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Okay, I watched it. Voice was a good bit higher in pitch and much softer than I thought it would be. Acting overall was good though, IMO. The only thing I have to say is maybe slowing down the text speed. Make it so it is closer to the speed of how the actors say their lines. That's my one and only suguestion on making it better, otherwise a good start!

The voices seemed pretty good to me. Not perfect, but then, what's perfection in this case anyway? Who's not cast yet? It seems like it would be a blast to be involved, and while I'd assume you've cast Akio Mutou, it would be interesting to try to find a voice for Shunichi Nomiya.

damn, the voice of Misha is better suited than Hisao… not as loud and crazy as i was hoping, but still better suited than Hisao's voice…

COME ON HISAO! STEP YOUR GAME UP!

edit: Just saw you guys hired Gordon Freeman for Shizune. Nice.

Everyone introduced in Act 1 (Including Akira even though she only get a few minutes of screen time) has been casted, but Act 2 characters have not yet been cast. (This includes Shizune.) So if you want to try out for Act 2 characters, those will open up eventually.

I don't remember there being any male roles beyond act 1, so I don't think I'm going to try. Besides, I don't think my voice is really suited for something like this. A shame, really, considering I really do want to put those classes to use.

The list of uncasted characters is as follows:

Hideaki Hakamichi –
Jigoro Hakamichi –
Miki Miura –
Meiko Ibarazaki –
Sae Saionji –
Shizune Hakamichi -

Then there are a handful of extras, like the old man who owns the antique shop. You should give it a shot, the more people audition the more likely we are to find the perfect voice for everyone.

>casting for a shizune voice actor

As was stated earlier, they debated wether or not to give Shizune a voice, and they decided that it would be best to give her a voice rather than not do so. Think about it, she didn't have a voice in the game, and neither did any of the other characters. The idea is to READ it, everyone gave them a different voice in their head anyway, why should Shizune be discarded?

Orgasmic moans count, Chris.

Shizune's voiced dialogue will be gradually introduced as Hisao learns to sign, yeah.

DOGGONE YOU PSEUDO NOW I HAVE TO TRY FOR SHIZUNE'S BROTHER AND DAD EVEN THOUGH I KNOW I WON'T GET IT AAAAAAAA

Damn straight you do. I'll let ya know when auditions are opening up again.

Jigoro's open? That's a tall order. Maybe I'll think about it.

Wait, are you saying Nomiya's already cast? I figured that was my best shot with Mutou obviously taken. (I know how to do "burned-out high school teacher" because I was one for a time.)

I was going to ask whether you were giving Shizune a voice. It made sense to me, but I figure you'll use some sort of sound effect like having Shizune, Hisao, and Misha sound like they're talking in a tunnel when they sign.

One more thought: have you cast the extras? Aside from Aoi and Keiko having a brief appearance, there are a handful of unnamed and not shown extras, such as a couple of students in Lilly's class, one of Emi's teammates at the track meet, a few art gallery patrons, and I think the convenience store clerk may have a line or two, but I'm not sure. Who am I forgetting…? Ah, Karla Satou (apparently the unused official name of Lilly's mother) has half a dozen lines or so over the phone. That's an important one, and you'll have to make some sort of decision as to what she'll sound like speaking "English". My suggestion would be to use Scottish Gaelic, so she says something like "Hello, é seo Karla Satou labhairt. Bealtaine liom a iarraidh atá ag glaodh?" (I very much doubt that's correct Scottish) when she answers Hisao's call.

Oh, Pseudo… You really make me want to try out for a part in this… I guess I could try for Jigoro too, or the old shop owner. (Though, internally I had read Jigoro's voice as a stereotypical Japanese rough-sounding ronin speaking engrish)

I know I won't get it, but if I audition I'll feel like I helped it along in a minor way, which would be a nice way of showing my respect for game, non?

Went ahead and dug up a complete list of the uncasted (AFAIK) extras, and it's much longer than I originally thought:

So yeah, you might have a decent chance once auditions open up. There are even a handful of Act 1 ones too. I suppose we've only casted the main characters. The biggest role here seems to be for Othello.

This is making me wish I'd made an audition thread earlier; it would've been awesome to cast someone from KYM as a main character. Oh well. I suggest everyone here auditions for an extra/one of the Hakamichis.

Cross Shiraki off that list, apparently he's been casted.

Out of curiosity, do you all have preselected lines to read from, or are we expected to come up with them on our own?

I already hunted down the instructions:

Katawa Seiyu Audition Information

ありがとう、秀明ーさん。

I should be that 'Airport Bystander'; I'll be in what I believe to be the best route and in a fitting place, an English guy who just so happened to see SPOILERS OF SOME CALIBRE Hisao chasing Lilly, (I think, I can't remember much anymore…) and I'd feel great about that.

But seriously, I wouldn't go for it.

Noticed a video for Kenji has been released. Not bad, but I'm not 100% convinced.

Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

@Random21

Oh wow. It's almost exactly how I imagined his voice to be. Shrill, nasal, childish and irritating

Needs to sound more serious and dramatic though. Kenji is a drama queen, but his voice is lacking that tone.

There were no feminism rants in this video. Just you wait.

JUST YOU WAIT.

Hisao: Acceptable. I've watched (and enjoyed) the dub of Haruhi Suzumiya, so a high schooler lead with a deep voice isn't new to me. :v
Misha: Needs a louder and/or shriller laugh. And maybe a higher volume in general.
Kenji: Spot-on.

Don't know, I always imagined Misha and Kenji's voices to be a bit more intense. Their tones are good, but they need to put more emotion into it.

Misha: Needs a louder and/or shriller laugh. And maybe a higher volume in general.

Tell that to all the people who think her voice is way too high. The ultimate goal of auditions was finding a VA that could do a voice that a) Matched the character, b) Wasn't annoying and c) Was well acted. You can't please everyone.

Pseudogenesis wrote:

Cross Shiraki off that list, apparently he’s been casted.

Dangit, I can't believe I missed it! This is a horrible lack of initiative and dedication on my part. Pseudo, you need to know: the past participle of "cast" is "cast"; "casted" is not a word. (I'm a lousy grammar Nazi….)

Random 21 wrote:

Noticed a video for Kenji has been released. Not bad, but I’m not 100% convinced.

I don't like it, but I don't expect most people to agree with me.

It sort of reminds me of something my college professor said in a drama class I took about directing. His point was about casting Hamlet, but there's sort of a similarity. He said that far too many directors want to cast King Claudius as this evil-looking, devious monster while such casting misses one of the subtle, yet central themes of Hamlet: nobody suspects Claudius is a murderer except for Prince Hamlet himself, so why make him look like one?

With Kenji, it's a whole different thing. Of course everyone sees him as a crazy little antisocial freak, but why does that mean he has to have a strange voice? The only characters in the story whose voices are described are Misha and Emi, as far as I recall. That gives some license in choosing the other voices, and with Kenji, yeah, he's strange, but doesn't his dialogue tell us that adequately without having him sound so odd? (Also, while not stated outright, it's implied that he dated Yuuko last year, so I think he should sound a little more mature, since Yuuko seems to have never realized she was dating a high school junior.) Now, he might turn a bit more shrill when he gets on one of his rants, but we didn't see that here.

Another note: I see that Kenji didn't match the written dialogue verbatim. Are the directors of Katawa Seiyu allowing that to some extent? When I was trying to read through the lines for Jigoro, I had a hard time with the fact that he very rarely used contractions. I have a hard time sounding natural while saying "Perhaps you should read it when it is published later this year." that phrase in the middle is just…wrong somehow. Although actually, I've been trying to work the odd speech patterns into his characterization, assuming he's talking in an over-formal matter as part of his self-important schtick.

Edit to add: I was looking up something about Hamlet and found out that David Tennant played the lead in a 2009 TV movie. Claudius was played by Patrick Stewart, which I thought odd, but it turned out to be odder than I thought. See, I'd recalled that Stewart had played Claudius before; he had, in a 1980 TV movie. Where it gets strange: Hamlet in that production was Derek Jacobi, who voiced The Master in a 2003 Doctor Who animated miniseries. So, as imdb.com notes, Patrick Stewart both times plays Claudius opposite a Time Lord. </random factoid>

Agreed. Kenji is weird, but the humor of his character comes from the seriousness in which he's presented. Making him have a silly voice ruins that humor, because it takes away from the situation.

Another note: I see that Kenji didn’t match the written dialogue verbatim. Are the directors of Katawa Seiyu allowing that to some extent?

I'll answer with this.

Yeah, early on we decided that it'd be appropriate to deviate slightly from the script when the phrasing of the lines made it awkward to read out loud. NeumanProductions seems to enjoy ad libbing, which I think is great because it makes the delivery seem much more organic.

Going back to what you said about casting for "Appearance vs. Reality", that was a major point of contention with the casting of Nomiya. I was one of the few people on the team that didn't see him as a force of pure unadulterated evil, and the voice that was going to be cast for Nomiya, as one team member accurately pointed out, sounded like a "necromancer". Ultimately it was decided to choose a voice that more suited an art teacher than his (Perceived) persona.

As a final note:

Pseudo, you need to know: the past participle of “cast” is “cast”; “casted” is not a word. (I’m a lousy grammar Nazi….)

Yeah, there's a bit of dialogue (mostly internal musings by Hisao) at the end of Emi Act I where Hisao is amazed that Emi has already planned out a running schedule and diet for him for the rest of the school year when he hadn't even agreed to make running a regular thing yet. "My God, Kenji!" he thinks, "If you could only see the scheme unfolding!" Of course, he's almost certainly being sarcastic, but you could take the scene various ways depending on what little scrap of credibility Kenji is allowed to have. (Although admittedly the shower scene is pretty over-the-top wacko.)

You know, so long as we're talking about this, what are people's opinions on what they'd like to see characters sound like? I was thinking that since Rin is so spacey, her voice should be a lot like Luna Lovegood from the HP movies. The story implies that Emi has a very high-pitched voice, which somewhat suggests to me that she would be even squeakier than Misha, but that might be hard given the Misha they're already working with. Hanako is bound to be a challenge, since she's quiet and shy, and yet she's supposed to be very intelligent; I don't know how one portrays that in a voice. One might be tempted to give Lilly some sort of accent, but Hisao mentions at least once that her Japanese is completely unaccented, so you'd need someone without much of an accent, and I'd give her the deepest voice out of all the girls, but that wouldn't be saying much as they'd all be pretty high-pitched. (Maybe Miki and Akira would be deeper, but you could do a lot with either character.) I have no idea on Shizune, but whoever the voice actor is, they need to be able to get across quite a broad display of emotion.

Now while I complained about Kenji sounding too weird, Nomiya on the other hand needs some amount of that weirdness, since several of the girls mention in Act 1 that they find him "creepy". A lot of that may be his odd sense of theatricality and apparently boundless enthusiasm. For such a big guy though, he needs a deep voice, I think. The only thing I keep thinking about Sae is that she's a smoker, so she ought to have that lightly scratchy quality to her voice that a lot of smokers do. The only other thing I can think of is that Meiko should, if possible, sound like an older Emi.

Wait a sec, I've just realised, will Lilly have a more Scottish/genericEnglish/British/attenuated accent?

I think (hope) that the goal was to make her speech sound formal and structured without using any stereotypical accents. A British Lilly would make no sense whatsoever.

I can say this, though: I adore the voice of the person we've cast as Lilly. It's just so… I can't even explain it. But I secretly wanted her to get every part she auditioned for. :S I'm excited to see how that video turns out.

As I said in my tl;dr post, Hisao specifically comments at one point that Lilly has no accent. She was born and raised in Japan, no need for her to sound unusual.

Pseudogenesis' description is really making me eager to hear Lilly's voice actor.

"Hisao specifically comments at one point that Lilly has no accent."

I thought it was the other way round! That's why I asked.

I swear, if this girl makes me fall in love with Lilly more than I already have, it'll be a dark day for my sanity.

Found it; right near the beginning of Lilly's Act 2:

And so long as I dragged that one up:

Those are the only specific descriptions of characters' voices that I recall, although Misha's voice is repeatedly commented on as being loud, of course.

A few members of the team dug through the script and plucked out every description of a character's voice for auditions, I think. It was stuff like Hideaki's voice being monotone, Akira's being masculine, etc.

Oh God, watched the Kenji video, not at all how I heard his voice in my head. Probably because I based it partly off of a guy I know who looks almost exactly the same as Kenji (but is taller). He has a rather notable and deep voice, so overall it was a stupid thing to do it that way.

Lilypichu does Misha's voice. Guess I'm taking the bad route for Shizune.

Also, the sex scenes are going to be so fucking awkward and uncomfortable for me.

Don't know to embed youtuve in HTML yet, so heres a link. The Nurse's video went up about 15 hours ago.

{Under the video, click on "Share", then "Embed". YouTube will give you the cut-and paste code. -Brucker(秀明)}

You can also just right click the video and select "Copy Embed HTML."

What do you think of Nurse? It's probably the most positively-received video we've put out thus far.

I don't know how to explain The Nurse's voice, but it is perfect. It's a little bit plain, but The Nurse always seemed to me like a pretty average guy.

The nurse to me seemed a lot like that actually, but considering I'm English I didn't have his voice all that American. xD

I meant with a Spoiler button, I do know how to do the copy/past embed thing, just kinda forgot actually. And the Nurses voice fits pretty well I think, so far they've done a great job with the voice acting!

>Meet the Nurse

Katawa Fortress 2. I'm calling it.

No. Nope. I'm sorry, but no, not at all. I can't stand the nurse's voice. It doesn't fit at all to me, and I find it to be very annoying.

@Teh Brawler:

Why not? I think he's my favorite so far.

It's far too deep for someone of that kind of build to sound natural, it has a dramatic flaire to it that just makes it sound cheesy and fake, and if there were any voice to make me completely unable to trust a person, it would be that one. Sorry, but for a character like the nurse, that voice is a death sentence to me.

That reminds me, I've been meaning to ask how you're planning on handling the sex scenes. Since it's YouTube, you can't go all-out of course, but I do tend to think the stories with "Disable adult content" leave a little something wanting, and not just the sex itself. Actually, I played through a lot of the sex scenes with content turned off, and to my surprise, while the actual sex was skipped over, there was still nudity.

So are you going to do the whole thing, but maybe with censor bars over breasts and genitals?