Mobile Suit Gundam SEED HD Remaster dub

General Gundam The Gundam Universe
#1

Been watching the re-dub of Gundam SEED and… I have mixed issues with it. On the one hand, a good chunk of the cast (Mu, Athrun, Rau, Sai, Tolle, Kuzzy, Murdoch, Yzak, Dearka, Nicol, etc.) have been pleasant to hear, and in some instances are superior to the original dub. On the other hand, the tones for other characters (Kira, Marrue, Natarle) just sound off to me. For instance, the new English voice of Natarle Badgiruel doesn’t quite have the snarl of a Drill Sergeant Nasty archetype that the old dub voice nailed, or that the new English voice of Marrue Ramius doesn’t quite have the commanding presence that the old voice had. I don’t know, maybe I have a bias towards the old dub even though I went in knowing that it would not be the same.

Sidenote: One dub voice that has me laughing on the floor is the new dub voice for Lacus’ pink Haro. That thing is f**king hilarious as from time to time it just spews out references to other Gundam shows. Such examples include “The Beast of Possibility” (Unicorn), “Life is cheap” (Wing), and “Blame this on the misfortune of your birth!” (0079). I’m sorry, but hearing an iconic Char line coming out from the squeaky voice of Pink Haro is just so funny.

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#2

My biggest complaint about it, was the changing of pronunciation of names. Primarily Lacus. Every time I hear it, I cringe.

#3

Eh, personally, I find the SEED HD English audio pretty good, and I don’t mind the pronunciation changes. Lah-kuss to Luh-Koos? To-may-to, to-mah-to. This sort of thing isn’t new to Gundam. Remember the English audio for the original series?

The final episodes, “Space Fortress A Baoa Qu” and “Escape” saw Amuro fighting off Char one last time, with the latter piloting an experimental MS called the Zeong. In Japan, the pronunciation was probably the same as Zeon, but in the English dub, it’s pronounced “Jee-Ohn” as a nod to that Japanese pronunciation and to avoid confusions with the Principality of Zeon itself. So I don’t mind the new pronunciations as much.

#4

I did some extra reading after finishing the new dub and found out something interesting. Lacus’ name is the literal Latin word for “Lake”. After running the word through a few different translators, they all lead me to the same conclusion: the new dub’s pronunciation is much more accurate than the old dub’s, and this makes sense because if you compare a derived word (Lacuna) to another language that uses Latin as a base (ex. Spanish) of the same word (Laguna) you get a similar pronunciation. Personally, I think this shows just how far we have come in terms of producing and translating for English dubs.

Side note: this is actually kind cool from a thematic point of view as since Lacus is the one to give Kira the Freedom Gundam (a metaphorical sword for his fight), she could be seen as a Gundam equivalent of the Lady of the Lake from Arthurian legends.

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