'Look! My dog turns into a cultural stereotype!' by Kara
Wednesday, March 19, 2008 at 5:57 AM

Watched Steamboy last night with some friends. Pretty good. I need to watch it in the original Japanese because I like some of the original seiyuu and because ... well, I mean, because. However, the majority of the voices were really good.

I've gotta say I've had a great deal of respect for Patrick Stewart The Person™ since I watched him on the Red Dwarf A to Z. He seems to respect fans, but account for people who have no clue what's going on. When he explained in the extras that Steamboy is a serious anime and doesn't have wacky hijinks or talking animals ... I think that'd bug some people, but honestly, while odds are the majority of the viewers are anime fans, I'm sure they have to account for people whose knowledge of anime extends to whatever their tween kids watch on Cartoon Network. I don't consider him patronising, anyway -- I think it's just easy for us to forget sometimes that a lot of people can't help but think of the anime stereotype because they're bombarded with Naruto rather than Macross. Not their fault.

Right.

Alfred Molina was damn good, and he was good and honest about not really even knowing of the existence of anime. Which earned some eye-rolling, I'm sure, but guys. He lives in England. It's not as easy to trip over anime over there. My friend -- my one friend -- who managed to find out anything about it has a bitch of a time finding R2 releases of ... well, anything.

Right.

I liked both of them. One's worked in dubbing before, one had little to no idea what was up, but both of them are pros and really seemed to love their work on it. (Which is fair, because I loved their work on it.)

What bugged me ... oh, what bugged me ... is Anna Paquin.

She's not a bad actress, kay? But I'd never seen a behind-the-scenes with her. And it's really kind of a let-down when I discover that an actress reminds me of the girls I graduated with.

That's not the worst part, though. In the beginning, when they started with her and Molina and Stewart taking about their exposure to anime, she said:

'Well, my boyfriend is into Japanime.'

In the Shoutbox, there is an emoticon that you use by typing :banghead:. Imagine that.

Fortunately, that's where she stopped, but then she went on about the amazingness of the fact that she was voicing a boy.

... sweetest, that's pretty much industry standard except for shows like Avatar. Also, the original seiyuu for Ray Steam was a young lady. It's really not that fascinating.

And the most headdeskalicious of all ... 'It's so cool to do action scenes. As an actress, I don't get a lot of those, because all that stuff goes to the guys.

... YOU WERE FUCKING ROGUE, WOMAN.

And incidentally, she can't do a British accent to save her life. And she certainly can't pinpoint it to a region. Well, unless that region is the inside of a small vehicle moving fairly speedily from Scotland to London and back again.

That said, Ray doesn't actually talk as much as you'd think in the movie, so grit your teeth and watch the dub once. It's worth it for everyone else. Also, no matter how you choose to watch it, it's visually amazing and a well-written story overall. You'll also learn about thermodynamics!

Yet another anime for my physics teacher friend to use as teaching material.

If you have been, I hate that.