Foster, Steven

It's not because you're a rabbit, it's because you're black. 😳

Steven Foster was never truly appreciated by a vast majority of dub fans and the dubbing community in general. The man has an impeccable eye for discovering promising acting talent with unique voices that ooze actual presence. He was responsible for giving actors such as Joshua Sheltz, Adam Gibbs, Patrick Poole, Kris Carr, Emily Neves, Justin Doran, Kalob Martinez, Mike Yager, Samuel Roman and countless others their first break into the dubbing medium. Foster had an immense hand in helping build actors Andrew Love, David Wald and Leraldo Anzaldua into the acting juggernauts that we love today. Foster was so damn dedicated to his job as an ADR Director and the dubbing medium that he would crash at the recording studio overnights to ensure that a dub was finished on time for Sentai Filmwork's insanely fast turn out schedule for producing dubs at the time. The quality in the voice direction department in the dubs produced under his watch rarely suffered for it. For the record any technical problems that occurred in the mixing process for a few of his final dubs weren't personally caused by him. The blame for that falls on the heads of the mixing engineers that allowed such amateur mistakes to slip through the cracks. Its baffling that they still have jobs after such repeated screw ups on their end. Foster talked about this whole scenario during The Ohio Guys interview a few years back. It should be apparent that over Foster's sixteen year ADR directing career he did so much for the dubbing medium in a positive manner. Foster directed some of my all time favorite dubs from the last decade. The vile reputation that anime fans have created for him over the years has always been greatly exaggerated and built upon an unjust hive fan mentality that's overstayed its welcome. Houston dubbing is far less rich and compelling with Foster currently not directing their dubbing output. I know I'm not only long time dub fan that wants to see him return to the medium and start directing once again. Its my sincerest wish that one day in the near future Foster will find his back to the directing chair.

As polarizing as he may be, from what I've heard from the dubs Foster's worked on, I didn't think they were that bad. Everyone churns out good and bad work, and I'm sure he wasn't the only one working on the scripts, he's probably had people look them over. I still like the CLANNAD dub, but After Story is better.

Dubs will be dubs. I'd rather have natural-sounding lines than awkwardly-specific-because-that-was-in-the-original lines any day, but you can't always help that.

The most colourful ADR director in the industry, and High School of the Dead and Ghost Stories exemplify this.

Rejoice everyone, he's quit Sentai.

Steven Foster is the Vince Russo of anime.