice Cast so that hopefully more kametsu users might find it useful and/or relevant, and later on I would add resources and references to the Japanese Staff/Writers/Studios too.

 

As far as the Title is concerned, I wanted to choose a title that would allow all of the above mentioned elements to be put into one single discussion thread without going out of the bounds of the kind of content that the title of the post would aesthetically allow, and at the time of creation of this post I did not know if the title of the post could be changed later on (I kinda still don’t know this either) so choosing a specific title like ‘English Voice Actors’ could have become a problem down the road.

 

Besides, even right now my entire post is not exclusively about English Voice Actors, for example, the Canipa Effect Videos are about the Japanese staff and animation studios which have no relation to the English Dub Voice Actors.

 

On 7/12/2018 at 12:38 AM, Paul Naure said:

Also the video "Steins;Gate in 60 Seconds" spoils the whole first season, so... spoiler alert !

 

Oh, you are right .... I completely forgot about putting up spoiler warnings in my post. Well, admittedly, I am quite obtuse when it comes to spoilers and even have to make a conscious effort into not spoiling shows when discussing them with friends who haven't seen it. When it comes to this post I would honestly prefer readers to be able to figure out for themselves that watching a particular video can potentially spoil a particular show for them by just reading the descriptions i have provided. Plus, I personally dislike bold text headers screaming in my face the word 'Spoilers Ahead' so i think i will just put some content advisory warnings at appropriate places.

 

Thanks for making it to the end of this obnoxiously large post. And for anyone interested, i will be making updates to the main post in about two weeks time once i have successfully shifted from my home and settled into my college dormitory.

Edited by Decrytum
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Crispin Freeman is among my favorite persons in the world 😳 and i keep track of any content i can find on him. So the fact that he doesn't do as many panels as other voice actors really makes me very sad and being able to find something like MomoCon 2018 - An Hour with Crispin Freeman can turn any sour day into a delight for me.

 

PS - I am currently watching this particular video so can't say anything about what anime it can spoil so watch at your own risk. Also, the actual video doesn't start until 2:00 minutes in so be mindful of that as well.

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