You've gotta start somewhere. Both Ayana Taketatsu and Christine Cabanos' first anime roles were as Azusa in K-On but not everyone is lucky enough to get cast as a lead character in such a popular, well made series so early on in their careers.
Everyone knows Bryce Papenbrook right? Kirito from SAO, Eren from Titan, Masaomi in Durarara, he's played all sorts of characters in popular shows recently. Many, many years before he got cast in those roles he was the lead character in both Eiken and Green Green. Both of which are near universally despised and are widely considered two of the worst anime of all time.
Then again, there's also cases where experienced VAs voice characters in shitty shows. The lead characters in Dokuro-chan are played by fucking Wendee Lee and Johnny Bosch. According to BTVA this was 2010 so it's post Bebop, post Haruhi, post Trigun, post Geass, post Eureka Seven and in a period where Bleach had been on Adult Swim for several years.
Apparently the audition scripts for the Strike Witches English dub had a big warning on the front that the show had underage nudity. Not to say all projects of a similar description have the same thing happening, but the VAs should know what they're getting into. As a voice actor, especially in the west where the pay for doing voice acting alone sucks unless you're Tara Strong or Troy Baker, you should be prepared to take on those sorts of projects. If Ayana Taketatsu refused to work on Kiss x Sis or Highschool DxD she would have probably missed out on a lot of money.
Speaking personally, if I were cast in a shitty show like Infinite Stratos (Like Josh Grelle who I should mention also plays Armin in Titan) I wouldn't want people to feel sorry for me. I'm getting paid, I'm getting experience and I get to star in an anime series. I mean, how cool is that?
Humlon said: Poor guys, making money doing the easiest job of all. I cry every night feeling sorry for them. If you think it's easy, why not go audition for an anime series? A lot of English dubs re-use actors who they know can do the job well so if you can do it better than them they'd probably love to have you on board.
Chris Rock, who sounds exactly the same in Madagascar as he does in live action movies and in real life, says voice acting is easy. Someone like Crispin Freeman whose played everything from lonely perverts to immortal vampires (Both of which are very, very different to his normal speaking voice) will give you a very different response. But hey, you can trust who you want to. |