We Need To Talk About The Witch Hat Atelier Dub

[00:00:00]Anime dubs have a reputation for being bad, but we actually quite like them. If we want to just relax and watch an anime, then throwing on a dub makes the whole process easier. Watching something in your native language can sometimes convey dramatic or comedic elements in a more impactful way. And in the last decade or so, the quality has been pretty good. It's rare for us to actually want to turn off a dub these days. All of that to say, Witch Hat Atelier is one of the shows this season we've been watching dubbed.

[00:00:30]The show as a whole is great. From the interesting magic systems to the corrupt magical government to the frustratingly realistic child characters. But there's one point we bring up to each other every single episode. The dub really sucks. So when we say the Witch Hat Atelier dub is not good, you got to understand we aren't your run-of-the-mill haters. We have evidence.

[00:01:02]>> So, there are three core issues we have with the dub. One, the choice of accents. Two, the execution of said accents. And three, the audibility of the dub itself. The last point is the easiest to explain, so let's start with that. Also, we're going to assume you're up to date on the anime for this. We are. It's a good anime. This isn't to trample on all of the show, but we do have issues with it. Riche is a very quiet and introverted character. She is softly spoken, almost in a whisper. But for some reason, this is expressed by having the voice actress talk in a whisper so close to the microphone it sounds like she's eating it.

[00:01:39]>> If being an adult means being forced to do things you don't want to do, then I'd rather stay as I am.

[00:01:45]>> This is the voice actress' first role as an anime VA, having starred in TV shows, commercials, and audiobooks. So it could just be inexperience with the medium and process. She is an Australian who lives in Los Tsubaki is another character that suffers from poor audio with her shrill voice often being hard to hear.

[00:02:03]>> That trial and error process is what MAKES THE FEEDING LESSONS VALUABLE. We mustn't act suddenly out of habit.

[00:02:09]>> And has performed well in other dubs such as Tohru in Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid and Lily from Zombieland Saga. In fact, her whole back catalog seems to be energetic girls. So, this feels more an issue with the direction or mixing than anything the voice actor has done specifically.

[00:02:24]>> She is a Danish-American living in Texas. A difficulty with any sort of voiceover is in making the voice communicable via speakers, something we're all too familiar with. Any transmitted audio will be compressed and distorted to some extent. This is what caused the initial transatlantic accent as people attempted to over pronounce words to be better received through 1920s audio devices. A similar and much more contemporary example would be what is often referred to as the YouTuber accent, something I sometimes notice both of us utilizing. It is a flattening out of certain dialectic quirks to a more universal and easy to understand accent compared to the natural speaking voice. This tends to culminate in a sort of faux American vibe. This isn't necessarily a good thing as overexposure to these false accents often lead people to assume that is how things should be pronounced. Dialectic differences exist and are something that should be explored in voicing characters instead of maintaining an assumed status quo of what is the default.

[00:03:23]>> This quite nicely brings us into point two, the execution of the accents. In Witch Hat Atelier, there are many different types of accents.

[00:03:33]>> But I do believe I'll pass. I'm going to [music] eat while I work.

[00:03:36]>> This is a really positive decision and there is a variety. Yorkshire, Danish, Received Pronunciation English, Scottish, Irish, American and probably some others that I've forgotten. This is really nice in theory and loads of people online are excited about hearing their accents in anime for potentially the first time. So, why do we have an issue with it? The best way I can explain this is to list out the nationality of every voice actor in the main cast. So, bear with me a moment.

[00:04:06]Coco, American. Keyfree, American. Aga, American. Riche, Australian. Or Rugio, American. Tata, American. Nolnoa, American. Custis, American. Dagda, Chinese-American raised in America.

[00:04:22]Tetia, Tetia, okay. So, when I was looking this up, I primarily used the voice actor's personal websites as a primary source.

[00:04:31]But for Tetia's voice actor, I ran into issues. This isn't information most people care to establish, so normally their own websites had something mentioned offhand in their bio while aggregate sites listed nothing. On her personal website, her about lists her as Danish-American. And in her Twitter profile, she has Danish and American flags. However, she is listed as being born in the Netherlands. So, some websites list her as Dutch-American. She also describes herself as being of German heritage. From what I can tell, she was born on an American army base in the Netherlands, giving her the dual American-Dutch nationality. But her mother is Danish and her father is American. She grew up speaking some Danish but primarily lived in America.

[00:05:13]So, let's stick with Danish-American raised in America. Estis, American.

[00:05:18]Utowin, American. Galga, American.

[00:05:21]Lelouchi, American. Coco's mom, American. Inguyn, Puerto Brush Buddy, American. And finally, the ADR director, American. Now, if it isn't obvious, the point I want to make is that despite the variety of accents, the cast and team are overwhelmingly American. In fact, there isn't a single British person to be seen here. I'm not saying you have to be of every applicable attribute to portray a character, especially for voice work where your voice is all that matters, but when a dub has issues with maintaining the quality and clarity of accents in a way that to our British ears is painfully obvious.

[00:06:02]Well, this is the crux of the issue.

[00:06:04]While trying to pinpoint where these people were from, I was struck with the painful American-ness of listing out three generations of your family you barely met as if it benefits your acting ability. The problem comes down to the general American opinion that England is just a worse or weirder version of America.

[00:06:21]For some reason, because of this, it's acceptable to treat Britain as an annex or outer territory and not a people with their own history. This is made explicitly clear through the constant use of European to describe a dub that covers the grand total of the British Isles and also Denmark. Especially when the execution of all of them is so overtly done by Americans trying to do an accent. It's great they tried, but watching the show as a British person is an issue because it's so painfully obvious that it's Americans doing their best impressions. Keefer is supposed to have a posher accent but sounds like no English person I've ever met. Or Rugio's Yorkshire accent comes and goes. Tata and Nolana's Irish and Scottish accents are borderline interchangeable at times.

[00:07:05]Aga and Reese seem to have some sort of accent but at no point did it feel English but just an American trying too hard to be posh. Every voice sounds like a caricature someone would do at a party for a laugh. And so finally, we come to the first point and the most egregious one.

[00:07:21]>> I'll come back up as SOON AS I'VE GRABBED IT.

[00:07:24]>> MONEY MAKES LIFE HAPPY.

[00:07:29]>> You can't claim to be focusing on diversity and classism and then assign voices with a randomness that flirts with stereotypes. Let's go through all the unfortunate implications. First of all, the use of a standard American accent as the underclass.

[00:07:46]>> It must have been them.

[00:07:47]They came in like this carriage.

[00:07:49]>> I get the intent. You want to align the audience to the main character Coco and better feel that we are learning alongside her in this new world. But this is an English dub, not an American dub. But the two are so heavily conflated that this is just another example of American cultural imperialization. And you can't even complain about it because then people who would otherwise support diversity crawl out of the woodwork to talk about how America is the center of the universe and has the biggest share of English speakers so no one else matters.

[00:08:21]We spoke about it a bit before, but this treating of Britain as America light has far-reaching consequences. First of all, the conflation of England, Ireland, and Scotland as one country. And the odd absence of Wales at all. Often compared to American states and they just uh aren't. Secondly, the assumption that all other English speakers can understand American English. Often we can, but it's only due to the heavy presence of American media already. This also leads to a lot of people omitting terms Americans won't understand to widen the accessibility. I really hate the use of dollars by English YouTubers and the fact that no matter what I do, Google Docs defaults to American English as standard. But mostly it's the assumption that because they have a cultural dominance that we are all just like them inherently. It's exhausting to have to constantly justify your words and culture because Americans see them as traits of a flawed American. Not every country has native peoples the same way America does or sees race the same way. I know this is a video about anime, but things like an assumption based off of skin tone and ethnicity is a reflection of a larger trend at play.

[00:09:33]For example, Tata has an Irish accent.

[00:09:36]>> Perhaps I was imagining things.

[00:09:37]>> He is the only ginger freckled character in the anime. Red hair was a historically stigmatized attribute of the Scottish and Irish and was often used as a way to identify and discriminate against them. This ties into the very long history of English colonialism, but the important part is that first of all, Ireland isn't a country. It's an island containing two countries. Northern Ireland is the part that is part of the United Kingdom. The other part is the Republic of Ireland, although it is commonly referred to as just Ireland. Arguably, any fantasy setting is pulling on a pre-1921 concept of Ireland, but conflating Ireland and Britain carries a very specific connotation of the aforementioned colonialism. Tata is also the grandson of Nonoa, who has a Scottish accent.

[00:10:23]>> I am familiar with something so [music] elementary.

[00:10:26]>> This again is treating British people as interchangeable. It is also entirely counter to the idea of using accents to convey status and otherness. Why would an entirely insular community that shuns outsiders and has several large towns have more accents than the outlying small villages? One for each town? Sure.

[00:10:45]But everyone being different from one another? The implication by choosing these accents is that Tethys, Kefri, Arion, Bryke, Tethys, Tata, Nonoa, and Agate have less in common with each other's heritage, culture, and upbringing than Coco, a villager, does to Dagda, a nomad. And speaking of Dagda, his son Gustav seems to have been given an accent that isn't American, but no one seems to know what it is. Some say Irish, >> Dagda!

[00:11:16]>> some say Scottish, >> And some of our stuff got caught in the eddy.

[00:11:19]>> and others Indian.

[00:11:20]>> See, there's a nook in the riverbank.

[00:11:22]>> He reminds me a lot of Prince Soma from the Black Butler dub, and that um is also something.

[00:11:28]>> You cannot comprehend my despair at being separated from her.

[00:11:32]>> If it is Indian, that's messed up for an entirely different reason, as it could be because he has a darker skin tone than the other characters. And this follows the trend of stereotypes we saw with Tata. If it's supposed to be Irish to reflect him being a traveler, that's insanely racist, too, because it conflates Irish travelers and Romani travelers. And if outsiders are differentiated by their American accent, then why does Coustas have a different accent to his dad? Accents are a product of your environment, not something inherited. I have heard tell that Coustas isn't Dag's biological son, but even so, if it wasn't recent, you'd expect them to have similar accents or for those accents to both be American.

[00:12:12]Regardless, I've seen way more confusion over this dub compared to others. And for a lot of these complaints, it seems to be they like the idea being attempted, but the execution is at odds with the narrative trying to be told.

[00:12:25]Personally, I understand what they are trying to do, and I hate it. I hate it for the way it conflates the complex history of Britain and flattens it to be on the same level despite centuries of discrimination. I hate the way it's another case of Americans patting themselves on the back for representation that is bordering on offensive. I hate that it doesn't even execute on the idea very well due to a total lack of research into the cultural context of these accents. And I hate that it is being lauded as an amazing dub when it's filled with over exaggerated and inconsistent caricatures of accents. It would be great if more English dubs were thoughtful and made attempts to add to the stories being told in more than just intonation and slang. But part of that needs to be for the English dubbing to not be in a chokehold by a handful of Americans and instead reflect the Anglosphere as it actually is. I really need dub studios to, if not bring in voice actors with varying accents, at least have an English person standing in the room to give their opinion. This whole situation reminds me of English spoken by Japanese people in anime.

[00:13:28]>> Oh, fortune did not smile by you.

[00:13:31]>> You'll have scenes where a character is supposed to be speaking flawless English, and it just sounds awful to the ears of native speakers.

[00:13:38]>> Take riddle airport personal list.

[00:13:41]>> This is because they didn't get a native speaker to be in the room. Without that, they don't even know what mistakes they are making. This is the same situation, but running under the assumption that all English accents are understood by one another. The dub team commendably attempted to add to the anime by using the accents of the characters to inform and express the class divide in the Witch Hat Atelier world. But unfortunately, they ended up detracting from it with poorly researched execution. It could have equally used different American accents. The reason they [music] don't is to try to tie it into the more fantastical elements, but by seeing that inspiration is only European, it's just a whole mess. Shira Hammer herself has credited a lot of things as vague inspirations, but seems to be more pulling on the concepts and ideas of fairy tales and fantasy as a whole. One that came up frequently was Lord of the Rings, which could indicate a connection to England. But then there's the use of atelier, which is the French for workshop, and the witch town of Carn seems to be a larger version of Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy, France.

[00:14:44]But no French accents? I think this is because France isn't English. In general, English is interchangeable and owned by Americans, but things outside of that, such as France, can be potentially seen as off-limits.

[00:14:59]Arguably, they only felt able to use a Danish accent because one of the voice actors has Danish heritage. I get the fear, especially when there have been a lot of issues around cultural appropriation in voice acting, with people being limited to only characters of their race or playing roles of different races. Personally, I think that there should be some leeway, as it's a specific skill that can be learned and trained outside of characteristics. And the issue is very complex. But as we said, I don't think they needed us to get an Irish person to play Tata, but having some level of input from a native Irish person could have helped a lot. Interestingly, the original voice actor for Soma in Black Butler passed away. And the voice actor they got to replace him was born and lived in India as a child. He also lives in Texas and has an American accent. But they kept a stereotypical Indian accent for Soma.

[00:15:49]>> Ciel up here. LOOK, I'VE ARRIVED.

[00:15:52]>> But the voice actor for Ciel is an American woman, and Sebastian is played by an American man. These accents aren't great either, by the way.

[00:16:00]>> Locating the nest [music] and eliminating the vermin.

[00:16:03]>> And are more caricatures of what the audience would expect a posh little [ __ ] aristocrat and his butler to sound like. The faux cockney accents of the secondary cast are, however, unforgivable.

[00:16:14]>> Just cleaned it up mean we can eat the pie and not.

[00:16:17]>> In that regard, I guess at least the Black Butler dub is even in its awful accents. Just drop the word English and identify yourselves as an American dub, so you can at least stop pretending that you represent the 38 sovereign states and 10 non-sovereign states, which have some form of English as their primary official language. Look, we have spent our whole lives hearing the various American accents to the point that I could probably know the implications of a valley girl accent versus a Brooklyn accent versus a Texan accent. It's fine if you don't know the implications of mine, but I would like you to stop pretending you do. Although, apparently, they even struggle getting the non-Texan accents right. Utilize what you know and the cultures you understand to build a similar division. Or research the accents and dialects you're using. Or have the outsider characters have equally differing accents. But why is it one shade of American versus an entire subcontinent? Even still, I really like Witch Hat Atelier, and I know the voice actors are trying their best. I don't want this video to detract from that fact. I just wish we could have a larger diversity of people working in the anime dub scene, and maybe move away from the monopoly Texas seems to have. To be fair, this is starting to happen a little bit. Love for a Prism was dubbed by the SI London, a studio based in London. It does feel a little amateur, but it's a step in the right direction.

[00:17:43]>> What we're really saying is bring back the BBC's Urusei Yatsura dub.

[00:17:48]>> Today's oil raid is part of a strategy by the Amalgamated Union of Space Taxi Drivers to recover a fare from Ataru Moroboshi, the well-known git.

[00:17:57]>> So, what do you think of our points? I know a lot of people disagree, so I would love to hear your perspective. I feel like for us, our annoyance grew and grew, and then this script was born. So, let us know your thoughts down in the comments. If you would like, feel free to check us out on Patreon, where you can support the channel and get early access to videos, work-in-progress videos, and monthly blog posts. Or, alternatively, check out our second channel for more uh of the stuff and streams.

[00:18:27]>> Bye.

[00:18:27]>> Bye.