I’ve noticed that every single time i release a video, someone writes a remark about English versus Japanese voices. To be honest, my preferences aren’t set in stone, which makes me curious about everyone else’s reasons for choosing one setting over the other.
Obviously the vast majority of these decisions come down to a matter of personal opinion. There’s no right or wrong answer, regardless of how strongly certain people feel about their favorites. Granted, there may be some voice samples which we can all agree are bad – but they’re few and far between. Guile, Dhalsim, Balrog, Sagat, C.Viper, Rufus, El Fuerte, Abel, Dan, Gen, and many others sound perfectly fine under English language settings.
Generally, i like being able to understand what my characters are saying. Since i speak English but can’t speak Japanese, my default starting choice is to leave the sound setting on English voices. Each character remains that way until one of them says something so unbelievably corny that i decide i’d rather not know what they’re saying. Prime examples include Ken’s idiotic “Try this on for size!” cry during EX Hurricane Kick and Akuma’s inane rambling.
The other major dealbreaker happens if a character speaks Japanese words under both settings, yet the English voice actor can’t pronounce them correctly. English Ryu, Sakura, and Gouken come to mind.
Of course this cuts in both directions. Japanese Cammy sounds cute at first, but she clearly can’t pronounce half those words. Japanese El Fuerte can’t even pronounce his own name. And Japanese Zangief sounds like he’s trying too hard and ends up screaming.
Well, what do you guys think? I’d like to get a sense of which voices are everyone’s favorites for future reference. Admittedly, i haven’t spent equal playing time on all cast members yet. If someone makes a convincing argument supporting a certain option for any character, i’ll consider it more carefully when they’re about to end up in one of my videos. By the same token, i want to know if there are any specific voice samples i should avoid at all costs.
So far i have Ryu, Ken, Chun Li, M.Bison, Sakura, Rose, Akuma, and Gouken set to Japanese voices and everyone else set to the English language option.
I agree on what Maj said :) Some characters are best heard in English while some in Japanese.
As for me, I like to hear the shoto warriors including Sagat and Dhalsim in Japanese, while the others are fine in English.
Thumbs up to the English voice actors with the cool accent, (Gief,Rose,FuerteCammy)
The thing is, Abel’s from France and he doesn’t have that thick France accent. :?
My IMOs. :)
My preference on voices just ends up being who I think sounds cooler and a few choice quirks. I don’t like Abel in english, but mostly because I think the Japanese voice actor does his grunts and yells with a lot more gusto, so I like the Japanese setting on Abel because it makes the character a lot more visceral when played or observed.
I prefer hearing Guile and Balrog in Japanese, as well. I like Balrog’s laugh and savagery, and with Guile it’s mostly because actually HEARING Flash Kick is something I find very jarring. I call it flash kick when I refer to the move, but for some reason I have to hear that dude say “Somersault.” I actually prefer El Fuerte in English because for whatever reason, he telegraphs his moves vocally when the english track is on. Bison in Japanese is a must, though the English language version has a few choice lines, he genuinely sounds retarded when KO’d and I can’t stand it.
Zangief I have to hear in Japanese, the “mother russia” thing gets old and I actually prefer not to understand what he’s saying half the time. In Japanese he’s referring to “the Children” for all that shit he does anyway, so I don’t know. “FOR MOTHER RUSSIA” or “FOR THE SAKE OF THE CHILDREN”, I don’t want to hear that shit at all in a match lol.
I like the way tekken does it where all the characters speak the language it makes sense for them to speak. I tend to keep it that way with ryu, akuma, goken, honda, and, sakura being in Japanese with seth and bison also speaking Japanese because there origin is unknown. Balrog, cammy, viper, dan, dhalsim, fei long, guile, ken, and rufas all make sense as native English speakers and everyone else ends up with English because that would be more likely.
I just left all the voices in english until i got sick of some of them. i think i changed honda’s first, he sounds especially retarded in english. eventually changed sakura’s and ryu’s. that’s actually all i can think of off the top of my head. i actually like bison’s english voice, and i main him :I
i’m also fond of “DIE ONE THOUSAND DEATHS”
The Japanese version was the only version when SF4 was only an arcade game, and that’s the only voices you ever hear coming from any Japanese arcade/tournament footage. Picking and choosing which characters to use which voices on the US console version just leads to awkward inconsistency as you hear different videos from different US players, and it forces that player’s opinions on the viewer instead of using one universal standard.
We’ve had only one set of Japanese voices per game for the last 20 years of Street Fighter; it didn’t suddenly become an issue that we’re “forced” to listen to Japanese voices in SF4. Personally, it makes me sad that this issue exists at all, because it’s just another sign that the US arcade scene is a thing of the past.
I just set Cammy, Boxer and Dictator to English, and Japanese for everyone else. Mainly because what they say in English is kinda funny.
Hah, I thought I was the only one bothered by that :D It feels like the actor doesn’t even know the language spoken in Mexico, with “aydios” and all.
I agree with Tarnish, Abel’s shouts in Japanese (in particular the one for his ultra) sound a lot better.
The only one I can remember that I’ve set to Japanese and isn’t in your list is Honda. I just like his Japanese voice better.
Hmm, well, originally I had it set so that if a character had a good reason to speak English, then I would leave it as so; however, I ended up changing Chun-Li back first because “Gomen ne!” and “Ahahahaha, Yatta!” were too ingrained into my system.
Ryu I changed back because I figured that if he wasn’t talking with like Guile or someone, then he’d be speaking Japanese.
Ken I have on English because I figure that his corniness and cockiness are half of his character.
Guile I leave on English because he is America.
Dhalsim and Blanka sound fine on English, and I’d rather not have Dhalsim’s Indian accent be mixed with a Japanese one too.
Zangief is on English because the accent is too good. He’s also the hammer of the USSR so he should be doing everything for Mother Russia.
Bison I leave on Japanese because I like the voice actor from various other anime and video games.
Akuma and Gouken really had no business speaking English in the first place. I also think that Akuma’s voice actor tries to hard to make him sound evil.
Honda didn’t really have any business speaking English either since his whole story is going around the world showing everyone how awesome Sumo is.
I also couldn’t really think of why Sakura would know English very well especially since everyone she would have contact with regularly should be able to speak Japanese very well.
I like the way Sagat says his Tiger moves better in Japanese. Just a personal preference. The English voice actor isn’t bad or anything.
Rose I leave in English because I like the voice actor from various anime and video games.
I can’t think of anything else in particular that hasn’t been mentioned already.
afilia, Tarnish, Numsigmernen: Okay, it’s not too late to switch Abel to Japanese so i’ll go with that, even though i think his Japanese voice sounds really generic. But his English “Take that!” sound byte is definitely annoying.
error1, zem, supersonic1453: Ah, yeah, forgot to mention Honda for some reason. The only reason he’s still set to English is because he hasn’t made enough appearances in my vids and i haven’t gotten around to it. His English voice makes me laugh but the Japanese one is definitely better, especially since the English guy actually says “Hundred Hand Slap” during EX hands.
SlimX: What about the console-exclusive characters?
CPS2: Yeah, that’s why i have Gen set to English. He sounds like an oldschool kung fu movie dub. Plus he has the best taunt speeches ever.
Abel’s better in English. His ultra sounds like he’s gargling in Japanese.
japanese abel is hilarious and that’s why i put him on that, that “WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH” for his ultra. also he dies and yells “KANNAMAGAAA” and I don’t know what that means but the way he says its just sounds funny to me, honestly I kind of want a translation if that’s actually a word and not just a sound.
English gouken is the best when he does air hurricane he sounds like my discrete structures professor.
japanese sagat says “i love beef” for tiger knee and “taiga dickslicer” for his ultra.
i want to know what japanese fei long says when he dies… “TOREDO MACHINA” or something, what is that? I really hope he’s not just saying “I LOST” like the english one
with the english m. bison he reminds me of dee jay “NOOOO”
Fei Long is pretty much just saying “I lost!” in Japanese. He says “Ore no maketta” or “Ore no make da” or something which basically means “It’s my loss.”
I’m not quite sure what Abel says in Japanese since I really never have him on that. I’d look, but I’m playing something else right now. I’m sure someone else knows, and probably knows exactly what Fei Long says too.
Hate ken “try this on for size” especially when playing him with Rose because Rose’s ultra “try this on for size” sounds cool. I like Roses english to hear her accent why do you have her in jap?
Also jap dan has such a deeper less wimpy voice.
@supersonic1453
Apparently sakura can actually speak English in the story.
@jamheald
Oh, I was sure she had the ability to speak English. She idolizes Ryu who trains with Ken who is from American who is Guile’s brother-in-law, etc. etc. I was just saying that since most of her usual acquaintances would be native Japanese speakers or at least be able to speak Japanese, it’d be more likely for her to naturally speak that. She lives in Japan too, so yeah.
@supersonic1453
Yeh totally agree there.
Apart from possible awkward performances or ill fits for the characters in question, one huge strike against the English voices, for me at least, is the fact that the lip syncing is completely off. Not a huge deal for grunts, screams or special attacks, but I find it incredibly jarring whenever a character’s lips start flapping completely out of sync with what they’re saying any time you taunt or win a round. So even in the cases where I don’t have a strong preference for either language (which admittedly doesn’t apply to many characters), I tend to side with the Japanese voice since then the voice samples will at least match the characters movements.
The only characters I set to English are Guile, and possibly Boxer and/or Viper (I can’t quite recall, honestly). I don’t mind Guile’s Japanese voice, but his English one is pretty great, and most of his phrases are either short, or in English in the first place, making the lip-sync issue moot. The same applies to Boxer, and to some extent to Viper.
The rest I keep in Japanese for various reasons. I have no desire whatsoever to hear Ryu, Ken, Gouki, Gouken, Honda, Sakura, Chun-Li, Dictator, Sagat, Claw or Dan speak English, and most of them sound awful anyway. The Japanese characters are a no-brainer, and I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to imagine the Shadaloo guys using Japanese over English… with Chun-Li and Dan I guess it’s a question of familiarity more than anything (which applies to most other characters too, I guess, but whatever), but for whatever reason I’m not interested in hearing them speak English. As Maj mentioned too, the mangling of Japanese words for the special moves certainly plays a part as well.
Cammy, Rose and Zangief I set to Japanese, at least partly because of their respective atrocious fake accent. Cammy in particular I absolutely cannot stand. She simply sounds like an American actress doing a fake snooty upper-class British accent – which doesn’t even make any sense in the first place! Cammy may represent the UK, but she’s a lab-created clone of Dictator, who prior to the events of SF2/past Z3 most likely spent most of her time in whatever part of Asia Shadaloo operated from. I’ll concede that she may speak English (her XvSF voice was awesome, after all), but why would she have a British accent?
With El Fuerte, Rufus, Abel, Fei Long, Dhalsim, Blanka and Seth, I don’t have a strong preference either way, and mostly set the voice to Japanese because of the lip-syncing issue. I actually really like Abel’s English, um, speaking voice, in lack of a better term, meaning how he sounds in actual dialogue – but in the actual fights his Japanese voice sounds much, much better. Fei Long almost has the opposite problem, his English screams and yells sound great, but his spoken quotes (not least I LOST!) just sound really corny and dumb. Gen’s English voice just sounds about 40 years too young and generally terrible.
Blah, I guess I wrote a whole essay on this stupid subject… TLDR version: I don’t see any inherent benefit to setting any voice to English (I’d rather not understand something than have characters sound completely different from how they “should” sound), most of the English voices sound bad to me for one reason or another, so I mainly stick to the Japanese voices.
@Jiggeh
About the accent thing, I feel that most Street Fighter characters are extreme flanderizations of their respective countries, so I always thought the ridiculous accents were within the spirit of the various characterizations.
I think Balrog sounds better in Japanese, largely because he makes such impassioned yells during his attacks; English voice doesn’t really sound ‘Crazy Buffalo’ enough to me, although I like his Ultra taunt at the end.
Dan sounds way more amusing in English because he really sounds like the weeaboo he’s supposed to be, haha X^D Dan’s old Japanese voices sound really good but he sounds rather tired in SFIV for some reason.
As I learned from an Arcade Infinity video and saw for myself, El Fuerte’s running sound is actually changed between Japanese and English voices! I have no clue why they did this and like the video noted, it does sound less annoying in Japanese.
@supersonic1453
Fair enough, and I certainly won’t argue that the fake accents are any more offensive than some of the more stereotypical character designs – I still find them annoying to listen to, though.
@ano
Forgot to mention it – Abel says “karada ga!” which basically translates to “My body–!”. Fei Long’s quote is indeed “ore no make da” which, as supersonic mentioned, was faithfully translated in the English dub.
I keep everything on japanese. The english voices just don’t sound like Street Fighter to me. Even when the japanese voices mispronounce things or sound ridiculous… like, that kinda campy stuff feels more like the voices I’m used to, and a lot of times that kind of quirk is very catchy and appealing. I mean, I think Sean’s “TORNADE!” from 3S or Chun’s “SPINNEENU BIRDU KICK!” from A3 are way more Street Fighter than Rufus telling me how long it takes to learn kung fu.
Also, I think it’s awesome how everyone who plays SF4 has such strong preferences when it comes to the voice settings.
@Jiggeh
Zangief’s russian wrestling is always number one. god his lips flap forever.
@Jiggeh
Also Cammy was pratically raised in Britain as she had no memory I should think that when your mind is blank things make and easy impression on you.
@zafo999
Well, it’s like they said in the SSF4 blog. I did wish that I could hear some of the characters in English. Guile’s a good example. I always thought he sounded stupid in Japanese in the Alpha series and Vs series.
But like you said, things can’t be replaced no matter how good the English voice acting is. Chun-Li’s taunt and victory poses are too representative of her character now to change it.
I personally use ALL voices in Japanese. You can say I am kind of spoiled since I watch subbed Japanese anime. Anime English dubs are extremely cheesy, and the only English voice I tolerate in SFIV is Guile.
@Jiggeh
Ah yes, good point about the lip syncing, I completely forgot about that. It was the original reason why I changed Ryu to Japanese, because his “I must train harder” victory quote was just awful. The same applies to a couple other characters, I just can’t remember them now.
@Maj
I certainly like Abel’s English voice (especially in dialogue), I just think he’s not very good at desperate yelling. His voice is still in English here, but I enjoy hearing his Japanese voice at a friend’s house.
I just don’t like the idea of dubbing and enjoy the original work – even if it’s a videogame and not so much a “piece of art”.
Nothing against English, though – English can be pulled off wonderfully, even in Japanese games. Leon in RE4 is good, some of the Silent Hill work is really good…matter of fact:
Quote from Carolyn Lawrence, voice of [annoying] Ashley from RE4:
“When videogames first started happening, and I did my first couple, the directors weren’t terribly concerned about the performance of the voice talent. They were always like, “Fine! Moving on!” because the games weren’t as intricate. But now they’re like mini-films and they need things to be very well-acted, because the consumer has gotten so savvy.”
I feel like that sentiment has been around for awhile with Japanese game developers, even if they’re not utilizing Japanese VAs – The English voice work in SFIII:3S is fantastic (think of Dudley and Alex), and even Hugo’s cheesy German lines sound convincing (or at least more convincing than they did in 2I.) Too bad Remy is mostly Japanese dialogue and Chun-Li’s chinese isn’t so hot.
When people reason “oh, I just think characters should speak their native language” they’re ignoring cases like Abel, who speak 90% English in the dub; it would be awesome if there was a larger budget for this stuff and we could actually have a game made with each country represented by a native speaker – even though a lot of the time they have to speak a common language to communicate with one another, I think victory quotes or move names can be in their user’s native tongue.
Of course, when it comes to SF, that’s a lot of countries…but I love languages that much. (Mexican non-Speedy-Gonzalez El Fuerte! Cantonese Fei Long! Hindi Dhalsim!)
I’m a huge fan of Japanese culture so needless to say mine is set on Japanese. I do like Guile’s “double flash” and the rest of the moves so he is set on English, otherwise prefer Japanese just because it sounds cooler!!!
Uh, you know those characters aren’t real people. The Japanese voices are equally dubbed.
@Dammit
If SFIV’s voice recording process was anything like any good animation project, the voices were recorded before animation took place. So the animation would be based on the voice work, rather than the other way around. I don’t think that technically counts as dubbing.
Gonna try to explain myself here from a more conceptual level first, and then talk about my preferences:
I think the Japanese voices are so ingrained that I can’t let go of them. If I use SF3 as an example, a lot of the characters start with a clean slate, so Dudley or Urien speaking English was normal, but Ken speaking English would be unnatural. It has nothing to do with nationality of the character – Zangief is a Japanese speaking Russian to me. Period.
While I naturally wouldn’t have a problem with English, it doesn’t sound good when the English used in SF4 is trying to follow Japanese. Japanese has a certain way of expressing itself that English does not replicate. The same is true vice versa. Think about it, those of you who are multilingual: will you use the same phrasing between languages to express emotion or idioms? Definitely not 100% of the time. I’d actually rather some of the dialogue be uniquely worded while keeping to the spirit of the words (which I know opens a can of worms).
The combination of voice acting in MvC2 and CvS2 in the past decade contribute to my bias. I thought Guile and Cammy sounded just fine in non-Japanese in Marvel, but everyone else seemed more natural with Japanese. Hence, I put that to use in SF4, but Guile yelling, “FLASH KICK” was too much for me to handle. Cammy is my only English-speaking character.
I wanted to put Ryu on English, since I think his actor’s delivery is fine. However, his pronunciation while DP’ing as Sho-yu-ken sounds like he means Soy Sauce Fist in Japanese.
i can’t believe people like fuerte’s english voice. i mean to each their own and everything, but wow.
i notice a lot of people using balrog’s english voice too, but i don’t. balrog just isn’t balrog to me without some engrish.
I set balrog in english just for “This jew is gay!!”
Abel – English
Ryu/Ken – Japanese
Chun-Li – Japanese
Gief – English
Sakura – Japanese
Rose – English
Cammy – Japanese
Bison/Seth – English
Sagat, Guile, Balrog, Dhalsim, etc. can go either way.
Mine are all set to Japanese. I main Cammy and Viper and just think Viper sounds more brutal/furious in Japanese (especially for her EX-seismo), and I think cammy’s engrish is adorable. I love hearing her say “spider heuvo!” for her Spiral Arrow. I also love her back-throw “EZ!”. Also her new ultra in SSF4 ends with what sounds like “sideway”. Seth’s “sexy boom” sonic boom is also hilarious.
Does anyone know the romanji for the Japanese voices for all of Cammy’s and Viper’s moves? Would also love to know the romanji for Viper’s Burning Dance ultra from SSF4.