social.noyu.me

was remarking to my gf that it's been years since i consciously thought about the fact that part of what makes anime anime is that it doesn't have lip-sync, that speech is dubbed over and is subservient to the animation, not vice-versa; the original japanese is also a “dub”

anime actually does have meaningful mouth shapes occasionally, for dramatic effect

さ・よ・な・ら

this looks amazing when animated. maybe because it's four syllables. you just couldn't get that drama out of a “goodbye” or « adieu »

…but it's not synced, it's silent! hehehe

anyway a fun realisation is that the idea that lip-sync is important is very… anglophone. the significance of lip shapes matching what a character is actually saying is probably less to you if you grew up watching redubbed things

i should clarify that i'm talking about two things at once:

• that in anime, the animation is done first, and the voice is dubbed over second to match the animation timing
• that western animation likes making mouth shapes match pronunciation, not just (vaguely) timing

i think i like the anime way better. there's something about how it makes the voice-acting subservient to the animation and not vice-versa, and how it is relatively neutral with respect to which language is dubbed over, that i think is pretty cool

man it's fascinating what details are and aren't synced once you pay attention to them. anime seems to do it for emphasis rather than doing it routinely

@hikari my understanding is that they do match lip flaps coarsely to the written dialog but its animated before/in parallel with recording so exact matches tend to be intentionally rhytmic pronounciations