Iron Chef Voice Talent

[Rachel Perlow]

Were you involved with the selection of voice talent for the dubbing of Iron Chef into English?

If so, is there a reason why the younger female is always so giggly? Do the Japanese ingénues actually come off that way in Japanese, or is it a characteristic of the person doing the dubbing? It is an interesting comparison between that voice and the more mature actresses, who sound much wiser.

Is there anything else you'd like to share about the voice over sessions?

[mstillman]

Were you involved with the selection of voice talent for the dubbing of Iron Chef into English?

If so, is there a reason why the younger female is always so giggly? Do the Japanese ingénues actually come off that way in Japanese, or is it a characteristic of the person doing the dubbing? It is an interesting comparison between that voice and the more mature actresses, who sound much wiser.

Is there anything else you'd like to share about the voice over sessions?

I was fired October 11, 2000. My recollections are my own and in no way are meant to disparage the network or any individual. I have no knowledge of current Food Network programming strategy or internal business practice. I have no desire to expose the private workings of the corporations, just my own experiences. My comments reflect only the time I was gainfully employed by Food Network and cannot in anyway be considered to be relevant to current practice/s.

In the beginning different voices/voiceovers were sent to us. Myself and another person in the programming department listened to the selections. I usually came with preferences, we usually agreed.

The young engenue is giggly...what can i say? It is must be a cultural thing about women speaking in public, embarrassment et al...But they giggle in the completely subtitled versions that I used to watch on public access.

Basically I think the folks at Fuji nailed it. If you have to have dubbing, you do it the way they did it by and large. I personally wanted less dubbing than there was even in the first season, but I understood why we went the way we did re:dub/sub ratio.

[torakris]

Japanese girls, especially on tv, giggle A LOT!

[Dave the Cook]

My brother spent ten years commuting to Japan -- two weeks there, two weeks home. I introduced him to Iron Chef a couple of years ago. When the ingenue started giggling, all he could say was, "I don't know about the food, but they got that part right!"

[Bux]

Elsewhere on this Q&A you implied that you didn't think an American Iron Chef was a workable concept. In spite of the fact that Iron Chef had such a tremendous following here in the US, I'm inclined to agree. This is not to say that sort of show might not have a large audience or that the American audience for Iron Chef understood what they were watching, but there's something very Japanese, or at least non-American about the show and the dubbing kept the gulf unbridged. Perhaps a part of the success of the show was based on the ability to keep it Japanese after being dubbed. The communication gap I sensed, was one of the charms of the show. For instance, it didn't immediately occur to me that "fwagra" was a western delicacy and not a traditional Japanese food.

The giggle seemed right on. I don't know if my ten weeks of experience in Japan spread out in three visits over twenty years gave me a better or worse perspective on the show, but dubbing reminded me of all the "frustration" I enjoyed as a guest in a country where everyone seemed driven to be as hospitable as possible. There's an odd way that the real Japan is hidden while they try to make you as comfortable as possible based on what they think you want. One learns to appreciate the anticipation of being brought you want they think you should want. Dying for a beer I am brought a coke and enjoy that coke more than I would a beer and more than I've ever enjoyed a cola in the US. In the same way, I quickly stopped needing the information I wasn't going to get via the dubbing and which may not have been available to the Japanese audience for all I knew. On the other hand, although I enjoyed Iron Chef tremendously at first, eventually I grew tired of it as a regular viewer.