Do you know who Vic Mignogna is? How about Bryce Papenbrook? Or Johnny Yong Bosch? Maybe J. Michael Tatum? Christopher Bevins? Ringing a bell?

These are American voice actors, people who dub Japanese anime into english, or do voices for Saturday morning cartoons. For whatever reason, when watching an animated show in America, there isn’t a lot of emphasis placed on who exactly you’re listening to. They’re almost non-entities to the viewers, and they certainly aren’t celebrities (except for when they appear at cons of course. They’re niche celebrities, I guess). Because these people aren’t “there,” as in, the viewer never actually “views” them, they don’t get much recognition for their hard work.

It’s a completely different story in Japan.

Japan’s animation industry is huge, like, producing 60% of the world’s animation huge. Accordingly, voice acting has an amazing amount of prominence there. Voice actors are extensively employed as character actors for anime and video games. Often international fan-clubs crop up around one actor (or particularly actresses), and some people (:\ I’m one of them) will watch a show simply to hear a specific voice actor (HiroshiKamiyaHIroshiKamiyaHIroshiKamiya – forever and ever amen). Most voice actors (or CVs, or seiyuus) are celebrities in their own right, and often launch music and live acting careers based on their success in animation.

Because voice acting can often be attached to a singing talent (or career) it’s not surprising to see albums produced by them. Vic Mignogna, for instance has his own Christmas CD, and several singles and albums. Unfortunately, Mignogna is not the norm, and most American voice actors don’t have any connection to music.

Once again, Japan takes it to the next level. Connected to animes you can usually find character songs, songs written to be sang by a character (obviously the voice actor, I mean come on). Some openings and endings to shows are sung by the lead actors (I can think of Yuyushiki’s op and ed, and Free!’s op and ed, and Karnevals ed off the top of my head). With Drama CDs, character songs, live action appearances, and live action adaptations, voice actors get a lot of opportunities and a lot of exposure in Japan that just doesn’t translate to American voice actors, for whatever reason.

Certainly part of the problem is the advent of subbing. Slap some subtitles on an anime and you suddenly have a lot fewer costs on your hands. A lot of American anime fans prefer to watch anime in its native language, because it’s more authentic (or maybe because ninja words sound ridiculous in english), or because the shows they want to watch are passed over for dubbing. Because the ratio of dubbed shows to subbed shows (considering the popularity of fansubs and all) is insanely tiny, most fans start watching in Japanese and never look back. Recently American anime production companies (like Funimation or Viz) have started releasing Official Subs as well, facilitating that split.

Another fascinating phenomenon in the fandom community – people who like to watch dubs are often “looked down upon” by people who watch in Japanese, for whatever reason. Obviously where there are preferences there will always be conflict.

Either way, voice actors demand a lot of respect. I mean, when was the last time you listened to your recorded voice? Most likely you’re voice isn’t as beautiful as you wish it would be (I know mine isn’t).

The only proper response is to bow down to the voice-blessed (like HIroshi Kamiya >.>)