windhover | (no subject)

My favorite voice actors are the ones with a wide variety of roles-- and by this I mean a wide variety of different-sounding roles, not just the same "EVERY CHARACTER I PLAY SOUNDS EXACTLY ALIKE HURR" that seems to be growing more and more prevalent among recent anime dubs (I'm looking at you, Vic and JYB).

Case in point: Renaissance Yamada, apparently typecast as the hot-blooded!/possibly psychotic and/or sociopathic ally, whose most well-known roles are the rather level and mysterious Mr. R (of Kichiku Megane) and Koshiro (of Beniten), and also played the very loud, very spastic fairy featured in Kichiku Megane R. Stuff like this appears to be pretty common among seiyuu, so a more familiar Western example would be Steven Blum, who is famous for roles like Spike Spiegel, but has also done the dubbed voices of several Digimon.

Sometimes it's pretty easy to pick up on similar vocal traits between such characters, even if they sound fundamentally different. Usually, this is pretty nifty. I know I thought it was pretty damn cool when I first started catching onto the similarities between Mr. R's voice and that of his fairy.

Other times, though, this can be kind of creepy. Take, for instance, Keith Ferguson. His most well-known roles include Kaim from Lost Odyssey, Basch from Final Fantasy XII, and Bloo from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. Incidentally, he also replaced Michael Rodgers as the voice of Gabranth in Dissidia Final Fantasy.

Basically, the entire reason I wrote up this journal entry was to say this: I cannot hear Bloo in Basch's voice, and that is a good thing. But I can hear it in DFF!Gabranth's voice, and that is really, really, really creeping me out.