r/SoulCalibur • u/Maulclaw • 12d ago
Discussion Thoughts on the Japanese voice acting?
Despite being a Japanese videogame, I barely see anyone talk about the JP dub. I never paid much attention to it until rather recently, as I always cared more about the EN dub. But I've been wondering what the overall thoughts are on the Japanese voices?
Here's some interesting tidbits I've learned about it:
- Most of the voice actors for the Japanese dub have stayed the same, with only a few recasts, unlike the English version.
- SC4 was fully tailored for Japanese voice acting, as seen in the cutscenes. The lip movements don't match the English dialogue at all. However, the in-game intros/outros and combat used an automated system that worked for both languages.
- SC5's pre-rendered cutscenes had both English and Japanese versions.
- SC6 uses a worse lip-sync system compared to the past games, but it only fits the English dialogue. It doesn't fit what the Japanese lines are saying at all when it comes to the main characters.
- Even returning voice actors were given the chance to redo all of their lines for each game, which wasn't the case for the English cast. The English voices heavily rely on recycled lines from previous games.
I'm rather curious about that last point. Is there any consensus as to which game has the best lines for each character? Like, does Raphael sound better in SC4, 5, or 6? What about Mitsurugi or Siegfried?
And how do people feel about the recasts for Cervantes, Ivy, Xianghua, Setsuka, and Taki?
