Sonic X Shadow Generations thread, movie level out now

It just makes me wonder where this "hallucination" is stemming from. Is it Shadow or Maria? Maria usually sees the best in people, so for all I know this is just an intrusive "seconds-before-death" thought

Or is this Shadow? One of the last moments of Shadow's Pre-Maria's Death Personality that perhaps saw the world in a more simplistic mentality (GUN Soldiers = Monsters)

Or maybe Biolizard is on some fucking shrooms right now! I mean honestly, where were they during the ARK Raid?

 

Oh shit, now I'm actually wondering if we'll see Biolizard in this animation.

This could be interesting...

 

Others more familiar with the canonical timeline can correct me if I’m getting this wrong, but aren’t both the Biolizard and Emerl cited as the motivation for GUN’s shutdown of the Ark (per The Truth About 50 Years Ago and Sonic Battle respectively)? I wonder if they’re lightly retconning Emerl’s freakout to be the same incident as the Biolizard’s, and it’s the latter that’s being referred to as another subject.

 

The Japanese version of the preview has been posted.

 

It's like night and day. Just listen to how much more feeling is in Koji Yusa's performance. The anger and desperation when he punches the floor. The subtleties like the clenching of his teeth, or the gasp when Maria holds his hand. They're completely lost in English.

 

Yeah... I pretty much only really care about the Japanese cast at this point. They are both consistent and consistently well acting. Kirk Thornton has just demonstrated to me that he is either miscast as Shadow or is consistently misdirected and is forced to ONLY ever focus on the dark and edgy tone over actually emoting.

 

For people wondering why theres a vision of gun soldiers, the youtube description implies this is shadow reliving the memories, likely from black doom's influence

 

A thought occurs: Shadow the Hedgehog has the level Lost Impact, where the missions are to locate Gerald's laboratory or to destroy the rampaging Artificial Chaos.

Is Lost Impact supposed to be the incident with Emerl?

 

Most likely the latter, he has range but it's never really showed up in his performance as Shadow.

 

I awaited that version, and it kinda didn't disappoint.
Shadow sounds WAY better in the JP dub, but Maria sounds as nasally off as she does in the ENG dub.
I simply don't remember her sounding like that in Sonic X JP dub.

 

I see what you did there.

 

Regardless, this blows the "he just needs better material" argument out of the water. This was the last chance for Kirk to redeem himself, and he blew it.

I can't see this being the director's fault either. Surely Kirk has storyboards and a script to reference. He should know what kinds of emotions are called for, and if he gives it, I can't see the director rejecting it or at the very least not accepting it as an alternate take. The man directed Miyazaki films and Final Fantasy games for christ's sake. He can't possibly be that incompetent. He just can't.

 

More likely it's some sort of Sega mandate. For some reason, Shadow must always sound dour to American audiences and be the supreme edge-lord. Not sure why, but this has always been the case with American Shadow compared to Japanese Shadow.

 

This has nothing to do with the mandate. They only said he sounded empty in English audio. That's all.

 

I suspect that Kirk, having played Shadow for the better part of a decade with a certain interpretation of the character in mind (and quite possibly encouraged at the time of his initial casting), has become accustomed to that conception of Shadow and simply isn’t straying too far from it now. It’s not as though he’s playing his lines for laughs a la Boom - his delivery is straight, genuine and appropriate to the scene. I think what we’re all looking for in his performance is a degree of emotional depth and vulnerability. Perhaps his having been trained to view the character and franchise as fairly two dimensional has hampered his ability or willingness to explore that emotional nuance.

 

Oh ok that explains a great deal why it sounds off to me, I’ve only known her voice as kyrie.

 

Accidentally, believe me xD

 

This is (for the most part) off-topic, but this does play into my theory that the English Cast will get another full-on reboot after 2030.

When it comes down to it, the 4kids Contracts ended in 2010, such as Jason Griffith (2005–2010) so I can imagine that more or less their contracts are usually on a per-decade basis.

I can see the current English-cast batting for the rest of the 2020s, even the next 1-2 3D games...I just wouldn't be surprised if we end up getting a new cast in 2030 onward.

By 2030, Kirk and Roger would've been doing these roles for over TWENTY YEARS. And I honestly wouldn't be surprised if by then, they're either not up to it or SEGA decides the next-gen of Sonic needs a new-gen of acting to look fresh and the such. When it comes down to it, the current English has stayed for so long because there's never been a reason to recast it.

Dream-Cast got replaced because they wanted one set of English Actors after 4kids' Sonic-X Dub

The 4kids Actors got replaced for reasons I don't know fully, I used to think it was them trying to split off from 06 / the late 2000s. But officially we're discussing just a matter of SEGA not re-continuing their Contracts

So the Studiopolis Cast? Honestly, I just see it as a matter of SEGA wanting to "Refresh" the series' identity through the recent Super-Game Initiative and their big aspirations for the series. So a new coat of paint would just add to that dream of theirs.

Will it happen? Beats me, all I know is that it'll happen def by 2040. Roger would be in his damn 60s by then, so hey I'll be right eventually

 

I don't think anyone has contracts that ensure that they'll be the characters for any amount of time, they're probably paid by session or something to that effect, which is why they can just change Knuckles, Rouge, Silver or Blaze's voices whenever, and then they can also keep using whatever lines they already recorded (Cream hadn't shown up in a voiced project since Free Riders but clips recorded for and between both were used for the Mario and Sonic games in between then and Dream Team.)

I've been wanting a greater shakeup voice cast wise since I'm not HUGE on a lot of the people who have been with the series since Free Riders, and there's times when they get someone new in and they grow into the role better for me (Silver in TSR, Knuckles in Frontiers) and then we obviously had Devin Mack and Ian Hanlin as Sonic and Shadow and even Prime Rouge to an extent for the little time she had and it makes me wonder what else we're missing out on.

 

This shit is ultimately subjective at the end of the day; if you didn't like any of the cast members when they came on as the characters in 2010, I doubt anything would have changed people's minds by now. I just roll with it at this point.

I will personally say that, The English cast are never going to ever match their Japanese counterparts; they can recast as many times as they want, but it's never gonna happen. The Japanese cast have been playing their characters for over 2 decades at this point, across multiple forms of media. The English cast have had multiple recasts in the last decade alone for the lesser supporting characters, and even Knuckles couldn't keep his voice consistent after Forces. One side simply just got more experience. I'd argue the Sonic Prime casts aren't even that much better, just better in comparison to the Studiopolis cast.

This issue is especially exacerbated when Sega specifically interpret the cast different in Anglophone territories compared to their own region. Eng!Shadow is very much different from JP!Shadow and that's been the case since his debut in 2001.


In any case, I actually think Kirk sounds pretty good as Shadow from that bit we heard. Pales in fucking comparison to Koji, but like I said, 23 years of experience compared to 14, with two widely different interpretations.