While more A-grade Hollywood actors are adding 'voice acting' to their list of trades thanks to the emergence of CGI animated movies such as the Shrek franchise and Pixar's movies, voice acting in Japan is treated much more seriously due to the proliferation of Japanese animation. From left to right: Mayuko Aoki (left) as Yuna, and Masakazu Morita (right) as Tidus.
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Bad dubs
Videogames developed in Japan invariably suffer when translated to English, particularly when they also include voice dialogue. Some examples include, but are not limited to, Forbidden Siren (a game set in rural Japan where the characters talk with a cockney accent?), Yakuza (infamous for its four-letter swearwords repeated ad-nauseum), and Final Fantasy X (for reasons I explain below).
The translators in charge of the English localization of Final Fantasy X admitted they had a lot of problems with regards to voice acting. The main problem was lip-synching – the lip movements of the characters in the cutscene sequences were specifically programmed to match that of the Japanese voices. Alexander O Smith, localization specialist in charge of Final Fantasy X, likened the task of implementing natural-sounding English speech into the game as “something akin to writing four or five movies worth of dialogue entirely in haiku form [and] of course the actors had to act, and act well, within those restraints”.
And to be fair, some of the characters were meant to be annoying. Tidus initially starts out as a mindless, annoying simpleton, for instance, but as he gets sucked into the quest and learns of Yuna’s plight to destroy Sin and break the cycle of perpetual crisis, he matures, both vocally and emotionally.
But regardless, James Arnold Taylor as Tidus and Hedy Buress as Yuna basically walk through their lines in a workmanlike fashion. It’s extremely questionable whether they even took the time to play the game and try to identify with the characters they were trying to portray. As Edge Magazine stated in its February 2002 print review of the game:
The potential dissipates in every tedious, embarassing, cut-scene.
The voice acting, which is passable at best but risible in the main, only emphasises every clumsy syllable. It renders the pathos comedic, the comedy dead, and since emotion is meant to be the series’ driving force, it butchers the whole game.
This, combined with Final Fantasy X’s distinctly Asian themes, conspire to ruin the game’s storyline for a native English audience.
Undub
Here is where the art of ‘undubbing‘ comes in. Some ‘Japanophiles’ took the time to take a copy of Final Fantasy X International (this is the version released in Japan that has a dual Japanese/English text option, but English voices only) and readd the Japanese voices. In layman’s terms: Final Fantasy X + English text + Japanese voices + subtitles. For people like me who were annoyed by the English voiceacting, it was bliss to play through it the way it was originally intended while still being able to comprehend what is going on.
The ‘Tidus/Yuna laughing’ scene is often pointed out by critics as a shining example of bad dubbing. Let’s compare the two – the first is the patched copy of Final Fantasy X International with the Japanese dub and subtitles and the second/third are the English retail version:
NOTE: If you get a message saying ‘We’re sorry, this video is no longer available’, click on the original link beneath the embedded video
Several other games (most of them RPGs) have been ‘undubbed’ in a similar fashion – including Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3, Final Fantasy X-2, Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core, Final Fantasy XII, Final Fantasy IV DS, Tales of Legendia, Star Ocean 3, Xenosaga Episode II – Jenseits Von Gut und Bose, and Xenosaga Episode III – Also Sprach Zarathustra.
How to play these ‘undubs’
Well, I won’t beat around the bush: there is no ‘legal’ way to play these ‘undubbed’ versions. Most of the ‘undubbed’ releases are patched versions of the games in ISO form, so you will either have to find them and burn them to disc (your PS2 must be able to play backup discs, of course – or you must employ the swap trick) or install them to harddrive – that is, if you have a ‘fat’ PS2 with a harddrive expansion bay and a copy of HDLoader.
