Now Which One Was That Voice?

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Common in Anime and Western Animation, and related to Hey, It's That Guy! and Hey, It's That Voice!. This is when a series is dubbed, and the credits list the Japanese voice actor in the standard Actor-Role method, while the English voice actors, by contrast, are lumped into a simple list under the heading "English Voice Talent". This makes viewers who recognize an actor's name have to do a search to determine which character they were, which can be problematic especially if they used an alias for this production (or if someone has a very large vocal range). This is generally a sign that the voice acting was not unionized for the production and at least one if not the majority of the voice talent are using aliases. Many live-action dubbed films go farther (they're often released in theaters subtitled) and don't list the English dub actors at all.

Examples of Now Which One Was That Voice? include:
  • Any dub released by Bandai Entertainment (pre-2012, before they quit home distribution entirely)
  • Bleach lists the English voice cast, but not their roles.
  • Burn Up Scramble (Featuring Wendee Lee)
  • Cowboy Bebop (Odd, considering that the dub has been lauded for being superior to the original Japanese, even by the creators.)
  • Gun X Sword has English credits, but doesn't list the voice cast.
  • Kekkaishi
  • Outlaw Star
  • Rurouni Kenshin
  • Samurai Champloo
  • Particularly bad in Star Blazers, where the American voice actors got no credit.
  • Many series released by Geneon and its predecessor Pioneer (before Geneon quit North American operations, obviously).
  • Many Japanese-developed video games list only the Japanese voice credits, period.
  • Street Fighter II:V
  • Fruits Basket. Which is frustrating when you're trying to figure out who Kimberly Grant voiced, but isn't really a big deal when you recognize the voice actors. [Lesse, Laura Bailey is Tohru, Eric Vale is Yuki, Jerry Jewell is Kyo, John Burgmier is Shigure.....]
  • Fairly common in Transformers shows when they would only list a list of the voice actors of the series (averted in the original 1986 movie, the live action films, Animated and Prime.) The RTM-1 dubs of some of the Transformers anime (released as Transformers Takara) took this further by not crediting the English voices at all.
  • Any English dub that was made by Animax did not credit the voice talent they used at all.
  • Pretty much every entry in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, games and cartoons both, only list the VAs and don't pair them with characters. It got worse in the 2010-onward games with the new voice cast; some VAs use aliases and Laura Bailey isn't credited period.
  • Super Smash Bros. Brawl, which is strange since the first two entries avoided this. Likely a union issue (the voice actors for the Metal Gear characters are union members, most of the other actors aren't).
  • Marvel vs. Capcom 2, they didn't even include the Japanese voice cast!
    • Neither did Capcom vs. SNK. The only VA credited for 2 was the announcer, Hiroaki Asai.
  • Many of the entries in the Shin Megami Tensei series don't include English voices.
  • The Sims 2, although some detective Googling and Hey, It's That Voice! will let you figure them out.
  • Sailor Moon does not list any of the roles the English dubbers played.
  • Recess lists who played who for the main cast, and then everyone else's voice actor is listed as "Additional voices", not saying who voices who, which carried into most of the dubs of the series (and it often varies on if Miss Grotke's going to be part of the "main" or "supporting" cast, she's "supporting" in most foreign dubs).
  • The DS remake of Final Fantasy IV played this straight (unlike the other entries in the series). Thankfully, Jonathan Klein (the voice director) was nice enough to confirm pretty much all of the voice actors and their characters. He also did the same for Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria and Star Ocean: The Last Hope.
  • Resident Evil: Revelations credits the Japanese voice cast, but doesn't credit the English one. Many of the major characters are easy to pick out though (Michelle Ruff as Jill Valentine, for example)
  • The dub cast isn't even listed in the credits of Osamu Tezukas Metropolis.
  • All animated Disney films up to The Sword in the Stone.
  • All of Nickelodeon's Doug and the first season of the Disney series don't list who played who.
  • The Simpsons never really lists who plays who. The only exception was in "Old Money".
  • With the exception of Symphonia, the majority of games in the Tales (series) are non-union and thus don't list the English voice actors.
  • The Soul Series has done both types. No credits whatsoever for III and IV (though oddly, the Star Wars guest characters in IV did have their actors credited), and a "block of names" for V (barring Roger Craig Smith, who was properly credited for Ezio).

Aversions

  • Angelic Layer
  • Chrono Crusade goes English, then Japanese credits.
  • Ergo Proxy
  • Gantz
  • Kiddy Grade
  • My-HiME runs the credits twice; once in Japanese, then once in English.
  • Noein
  • Now and Then, Here and There lists them concurrently, in both the ends credits and the dramatis personae at the beginning of each episode.
  • Please Teacher! runs Japanese credits, then the preview, then English credits.
  • Samurai 7 does the English credits before the Japanese ones.
  • Shadow Hearts only gives the English voice cast.
  • Tokko not only does full Japanese and English credits, but full Spanish credits.
  • This is a common practice in most anime series nowadays; FUNimation even tends to give the English voice cast precedence in the credits over the Japanese voice cast, as did ADV Films back when they did dubs.
    • Ditto with now Sentai Filmworks. Their dubs still credit the English dub cast first then the Japanese cast.
  • The Sonic Rush Series series are the only Sonic games to match up the voice actors to their characters.
  • Alice in Wonderland is the first Disney animated film to have the characters' names listed next to those of their voice actors. This actually won't happen again until 1967's The Jungle Book.
  • The Fleischer Brothers movie Mr. Bug Goes to Town may be the earliest example where the voice actors are credited for which characters they voiced.
  • Catherine. Clearly, Atlus realized how big a deal the actors in Persona were, because they were credited for their performances and were given a good amount of hype before the game came out.
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