Well. I'm going to be as fair about this as I can, but, let's make this clear right off the bat. Personally, I think this dub is.. with a very few exceptional points... excruciatingly POOR, even for English dubs which are in general poor shadows of their original material. I was able to get ahold of 23 MP3's of the first volume dub through sources, and so I'm NOT basing this judgement on one or two samples, but on many, taken from the first three or four episodes of the dubbed Utena series. What I want to do with this webpage is make these samples available and provide my own commentary on them as a fan of the series.

Let's begin with the most common first thing heard in the early episodes: The opening narration, (805KB) relating the myth of Dios and Utena's first meeting. I think this voice is a bit melodramatic, but it's passable. Myths are, after all, a bit 'larger than life'. However, I miss the soft voice of young Utena relaying the tale from the original. It seems that no attempt was made to have that second, 'younger voice' relayed in the dub, which is disappointing.

The introduction scene, where we first meet Utena and she is confronted about her 'weird getup' utena1.mp3 (451KB) doesn't sound that bad.. EXCEPT for one small thing. It's Ten'JOH. Not Ten'JUU. A bit of Canadian VA pronunciation bias here? And this problem persists for the ENTIRE first volume of the dub, which tells me no one coached people how to pronounce their character's names. And this isn't the last occurrence of this particular problem.. Rachel Lillis, Utena's English VA, does OK in this scene, though perhaps a little too ditzy toward the end. The teacher's voice is fine, except for the mangling pronunciation of Utena's name. (I'm glad they DID get Utena's first name right!)

The pronunciation issue basically seems to touch any name in the series that has a long o sound in it; utenawakaba.mp3 (408KB) is a particularly flinch-inducing example of this. Wakaba's voice here is suitably 'genki', but a bit too low, and a bit too 'pleasing'. It really feels like the VA's are stumbling and tripping over their tongues when they try to speak the unfamiliar names, and emphasis is placed on the wrong syllables of words (WaKAba in the dub, for example, as opposed to WAkaba in the original.) Saionji (Sahee-ohn-gee) is consistently spoken as Say-ohn-gee, and with some of these voices, it just comes out like a razor blade down the spine.

As for Saionji himself? Ugh. Whoever made the decision that his boorish, boisterious and very Kunou-like original voice should be replaced by one in English that is (no offense) stereotypically gay, needs to be talked to rather firmly. There is NO intimation of any kind- especially at THIS early stage of the story, that Saionji goes in that direction- and this lends a weird, perverse spin on all his scenes with Anshi, particularly council1.mp3 (420KB) and the scene where he strikes Anshi in episode 2, slap.mp3 (378KB).

Miki and Juri... they can be summed up easily. BAD. Juri's voice wavers up and down from reaaaaaly slow and laconic to hastilytryingtomatchtherestofthelinetothemouthmovements, as in this sample: mikijuri.mp3 (386KB). Juri's voice is also a bit too similar to Anshi's. Miki's voice is passable, but I miss the higher, androgynous sound of Aya Hisakawa's original performance.

The Student Council Oath (271KB) (led by Touga's English VA, Crispin Freeman, who has done various roles in other dubs, including Zelgadis in Slayers) takes a bit of getting used to. I have no real technical problems with the performance; it's a bit more 'flowery' than the original, though. Nonetheless, I can say with total sincerity that Crispin Freeman's performances are the best in the dub- out of the 23 samples I heard Touga consistently speaks with genuine emotion and color, and in fact, in some sequences, he outACTS everyone else in the scene.

A very specific example of this is the first meeting between Touga and Utena, playboy.mp3 (345 KB). Rachel Lillis' performance here as Utena falls so FLAT on its face that Crispin Freeman's lines as Touga (particularly "you're beautiful when you're angry") DO NOT MAKE SENSE just listening to it. But even Crispin blows it at the end with the 'tenjuu' thing, marring an otherwise excellent performance.

And Rachel Lillis REALLY falls flat at the end of the summoning (287KB) of the Sword of Dios. As one of my friends put it, "Hi! I'm the Valley Girl of the Duel!"- I can't agree more. You can almost hear the bubble gum popping... Now, Anshi. Anshi's English voice.. I have several problems with it. It's TOO soft; she sounds as if she's on heavy medication or at least sleepwalking through her part. There's soft and mild, and then there's sleep-inducing. I have to say that Anshi's performances (from the samples I have) fall more into the latter than the former. Check out rosebride.mp3 (291KB) as an example.

I have a HUGE problem with the entire first victory.mp3 (382KB). Not only is everyone else but Touga's acting lame, but the translation itself RUINS the delicate insult that Anshi smacks Saionji down with. "You seem upset.. Saionji.. classmate.." sounds really, really UNNATURAL. "Take it easy.. Saionji.. *master*" would have been better. (ANYTHING would have been better here.) If the problems with the LEADS are bad, the second-string characters really suffer: Nanami's henchmen in particular are wooden as boards. 3bitches.mp3 (425KB) gives that off pretty well. The following sequence with Nanami.. oh, I MISS the smirking, obvious "dagger in your back even while I kiss your feet" quality. That menacing, exaggerated niceness is completely absent here.

For those of you wondering about Chuchu's (440KB) transition from Japanese to English, here's his introduction scene. At first I thought they had mingled the Japanese and English Chuchu voices, but I was mistaken. Anyway, it's REALLY hard to screw up a mascot character that doesn't speak, so this comes out just fine. :) The Kage no Shoujo (294KB), on the other hand, are disappointingly low-key and flat, without the hyperactive sound of the original girls. "Kashira, Kashira, gozonji kashira" is rendered as "Do you know? Do you know?" I liked the "I wonder, I wonder... do you know what I wonder?" of the fan translation MUCH better.

Now, in conclusion to all of this... of course, I wasn't expecting much. (To quote Bad American Dubbing: "Americans can't dub for shit. STILL.") I will be buying the subtitles (and AM buying the Japanese raw VHS editions, and probably the DVD's as well.) over the dubs. Is the dub acceptable? If you're a serious fan of Utena, I personally feel the answer is no. But then again, if you're a really serious fan of Utena, you already own the series, probably on LD, and only plan to buy the series so that it makes enough money to get the rest of the episodes past 13 over here subbed.. My specific beefs are really: First, get the VA's some pronunciation cards, and break the names down into syllables if you have to. Get SOMEONE in there who knows enough Japanese to be able to do that, and make sure the actors get their names RIGHT. It's very, very distracting to feel the lines grind to a halt because of poor pronunciation. Second would be: Don't be afraid to be colorful with the voice, emotional! Crispin Freeman can do it, and he does great. Why can't the others follow suit? It would help distinguish the characters. As it is, most of the characters sound like they're on heavy medication- they're all so *pleasing* and *monotone* and LIFELESS! That's not very exciting to listen to! Utena is a series that deserves a little better treatment than a quick and dirty hack dub, and it would only take a little more effort to have gotten it right.

Of course, it's too late now, for this series...

Utena/Chuchu: Rachel Lillis
Anthy: Sharon Becker
Miki: Jimmy Zoppi (random nobodies in Slayers)
Nanami: Leah Applebaum (Works with Sci-Fi Channel's "Seeing Ear Theatre")
Touga/Dios: Crispin Freeman (A very nice man, Zelgadis in Slayers)
Wakaba: Annie Pondell
Jury: Mandy Bonhomme
Saonji: Jack Taylor