As positive as my general assessment of the acting is, I do have complaints with this dub. There is a strong Japanese presence on the staff, from the Japanese director, to the translating team, to the bilingual actor who plays the villain Dispel. This can be good and it can be bad. On one hand, the Japanese do bring a vast amount of anime dubbing experience to the table. On the other, Japan and the US are vastly different worlds when it comes to voice-acting. I've always questioned the wisdom of trying to bring true Japanese accuracy to dubs, referencing the Japanese performance and squeezing every bit of meaning out of the script. It's much too easy to end up with an awkward-sounding product, and the market you're aiming at with that approach doesn't watch dubs anyway. For example, Synch Point claims hours were spent on translating the puns and songs just right. That's admirable, but everyone who cares about that will buy the subtitled version. (And quite frankly, I had trouble understanding the lyrics to the songs anyway.)

An example of a problem this approach can create can be heard in how Noelle pronounces Yuusuke's name. "Yuusuke" is a darned hard name for Americans to pronounce correctly. I would hazard a guess that most directors would instruct the actors to pronounce it "YOO-skay". It's not accurate, but it's close enough and the viewers can actually say it. It's also the way most fans pronounce the name. This apparently wasn't good enough for director Fusako Shiotani, who insisted on the correct pronunciation. Kou, understandably, had trouble, and for the first two episodes, the name varies between "YOO-skay", "YOO-skeh", and "YOO-skuh". "YOO-skeh" seems to have won the war in episode three, but it just sounds odd, as if it's not a natural sound to come out of an English-speaking mouth.

Synch Point was nice enough to provide me with a copy of the subtitled version. After comparing the Japanese, I had minor problems with two of the dub voices. Dispel, the villain for all the episodes of the first volume, is a wire-thin, effeminate, prancing goofball of a bad guy, and Hisato Masuyama, who provides the voice in the dub, plays him for laughs. It's an enjoyable performance, but I found I preferred the Japanese version, in which Dispel can become decidedly creepy at times.

Similarly, I had problems with Ricardo Ibarra's portrayal of Papa, Noelle's Frankenstein monster father. Papa is a running joke, in that he looks like a horrible monster, but has a Mr. Nice Guy voice. In Japanese, this is accomplished by having him speak in a formal samurai dialect to emphasize what a nice, polite guy he is. The Japanese actor barely uses a character voice at all. Ibarra, in contrast, uses a fairly goofy character voice. The voice is designed to make the character sound friendly, but it's such a low, silly voice that it misses the point. The joke becomes too obvious, and less funny.

(If they wanted to portray over-formality in a tone of voice, why not go the route of Aeka in "Tenchi Muyo"? Have Papa speak like English nobility. That would be funny.)

Overall, I like this dub. It has its problems, but the pros outweigh the cons. It has a great cast that will likely only get better as some of the minor characters get more screen time. It's a surprisingly good dub considering that it's a first effort, and it bodes well for future efforts.

Rating: *** (out of 4)

(review based on episodes 1 - 3)

Released by: Synch-Point (Digital Manga)

Dub by: Dubbed in-house

Director: Fusako Shiotani

Noelle - Diana Kou

Yuusuke - David Lucas

Dispel - Hisato Masuyama

Natsumi - Jodi Tamar

Miruru - Wendee Lee

Papa - Ricardo Ibarra

(not reviewed)

Silky - Jennifer Sekiguchi

The views and opinions expressed in The Dub Track are solely those of Ryan Mathews and do not necessarily represent the views of Digital Manga, AKADOT or its sponsors.

I'm Gonna Be An Angel © Synch-Point / Digital Manga.