3.5 What’s wrong with entertainers getting into voice acting?

3.5 What’s wrong with entertainers getting into voice acting?

“Entertainers, they’re hopeless at voice dubbing!”

Oft-heard criticism. That character voices shouldn’t be done by television actors, but by ‘legitimate’ seiyuu instead.

From my point of view, I simply cannot understand what is so wrong about the notion of entertainers getting into dubbing. I think it’s wrong to be tied to a specific profession of a seiyuu or an entertainer in the first place. I don’t know whether good seiyuu can be good actors, but I do believe that good actors could turn out to be good seiyuu.

For example, Ghibli films use not only seiyuu but also a lot of actors; for example, Miwa Akihiro and Morishige Hisaya both appeared in Princess Mononoke and you don’t hear too many people complaining about them. As the two of them possessed an unparalleled way of thinking, taking into account things like line codes, they were able to pull off such acute performances.

For Howl’s Moving Castle, which I acted in, I believe that there were quite a lot of complaints about Kimura Takuya. People couldn’t stomach the fact that he’s a member of Johnny’s Entertainment and that he’s an idol after all. But I think Kimura Takuya’s performance in Howl was splendid. His acting allowed Howl to appear so much more vibrant when compared to the other seiyuu who voiced secondary roles, turning him into a three-dimensional character.

At the end of the day it matters not whether one is a seiyuu or an entertainer, the most important thing is that “you can produce a good performance”. There are actors who can produce good voice acting, and there are also many seiyuu who are hopeless at it.

Putting asides the meaning behind acting, the only difference between so-called seiyuu and other actors is whether or not their breathing & motions matches that of the person or character on the screen.