JAST USA is doubling down... on SoniComi?

[Fred the Barber]

This came across my twitter feed today, and I cringed hard.

As pretty much the only person around here who will admit to enjoying watching anime with English dubs (recent dubs, that is, not the crap they churned out 15 years ago), I've sometimes wondered whether we'd ever see a VN with an English dub. On these boards, Huniepop gets a fair bit of both hate and love for its voice acting - I personally think both are deserved (the hate, for Nikki; the love, for the rest of the cast; seriously, Kyu, marry me). But Huniepop is of course originally an English-language game and is a far cry from a VN, even though we talk about it a lot around here.

But the day has finally come. Our historical first (as far as I know) English-dubbed honest-to-God Japanese VN is on its way, and I'm sure @Rooke will be delighted more than anyone by this double-whammy of good news:

I get it, I really do. Growth has stagnated. They want to branch out, grow their market in new directions. If this is it, more power to them.

But this isn't it. This isn't going to work.

Somebody, save us before it's too late.

[Kaguya]

Eeeeeeew, English. 

[Dergonu]

This will be ... interesting. It could end up being a really important step forward into bringing more VNs to the west. And it could also end up making every single VN fan in history cringe to death.

We'll see which one it ends up being

 

I'm not a big fan of dubs, but that's mainly because I don't need them. I can afk watch most Japanese anime by now, and voice acting in general, be it in VNs or what have you is also quite simple to follow.

For JAST's fanbase, this might be a pretty decent move though. Who knows.

[sanahtlig]

Is this JAST's decision though?  Really?  It could very well be that this is something Nitroplus wanted.

What I find odd is that they only mention one character getting an English dub.  What about all the others?  Are we going to see characters talking to each other in different languages: one in English and the other in Japanese?

[Kaguya]

5 minutes ago, Dergonu said:

This will be ... interesting. It could end up being a really important step forward into bringing more VNs to the west. And it could also end up making every single VN fan in history cringe to death.

This kinda ties to why I'd like jp companies never to notice we exist at all. 

Ultimately, I don't care about whatever they do to existing games (especially sonicomi, w/e.) 

After all, translations are just that - translations. I can still go and play the original game without really minding those. 

What I wouldn't like is the market suddenly making VNs aimed for the west (which they aren't doing at all yet, thank goodness.) 

Because I like VNs as they are and the thought of them suddenly changing to fit an audience I mostly despise is scary. 

A sonicomi dub is a far cry from that, so I'm not too worried... But anything that could make currently existing companies to actually pay attention to the western community is something that makes me scared, lol. 

If this is something nitroplus actually wanted, rather than JAST trying out something new out of their own volition, I really hope it'll fail. Hard. 

[Darklord Rooke]

More voice acting, greaaaaaat ...  

[Decay]

5 minutes ago, sanahtlig said:

Is this JAST's decision though?  Really?  It could very well be that this is something Nitroplus wanted.

What I find odd is that they only mention one character getting an English dub.  What about all the others?  Are we going to see characters talking to each other in different languages: one in English and the other in Japanese?

I wouldn't be surprised if this is JAST's doing. You just know that Sonicomi is going to be one of their best selling releases.

[Nosebleed]

I think it's a nice addition for those that like that sort of thing, and considering it's optional there's no reason to be upset either way.

As for whether or not I'll be using the feature though...

[OriginalRen]

I don't care what anyone says, Space Dandy had an amazing dub; the director of the show himself came to the US to promote it. There is no way some of those jokes would even be funny if it kept the original Japanese. The more I think about it, that show really is one of the best anime I've had the pleasure of watching. How else could you even begin to understand the High School Musical episode in original Japanese? George Romero references, Daft Punk/Earth, Wind, & Fire style tracks, it's done so well. The industry needs more shows (and promotion) like this.

[Chuee]

38 minutes ago, sanahtlig said:

Is this JAST's decision though?  Really?  It could very well be that this is something Nitroplus wanted.

What I find odd is that they only mention one character getting an English dub.  What about all the others?  Are we going to see characters talking to each other in different languages: one in English and the other in Japanese?

Because the VA for sonico is a very famous cosplayer, which is pretty the only reason she was chosen to do the dub of the sonico anime (she's literally never voice acted anything else). Throwing her name in there means she can promote the game, which would give it a lot of exposure it wouldn't have had otherwise. None of the other English voice actors can give them that, so it's not worth it to spend money on them. 

[Darklord Rooke]

3 minutes ago, Nosebleed said:

I think it's a nice addition for those that like that sort of thing, and considering it's optional there's no reason to be upset either way.

Eh, voice acting of any sort increases cost (sometimes obscenely,) potentially limits content, and encourages developers into creating safer stories. I’d rather VNs not include voice acting of any sort, Japanese or English, it’s not essential and is a pretty easy way to keep costs down.

I know literally nobody else agrees with me, and I'm comfortable with that thought  

[Decay]

2 minutes ago, Rooke said:

Eh, voice acting of any sort increases cost (sometimes obscenely,) potentially limits content, and encourages developers into creating safer stories. I’d rather VNs not include voice acting of any sort, Japanese or English, it’s not essential and is a pretty easy way to keep costs down.

I know literally nobody else agrees with me, and I'm comfortable with that thought  

On the other hand, the only reason Duel Savior was halfway decent was due to the protagonist's excellent voice acting (in the ps2 re-release, always use that voice option when installing the translation patch).

Without it, that game would have nothing.

[Jibril]

English dub is always welcome. Except when the voice acting is bad, like the majority of English dubbed anime, with the exception of a few. I won't judge until the product comes out then we'll see how bad it is. Or maybe they'll end up making one good dub for every 50 they dubbed, like anime dubs.

2 minutes ago, Rooke said:

Eh, voice acting of any sort increases cost (sometimes obscenely,) potentially limits content, and encourages developers into creating safer stories. I’d rather VNs not include voice acting of any sort, Japanese or English, it’s not essential and is a pretty easy way to keep costs down.

I know literally nobody else agrees with me, and I'm comfortable with that thought  

Blasphemy! How would the fanservice sex scenes work without voice acting!? All the ones who bought it for their.... free time.... can no longer enjoy their free time!!

[Nosebleed]

5 minutes ago, Rooke said:

Eh, voice acting of any sort increases cost (sometimes obscenely,) potentially limits content, and encourages developers into creating safer stories. I’d rather VNs not include voice acting of any sort, Japanese or English, it’s not essential and is a pretty easy way to keep costs down.

I know literally nobody else agrees with me, and I'm comfortable with that thought  

50% of the reason I play VNs is because of the voice acting. I want an entertaining experience, not to literally read a book.

This is not to say I don't see your point regarding the costs, but I still believe it's a very vital part of the industry and should be invested on because tons of people value it. I do think additional dubs beyond the original is an unnecessary cost and takes more time and effort than what it's usually worth (i.e subpar voice acting), but to each their own.

[solidbatman]

This one already looked like trash with a trash cow lead. Not like this can make it worse. 

[sanahtlig]

17 minutes ago, Rooke said:

I’d rather VNs not include voice acting of any sort, Japanese or English, it’s not essential and is a pretty easy way to keep costs down.

Downvoted.

21 minutes ago, Chuee said:

Because the VA for sonico is a very famous cosplayer, which is pretty the only reason she was chosen to do the dub of the sonico anime (she's literally never voice acted anything else). Throwing her name in there means she can promote the game, which would give it a lot of exposure it wouldn't have had otherwise. None of the others English voice actors can give them that, so it's not worth it to spend money on them. 

But people talking different languages to each other is just bizarre.  How could that possibly be considered a selling point?  If the target audience is Steam players, will they actually appreciate this?  My guess is... no.  If JAST wanted this girl to cosplay market for them, they should've just hired her to do that.  Of course, if they dubbed all the JP voices that would change my opinion.

36 minutes ago, Kaguya said:

If this is something nitroplus actually wanted, rather than JAST trying out something new out of their own volition, I really hope it'll fail. Hard. 

It's just an extra option.  If it's not the default setting, it won't have any impact at all on your typical player.

[Chuee]

2 minutes ago, sanahtlig said:

But people talking different languages to each other is just bizarre.  How could that possibly be considered a selling point?  If the target audience is Steam players, will they actually appreciate this?  My guess is... no.  If JAST wanted this girl to cosplay market for them, they should've just hired her to do that.  Of course, if they dubbed all the JP voices that would change my opinion.

I've never played it nor do I care to look into this, but the VNDB lists Sonico as the only character in the game. From what I've heard it's also just a game where you act as Sonico's manager or some shit, so maybe she's the only voiced character in it? 

Also, I'm not sure how much you know about the voice actor, but she's really, really famous among cosplay and convention-going people. Her twitter has 517k followers, so just imagine someone with that big of a following being on your game. They're not aiming for a steam audience, they're aiming for the casual anime fans who might not know anything about visual novels, but see Jessica Nigri on it and pick up interest in it. 

[sanahtlig]

5 minutes ago, Chuee said:

I've never played it nor do I care to look into this, but the VNDB lists Sonico as the only character in the game. From what I've heard it's also just a game where you act as Sonico's manager or some shit, so maybe she's the only voiced character in it? 

Also, I'm not sure how much you know about the voice actor, but she's really, really famous among cosplay and convention-going people. Her twitter has 517k followers, so just imagine someone with that big of a following being on your game. They're not aiming for a steam audience, they're aiming for the casual anime fans who might not know anything about visual novels, but see Jessica Nigri on it and pick up interest in it. 

Huh.  Well if Sonico is the only voiced character, and this cosplayer really is that famous, then this sounds like a great publicity move.  I just hope JAST prices the game in accordance with the actual content.  I get the sinking feeling that they're going to charge a pretty sizeable sum for not much content.

[bigfatround0]

Lonely nerds are going to eat this shit up when they see her name. 

[Soulless Watcher]

What a bizarre marketing experiment, Jast..... is this really the hill you want to die on?  It just really seems like a vestigial feature in a game in which I really doubt many people would care about an addition of an English dub. The only people who would bother with the Sonico game would be pretty high level nerdy ottaku people, who would prefer the Japanese voice acting. Now, if it was something like Steins;Gate that has a substantial western following and has an excellent dub cast (for the anime) it would make more sense. Than again that would be a substantial investment and cost waay too much. 

In the end I just see this as a pointless exercise. Someone in the higher ups wanted to make a cold calculated experiment without any risk, completely failing to realize that in this particular experiment no risk = no reward.

Sidenote: In a gimmicky game like this, that relies heavily on the "moe" factor, taking out voice acting would pretty much rip out 60% of its' worth. There is no "story" to be found here.

[Arcadeotic]

I don't really know what to think about this nor really care

I guess another language for this kind of game could work, but really I'd probably cringe, hard

I'm not planning on getting this game, so I don't mind either way.

[littleshogun]

My response - Okay, whatever.

More detailed one - Instead of SoniComi dub, I think if JAST announce Seinarukana it would be very good news here. But what we got announcement for SoniComi, which the game I suggested that JAST should take their time for very long time to bring it here ie even if JAST delayed it's release until 2050 or so I didn't care. But instead JAST concentrate on this game so much that Seinarukana and Flower got shafted. So, I didn't really care about this much.

PS - For Visual Novel, I think it's the 2nd time the translated one was dubbed. The first one was Dangan Ronpa series, although the voice in there was limited though.

[Darklord Rooke]

31 minutes ago, littleshogun said:

PS - For Visual Novel, I think it's the 2nd time the translated one was dubbed. The first one was Dangan Ronpa series, although the voice in there was limited though.

Dangan Ronpa is more an Adventure game than a VN, it was released as a game not a VN, by localisers who specialise in releasing games and not VNs, so I'm not really surprised that it's the only other 'VN' which gets a dub.

[WinterfuryZX]

40 minutes ago, littleshogun said:

 

PS - For Visual Novel, I think it's the 2nd time the translated one was dubbed. The first one was Dangan Ronpa series, although the voice in there was limited though.

And Virtue Last Reward

[atorq]

9 hours ago, Chuee said:

Because the VA for sonico is a very famous cosplayer, which is pretty the only reason she was chosen to do the dub of the sonico anime (she's literally never voice acted anything else). Throwing her name in there means she can promote the game, which would give it a lot of exposure it wouldn't have had otherwise. None of the other English voice actors can give them that, so it's not worth it to spend money on them. 

 

Actually, she has voiced other things, most notably Cinder Fall in RWBY and it's actually not bad.