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Are there any anime that have English language dubs voiced by the voice actors of the original non-English language of the anime?

qubodup
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    This will be extraordinarily rare (if it even happens at all) for anyone who has to actually speak human language (Japanese/English), at least partly because of the sheer paucity of Japanese voice actors who are fluent enough in English to perform in English. – senshin Sep 04 '16 at 21:39
  • (To elaborate, there are a fair number of Japanese voice actors who are reasonably conversational in English - for example, Sawashiro Miyuki, Kakihara Tetsuya, Murase Ayumu, etc - but they invariably have a strong enough Japanese accent that you couldn't pass them off as native-level English speakers. I can only hope that Maxwell Powers gets to reprise [his role as Suzuki](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyVR5jcxLWE) if _Kabaneri_ gets dubbed.) – senshin Sep 05 '16 at 03:10
  • For real action movies, jodie Foster is famous for dubbing its one voice in French (with no accent at all o_O) and I believe Daniel Brühl does it too in spanish/french/german/english ! – yota Sep 06 '16 at 14:18

4 Answers4

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The most prominent example that comes to mind is Pokémon, which has used Ikue Ohtani's voice for Pikachu for almost the entire series.

giraffesyo
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Makoto
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    Thanks but does Pikachu ever speak Japanese or English? Even in S1E17, it seems to only ever say "Pika-Pikachu" which is neither English nor Japanese and it is all with subtitles, not translated/dubbed. I'm not looking for anime which uses the same audio recording for a characters speech in original and dubbed version but rather for anime where the Japanese language voice actor is also the same character's English language voice actor in the anime's dubbed version. – qubodup Sep 04 '16 at 22:24
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    @qubodup The original way you phrased this question was if the original voice actor was used in an English dub, and Pokemon is the most prominent example that exists that makes use of the original Japanese seiyu. If you're looking for something more specific, you should look to edit your question. However, that shouldn't invalidate this answer, since the original seiyu are indeed used. – Makoto Sep 04 '16 at 22:43
  • I thought "dub" implies translation. PS: and I did specify "English" – qubodup Sep 04 '16 at 22:51
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As a matter of fact, Mari Iijima reprised her role as Lynn Minmei in ADV's 2006 English dub of the 1982 anime Super Dimension Fortress Macross. Unfortunately I can't find any clips of the dub, but here's an English interview with her about the role.

Makoto
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shockz0rz
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As amazing as that would be the answer is no. A majority of the voice actors in the industry would have to be fluent in English for that to happen, and that is sadly not the case here.
EDIT :A lot of Japanese voice acting tends to be 'good', but at the same time it's a lot different than the type of voice acting in English. With English, we kind of strive for natural sounding voices that sound normal. Whereas in contrast with Japanese voice acting, especially in Anime, nobody in real life talks like any anime character. While overacting is seen as a sign of a bad actor in the West, over in Japan it's kind of the opposite. And I feel because of this, it's kind of easier to come across as a good voice actor in Japanese than it is in English. That and directors are super picky about VAs. Some directors will go through hundreds of auditions for characters that aren't even the protagonist.

Also, would you like to watch an anime where all the jokes and puns which kind of make sense in Japanese, would be lost in translation?

As an answer said already the most prominent case of that happening is in the case of Pikachu.

icarus007
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  • There *may* be more than one occurrence, but this does indeed piggyback on my original answer. Do you have more sources to add? – Makoto Sep 05 '16 at 05:53
  • yeah sorry if I piggybacked unintentionally :( . I edited it. Honestly Pikachu is the only case which comes to mind when a question like this is asked. – icarus007 Sep 05 '16 at 06:07
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The D4DJ English dub has one of the Japanese voice actresses playing the same character in English. Which is really cool!

Dubbed Anime Fan
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  • For another single shared seiyuu, Sally Amaki will be playing Carol Olston in both the Japanese and English releases of *Tomo-chan wa Onnanoko!*. Both she and Kagami Karin hail from California--i.e., they're native speakers of American English. – 鬼いちゃん Jul 30 '22 at 09:31