Ani-Monday Reviews: Noein & Tokko

All right, SciFi Chanel's Ani-Monday has come and gone, and as such, I'm stuck pondering and considering the two animes that I watched that particular night (Noein & Tokko).

Both of the storylines and quality of animation are good. I've seen better, but I've also seen worse in both regards. Frankly, I don't have a complaint in either area just yet.

Noein seems to grab my attention more, as it's a more straight-up science fiction anime, but Tokko does show promise as well-provided we don't delve into even deeper into even more overt ecchi scenes, but again, this is American television, so I have the feeling we don't really have to worry over that, at least too much.

Then we have the voice acting.

Oh, how I wish we DID NOT have the voice acting.

I'm not certain what it is about imported animation that American voice actors just can't seem to, well, act, while performing their craft.

I mean, they can do it for Cars and The Incredibles, and Batman Beyond, but they can't for this series? It really makes my head hurt.

For Noein, it wasn't any one thing, but a cumulative effect. First, the children in the series just didn't sound like kids. They're supposed to be around twelve, but they sounded like high school students. That was annoying enough, but I could overlook it. What really drove nails through my ears though was the "southern belle" accent. I can't remember if they ever actually stated the character's name, but she had an atrocious fake, southern accent. It was so bad, that it made Blanche from the Golden Girls sound like a Yankee. I have a southern accent, my entire family does, we're all from the Deep South, yet none of us sounds like that-not even my grandmother.

For Tokko it wasn't the 'sound' of the voices that was off (well, except maybe the sex-crazed blonde) so much as it was that the characters had a tendency to yell. I call this the Dragon Ball Z voice. For whatever reason, in the Americanized version of DBZ, the characters yell all the time. Literally. I don't think Goku has ever whispered in his entire life, I know Gohan hasn't (and if you don't know what I'm talking about there, well that's what the wiki is for).

Then you couple that with the fact that DBZ is the most 'successful' of the recent imports, the companies in charge of such things, think that EVERY anime character is yelling. It makes me want to smack someone. Do you yell all the time? I sure don't. Yet for some reason, these characters do.

Unfortunately, that's an old gripe about a LOT of anime series that have been dubbed, and a good reason why subs are so much more popular.

In the end, I'm still interested in these animes, and hope that I can get through the dubbed versions, if I can, I may make the effort to find subbed versions to rent so I can really watch and enjoy the shows.