Death, Artistic Integrity, and Amanda Winn Lee
Foremost, let me state that I’ve been an anime fan for quite a while now, and have an ever increasing affinitity for the Japanese vocal performance, and an ever increasing distaste for the practice of dubbing anime into English. Also to be noted is the fact that I am a visual art major, and have come to place a high value on artistic integrity.
For those of you who don’t know, Amanda Winn Lee is the English voice of Rei Ayanami, as well as Yui and Pen Pen in the Manga release of D&R and EoE. She also did ADR work on the original series release while at ADV, and was the senior ADR director for the Manga release of D&R and EoE.
She has a distinct degree of notoriety in some circles, and if you don’t know why, you’re about to find out.
In Death, there is a segment pertaining to Kaji, at the end of which there is a transition between Kaji’s death, and Asuka berating Shinji in disbelief when he informs her that Kaji is dead. The expected gunshot (akin to the editing in the series) is a harsh slapping noise. This transition excellently connects the two sements with a well implemented sound. This instance of artistic creativity was lost on Winn Lee and company, who believed the sound to be in fact a really poor gunshot. So they took it out, and put in an actual gunshot. In so doing, they have altered the intellectual and creative scope of the film. It’s just the English dub, but it still illustrates the fact that English language directors have some peculiar affinity for taking someone else’s work, and making it their own, and imparting their own sense of “creativity” in the process. “We don’t like it, so we’ll change it”. As an artist, this particularly disturbs me. I know for one that I wouldn’t want anyone to take my art, alter it, and then pass it off as their own, ruining the artistic integrity in the process. I would rather they leave it intact, and simply pass it off as their own, so that what I was trying to create would reach people the way I had intended it to be experienced.
And with that, I present to you the sequence in question. First, the English dub, followed by the original Japanese (what it was supposed to be), and concluded with the pertinent audio from the DVD’s commentary track. The female voice is Winn Lee, and the male voice is her husband, Jason Lee. Taliesin Jaffe does not offer any comments.
Enjoy.