Turns out that Sentai wont be adding in the Japanese voices in the Blu-ray "required by the Japanese licensor."

http://www.japanator.com/persona-4-animation-blu-ray-will-not-have-japanese-track-25105.phtml

In terms of Anime releases in the west, this is a first for a show to not have the Japanese voices. Still the persona series has never had the original Japanese voice in it west releases besides Arena.

Also they must have spent a lot to get the original cast to do the voices so something had to be cut.

Only weaboos will be angry at this which is fine by me!

Dubbed anime is the worst anime.

This is a bad product in this case.

@Phatmac: Pffft, Yui Horie is a far better Chie than Tracey Rooney could ever hope to be!

@Cloudenvy said:

@Phatmac: Pffft, Yui Horie is a far better Chie than Tracey Rooney could ever hope to be!

Though Tracey Rooney won't be voicing Chie in the anime dub.

@FluxWaveZ said:

@Cloudenvy said:

@Phatmac: Pffft, Yui Horie is a far better Chie than Tracey Rooney could ever hope to be!

Though Tracey Rooney won't be voicing Chie in the anime dub.

I just couldn't make any comment on Erin's Chie since I've never heard it. : (

@Canteu said:

Dubbed anime is the worst anime.

This is a bad product in this case.

Yes. Not that I would have watched it anyway, but dubbed anime is hilariously bad, believe it!

Meh, Episode 26 is set to pop up on the internet later this month in all its subbed glory, I'm good.

@Cloudenvy said:

@Phatmac: Pffft, Yui Horie is a far better Chie than Tracey Rooney could ever hope to be!

ヾ(●⌒∇⌒●)ﾉ

I am indifferent because this was a sub-par adaptation.

Following up on this, it seems Sentai has nothing to do with the UK release so it seems, for now, Japanese audio will be in-tact when it releases here.

@Cloudenvy said:

@FluxWaveZ said:

@Cloudenvy said:

@Phatmac: Pffft, Yui Horie is a far better Chie than Tracey Rooney could ever hope to be!

Though Tracey Rooney won't be voicing Chie in the anime dub.

I just couldn't make any comment on Erin's Chie since I've never heard it. : (

she kinda sounds like Erica from Catherine.

and I'm not bothered because if I wanted to, I could just watch the hulu version

It's not hard to find a properly subbed version of this, but if this gets to be a trend then it's going to alienate the core anime audience. I, myself can watch very very few movies dubbed these days. There are the Godzilla classics from the 1970's which I prefer dubbed because they're so ridiculously bad, but besides that, anything else I see be it Japanese, Korean, French, Russian or what have you, I prefer to hear the original voices with English subtitles.

By the way, I own an old DVD copy of Bubblegum Crisis OVAs that are in English only, so it's not a first. I originally had the Japanese with English subs VHSs, but "upgraded". Ick!

@metalsnakezero said:

Also they must have spent a lot to get the original cast to do the voices so something had to be cut.

But they don't have the original cast

So... I wonder how many of the complainers actually speak Japanese and can honestly tell whether the voice actors on the other side of the pond are better than the English ones or not?

I'm not saying that this is a good thing - I certainly do wish that they had included the sub because a lot of people prefer that - but to go completely nuts when this is still available through other avenues is kind of obnoxious.

Meanwhile, I'll stick to dubbed. I do not like reading my TV shows, anime included, and dubs have gotten a lot better anyway.

@Bocam said:

@metalsnakezero said:

Also they must have spent a lot to get the original cast to do the voices so something had to be cut.

But they don't have the original cast

Well most of them.

I also forgot to mention this. Since Pesona 4 Arena and Golden are coming out this year, Sentai would need to release the Anime ASAP.

@Phatmac said:

Only weaboos will be angry

Yeah, I am pretty bummed out about this.

@Animasta said:

@Cloudenvy said:

@FluxWaveZ said:

@Cloudenvy said:

@Phatmac: Pffft, Yui Horie is a far better Chie than Tracey Rooney could ever hope to be!

Though Tracey Rooney won't be voicing Chie in the anime dub.

I just couldn't make any comment on Erin's Chie since I've never heard it. : (

she kinda sounds like Erica from Catherine.

and I'm not bothered because if I wanted to, I could just watch the hulu version

This could help:

Why they can show the subbed version on AN but not the Blu-ray is baffling.

Here's the thing: Aniplex is making way too much of a issue out of their fears of reverse importing. They (as well as Atlus JP) are also greedy as fuck. (see the Amazon JP dispute).

@Hailinel: Streaming rights are different than Blu-ray rights.

Well, I was gonna get the Blue-ray...but I guess I'll settle for the DVD...

Sorry, I just like the Japanese cast better in anime. They just, I dunno, sound more natural.

If I was a weaboo I would be freaking the hell out right now. But honestly, I guess I'm fine with it?

I really wouldn't call this a first- like any anime brought over before the 2000s tended to all be dubbed.

Whatever, I'm pretty used to dubs at this point, plus I couldn't really finish the Persona 4 anime with Japanese voices, it was too weird. I'll probably pick this up, more to collect than anything though.

@ArbitraryWater said:

If I was a weaboo I would be freaking the hell out right now. But honestly, I guess I'm fine with it?

Why do people insist on using a stupid, made-up word when there's already a word for it?

Japanophile, people. It's in the fucking dictionary. Learn to use English, for Christ's sake and stop speaking 4chanese.

@metalsnakezero said:

@Hailinel: Streaming rights are different than Blu-ray rights.

Well, the problem here is that people in Japan would be able to import the series for much cheaper since Japan and the US are in the same Blu-Ray region. Aniplex realized this and put a stop to it immediatly because they want all the money they can get.

it all depends on how the dub turns out. if sentai does actually manage to get the persona 4 english cast like they said they would then it may not be bad. all i know is that i'll be waiting for after release to pick up either the dvd or blu-ray depending on how it turns out.

and i still don't know what i think of the new voices for teddie and chie. i've gotten used to teddie's voice already, and from the little i listened to the video of chie voice it's not as bad as i thought it was going to be.

@Hailinel said:

@ArbitraryWater said:

If I was a weaboo I would be freaking the hell out right now. But honestly, I guess I'm fine with it?

Why do people insist on using a stupid, made-up word when there's already a word for it?

Japanophile, people. It's in the fucking dictionary. Learn to use English, for Christ's sake and stop speaking 4chanese.

Because Japanophile sounds... just as silly? I dunno. It's the internet. If you get upset about the usage of certain words or grammatical stylings, you're going to get upset a lot. But I wasn't meaning it in insult, if you took it that way.

Point is, I can't empathize or sympathize with people who only watch their anime in the native tongue of Glorious Nippon, even if a perfectly well-done dub is available.

@ArbitraryWater said:

Point is, I can't empathize or sympathize with people who only watch their anime in the native tongue of Glorious Nippon, even if a perfectly well-done dub is available.

That's another term that I take as nothing more than insulting bullshit, really. And it makes you sound like HandsomeDead. It's telling that the only time I ever hear the country referred to by that name, it's in the context of making fun of people, which is fucking retarded.

"Weeaboo" is nothing more than an insulting turn of phrase invented to belittle a certain subgroup with a particular interest, and it's grown to be used by idiots that will, for example, mock those that prefer Final Fantasy to Mass Effect, regardless of their actual stance on Japanese media as a whole. It's become nothing more than nonsensical idiocy.

@Hailinel: You know, sometimes you get a bit too invested man. I will apologize because I still respect you and your opinion, but you gotta pick your battles. Like, I dunno, going after the first guy to use the term in this thread.

Though, I do find it funny that you reference HandsomeDead. Didn't he totally call you out in his retarded rantblog as a "lonely proto-Japanese"? Man that guy was an asshole.

@ArbitraryWater said:

@Hailinel: You know, sometimes you get a bit too invested man. I will apologize because I still respect you and your opinion, but you gotta pick your battles. Like, I dunno, going after the first guy to use the term in this thread.

Though, I do find it funny that you reference HandsomeDead. Didn't he totally call you out in his retarded rantblog as a "lonely proto-Japanese"? Man that guy was an asshole.

I apologize. It's been a rather stressful evening in non-internet land.

And he didn't so much call me out as write an insulting phrase along those lines with a hyperlink to my profile. But yeah, he was an asshole.

@believer258 said:

So... I wonder how many of the complainers actually speak Japanese and can honestly tell whether the voice actors on the other side of the pond are better than the English ones or not?

I'm not saying that this is a good thing - I certainly do wish that they had included the sub because a lot of people prefer that - but to go completely nuts when this is still available through other avenues is kind of obnoxious.

Meanwhile, I'll stick to dubbed. I do not like reading my TV shows, anime included, and dubs have gotten a lot better anyway.

I don't really think you need to be able to speak Japanese to know if they're a good voice actor or not, but man that whole subbed elitism thing is annoying right? Before the Anime Discussion thread I couldn't find any anime fans who would take me seriously just because I prefer to watch shows in English, which made getting recommendations a huge pain.

@Hunter5024 said:

@believer258 said:

So... I wonder how many of the complainers actually speak Japanese and can honestly tell whether the voice actors on the other side of the pond are better than the English ones or not?

I'm not saying that this is a good thing - I certainly do wish that they had included the sub because a lot of people prefer that - but to go completely nuts when this is still available through other avenues is kind of obnoxious.

Meanwhile, I'll stick to dubbed. I do not like reading my TV shows, anime included, and dubs have gotten a lot better anyway.

I don't really think you need to be able to speak Japanese to know if they're a good voice actor or not, but man that whole subbed elitism thing is annoying right? Before the Anime Discussion thread I couldn't find any anime fans who would take me seriously just because I prefer to watch shows in English, which made getting recommendations a huge pain.

If you're not familiar with the language and a lot of its quirks, then you can't tell a difference in acting quality as well as someone who can speak the language very well.

And yes, the subbed elitism is very annoying. It's so stupid.

@Hailinel said:

@ArbitraryWater said:

@Hailinel: You know, sometimes you get a bit too invested man. I will apologize because I still respect you and your opinion, but you gotta pick your battles. Like, I dunno, going after the first guy to use the term in this thread.

Though, I do find it funny that you reference HandsomeDead. Didn't he totally call you out in his retarded rantblog as a "lonely proto-Japanese"? Man that guy was an asshole.

I apologize. It's been a rather stressful evening in non-internet land.

And he didn't so much call me out as write an insulting phrase along those lines with a hyperlink to my profile. But yeah, he was an asshole.

/hug

There, there. Nobody liked HandsomeDead, man. Nobody.

I associate English dubs with shrill voices, unnatural sentence intonation, and out of place stresses. It doesn't help that a lot of professional English voice actors barely sound invested in their performances. I've heard fandubs on youtube that are hundreds of times better than the so-called professional dubbing of Funimation or Sentai.

Generally, the male voices aren't completely awful, but my god, the women. I understand that when you have 40 year olds trying to sound like 15 year olds there are going to be some issues, but Jesus, the Japanese can pull it off, why can't we? Rin wouldn't be mai waifu~~ if not for Ueda Kana's perfect voice. After playing P4 in English and checking the Japanese voice actors on wikipedia, realizing that I'd missed Horie Yui as Chie, Koshimizu Ami as Yukiko, and Seki Tomokazu as Yosuke -- it was simply depressing. Hell, I'll even give Kugimiya Rie a pass: even some of the worst Japanese VA is better than some of the best English (Laura Bailey).

In case it wasn't clear, I think not including the English track (both in the game and on the blurays) is awful. If I'd known what I'd be missing before playing the games with English VA, I'd probably have downloaded an undub. I'm sure it makes business sense, but the lack of options is frustrating. I can choose between supporting a mediocre localization, or not supporting any localization at all.

@GunslingerPanda: What happened to him?

@GunslingerPanda said:

@Hailinel said:

@ArbitraryWater said:

@Hailinel: You know, sometimes you get a bit too invested man. I will apologize because I still respect you and your opinion, but you gotta pick your battles. Like, I dunno, going after the first guy to use the term in this thread.

Though, I do find it funny that you reference HandsomeDead. Didn't he totally call you out in his retarded rantblog as a "lonely proto-Japanese"? Man that guy was an asshole.

I apologize. It's been a rather stressful evening in non-internet land.

And he didn't so much call me out as write an insulting phrase along those lines with a hyperlink to my profile. But yeah, he was an asshole.

/hug

There, there. Nobody liked HandsomeDead, man. Nobody.

The guy complimented me on my username once, I don't hate him. I wished he could have been less of an asshole because he seemed pretty smart otherwise.

WHAT!

@believer258 said:

@Hunter5024 said:

@believer258 said:

So... I wonder how many of the complainers actually speak Japanese and can honestly tell whether the voice actors on the other side of the pond are better than the English ones or not?

I'm not saying that this is a good thing - I certainly do wish that they had included the sub because a lot of people prefer that - but to go completely nuts when this is still available through other avenues is kind of obnoxious.

Meanwhile, I'll stick to dubbed. I do not like reading my TV shows, anime included, and dubs have gotten a lot better anyway.

I don't really think you need to be able to speak Japanese to know if they're a good voice actor or not, but man that whole subbed elitism thing is annoying right? Before the Anime Discussion thread I couldn't find any anime fans who would take me seriously just because I prefer to watch shows in English, which made getting recommendations a huge pain.

If you're not familiar with the language and a lot of its quirks, then you can't tell a difference in acting quality as well as someone who can speak the language very well.

And yes, the subbed elitism is very annoying. It's so stupid.

Not really, Japanese voice acting actually feels like they are acting, something that is often not there in anime dubs or your average western video game. Yakuza 3 has some of the best voice acting I have ever heard. English voice actors saying stuff like "-san, -chan" and so on just sounds dumb too. They should have removed every mention of "-senpai" in Persona 4.

I was of this opinion before I could speak or understand any of the language too.

Japanese voices belong nowhere near a NA Persona 4 release!

English cast is the only cast!

@Hailinel said:

@ArbitraryWater said:

If I was a weaboo I would be freaking the hell out right now. But honestly, I guess I'm fine with it?

Why do people insist on using a stupid, made-up word when there's already a word for it?

Japanophile, people. It's in the fucking dictionary. Learn to use English, for Christ's sake and stop speaking 4chanese.

I'll only start using that when people start using "Japanimation" again.

@ChrisTaran said:

Japanese voices belong nowhere near a NA Persona 4 release!

English cast is the only cast!

Which English cast?

I've always felt it's whatever you hear first (dub is better or sub is better), and the people who are REALLY into anime are wathcing the subbed versions as soon as possible.

I couldn't watch FMA with japanese voices. I just can't, but I don't think I can watch steins;gate's english dub.

and the persona 4 japanese version is probably better but fuck it

I thought the Japanese version was great, so I'm only going to be watching the English dub out of sheer curiosity. I feel no rage.

Why would you buy anime anyway?

This is like $70 and doesn't even have all the episodes. Total ripoff.

Anyone knows the release date for this?

Man, usually I'm really anti-anime dubs, but having spent sooo much time with the P4 cast, I'd only be listening to this in English anyways. Just like how P4A gave you Japanese audio option but I still stuck w/ English. It's probably the only game/series that I can say I prefer the English dub to the original Japanese. Princess Mononoke had a really good dub too, come to think of it..

Probably picking up the Blu Ray as a result.

I'm waiting for English cast. Need that Troy Baker in my life.

The only anime I prefer in Japanese is Fist of the North Star, because I don't give a fuck what they're saying.

I heard and liked the english cast first, when that happens I usually prefer the english voice actors. Troy Baker is Kanji so... fuck the Japanese VO!