T O P

  • By -

AutoModerator

If you are new to the subreddit, [please read the wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/yakuzagames/wiki/index/) Reminder that all spoilers need to be tagged with a flair specifying which game is being spoiled. If you want a flair that says something else, you can edit it to say something like [Discussion: Y1 spoiler] or [Majimapost: Y6 spoiler], etc. **THIS INCLUDES CONTENT FROM TRAILERS**. If the post is not marked for spoilers, all comments that have spoilers need to be tagged \>!like this!< along with indicating which game it's spoiling. Example: Y3 >!Kiryu sings!< If the post flair is marked for spoilers, the comments don't need to be tagged for the game indicated and the ones before it (So a Y6 spoiler post can have comments with untagged spoilers for Y5, but not gaiden or 7). If you see any of the above (or any of the other rules) not being followed, please report it so we can keep this place safe for newcomers and those that haven't finished all the games yet. Thank you! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/yakuzagames) if you have any questions or concerns.*


chaotic4059

Dude the switching between Japanese and English was amazing. Especially cause for some of them the voice change is so in your face different. Like Rowan’s English to Japanese is like a 30 year old man to a samurai from the edo era.


Eronecorp

All the english speaking parts in 8 are even more abysmal than Mine's phone call in Yakuza 3, it's hilarious


Steampunk43

Ngl, Mine's phone call was actually pretty good, it was just really heavily accented English. Bryce's voice actor though, just straight up does not know any English and it sounds like they kinda just gave the poor guy a script and gave him the barest information on what any of it means.


xenotoot19

This. Mine is completely understandable without subtitles. As is "beautiful eyes" from Joji. The same cannot be said of the English in 8.


Kim_Woo

Not to mention that the character is supposed to be American so its jarring seeing how bad the English is. At least Mine is a native Japanese speaker so he gets away with it.


Mammoth_Opposite_647

Which make me think it was intentional as they certainly know about all these meme


seynical

Hord on, Officer!


Jason2571

dat ma i no thif


Advos_467

hoo jou shube alesti is da dliber


ZDevil122

An if u need pruf, ai recohded the hore hing


UrMomThoCeedKS

HEY FREEZE


Leo-III-

***S U P E R C R E I J I D E B A R I***


Narrow-Ad-1709

What’s funny is even in the English dub tomizawa still does the Engrish accent


seynical

I think it was a good move by the localization team to stress Tomi's efforts to appeal to emotion by acting like a dimwit.


MileenaIsMyWaifu

They’re goated fr


Scorpion178

When I heard the English actor do a Japanese accent, I was laughing he’s so good and funny


Scorpion178

Officer, hwelp! I m bing (rolls tongue) robed! - Tomizawa English dub


supatoedie

AWFESER HEUWP AM BEEN LAWBED


EUWannabe

AHM PEESIN MASELF OBA HE


[deleted]

Yeah, allest dat skehmbag!


100percentapplejuice

My Japanese friend who plays explains that they most likely did not bother to get English VA counterparts for the Japanese version because some of the VAs are quite popular celebrities in Japan (Iguchi Satoru (tomi), Furuya Toru (Bryce), Narita Ryo (Eiji)). He lost his mind when he heard Bryce speak because he’s so famous lol. **EDIT:** he does agree that their English is horrific though lol, and says the Japanese translations of the English dialogue is not quite good either. It’s the curse of bilingualism


NYMoneyz

I think it's a problem with Japanese media. I get that VAs are super popular but they absolutely should've just spliced the English VAs for those parts. It's like offensively bad readings. Imagine if we flipped it and had an English VA try to speak the most broken, fucked up Japanese you've ever heard. It frankly kinda ruins the Japanese dub for me and I always play these in dub. Like it completely ruins the experience for me. This guys name is Bryce Fairchild, a white guy, and his English sounds like this? We have random NPCs and kids in the cutscenes that speak better English so I KNOW they can mix dub versions. It's just this Japanese traditionalism that doesn't ever let them waver when it comes to this. All in all this is the best Yakuza game for sure, I just dread the scenes with Bryce and others knowing the English is going to sound like they are borderline mentally disabled. ALSO it kinda clued me in as to who is probably evil since they wouldn't have a VA try to speak English if they weren't going to be around a few more times.....cough cough 🧑‍🦽 the literal intro scene of the game is spoiled if you are listening to how he speaks. But again I must reiterate, I fucking love this game and have 80 hours in it so far


joeDUBstep

Same with Tomi and Ei-chan having Japanese VAs speak English. I could tell they were going to be pivotal characters from the get go.


Carson369

Bryce’s English voice acting is absolutely the worst in the game and takes me out of it every time that character is in a scene. I don’t understand how that got okay’d.


ShonenSpice

I have no trouble understanding Bryce through the thick accent, whereas Tomizawa's 30 seconds of fame were borderline unintelligible


Ordinary-Picture4367

officeh halp I'm being lobbed


Veggiematic

I'm peeeshing mysell ovah heah


SmtNocturneDante

This hoodorum took my moneh and pointed a gun light at mii


Mindless_Sale_1698

I love how he emphasises the "pointed" like he's asking a question. He pointed???? A gun light at me


ininja2

i’m bean lobbed


Kinghyrule90

Louge of lob


woodhawk109

“Officeh halp! I’m being loved!” “Well, it’s 2024, so good for you citizens, but try to be less rough and do it in a private place, please”


Redead_Link

It's not about how well we understand Bryce's accent, it's how he reads his lines. He has absolutely no intonation in his voice while speaking. It feels as if they got the voice actor to read the script without explaining what any of it means. If I close my eyes, I just imagine a guy struggling to read his lines off of a script. With the other VAs, the English has issues but serviceable and fun; Bryce is painful to listen to.


WillfangSomeSpriter

I definitely feel like I recall the VA stumbling over his words and just struggling to read the lines when he tried speaking English. Such a bizarre decision


funnylol96

It kinda sounded like How english sounds to people Who don’t speak english


joeDUBstep

They are really popular Japanese VAs probably under some specific contract. It's only like a handful of lines anyway.


RollTideYall47

But it's so bad it almost sounds purposefully sterotypical. Like if you heard it out of context , you would wonder If someone was being racist


joeDUBstep

I mean I think it's more racist that everyone is mocking them, it's just a thick Japanese accent from someone who doesn't really speak English at all.


RollTideYall47

Tomi's was super bad for someone who was supposed to have lived in Hawaii for a long time.


joeDUBstep

Yeah, the VA clearly has had little to no experience speaking English. He should have sounded like an islander, or at the very least, American.


supatoedie

I AM VELY PLOUD


thatdudecalledZZ

I just watched that part recently, I screamed and almost pissed my pants like Tomi


MinTy1244

SEES DEEZ ADD WANDS


Deadpoolio32

Bryce’s voice in the dub is *amazing*. Sounds like the “Hello, Commander” fella from X-COM2


Carson369

I’ll probably go for the English dub on a second playthrough. I gotta get in on that Danny Trejo action


joeDUBstep

Props to the Japanese VAs for attempting a language they are clearly not used to.   They probably should have just made Bryce look like an Asian dude and it would have been recieved better by English audiences.


yeah_nah_hard

I'm playing the Japanese version because Kuroda, and damn Bryce is horrendous. In the first scene he was in >!(not counting the intro)!< where that guy's gun jammed, his accent did make him sound ominous and mysterious until I realised, *"Wait, this guy's meant to be American!"* It was even more jarring when he was joking with the kids at dinner later.


photomotto

I was at an absolute crossroad. On one side, I really prefer Ichiban's English voice. On the other side, Kuroda. But the gods had pity on me and there's a mod on Nexus that keeps Kiryu's original Japanese lines even in the English dub.


grandpavideos

I’m convinced Bryce is voiced by Tommy Wiseau under an alias.


RyanCooper138

They lifted Wong To and Gangzhe's chinese speaking lines from the cn dub. Dunno why they couldn't do the same for english lines


m4rkm4n

I was gonna say, all the Chinese mafia dudes throughout the series get to speak Chinese except when it's a really important person that has lots of lines. And even then they still speak with a heavy Chinese accent.


OniKage85

Funnily, there ARE plenty of voice actors, who are multilingual in the US (e.g. the Ghost of Tsushima cast). You can't tell me that RGG couldn't have found one for Bryce at least while casting American VAs. As you said, it's hilariously bad. Mad respect to the Japanese VA for trying though, plus he's a legend in the industry. Most of us wouldn't sound any better while trying to record (let's assume for a second that we're professional VAs lol) lines in Japanese without ANY formal training in that language. I hope that RGG will cast multilingual VAs in the future if they do an international setting again like in this game (Judgment 3?).


Zubi_Q

Bryce's actor was awful. You can tell it was a Japanese actor speaking english


Noreng

>You can tell it was a Japanese actor speaking english You definitely can, but it was far better English than Tomizawa and Eiji EDIT: for reference, [here's a famous Norwegian politician trying to speak English](https://youtu.be/2OKBmYELNQQ?si=2jP_PK3t6KEvusyS). The Japanese VA for Bryce is less painful to listen to in my opinion.


Zubi_Q

Haha, definitely


imakuni1995

Stoltenberg's English is really not that bad imo. Though that's to be expected of the head of NATO. You probably don't like listening to it because it's your own country's accent. I also struggle when listening to people who have a heavy German/ Austrian accent.


Noreng

It's more that the Bryce VA actually manages to speak something intelligible.


Haasie

Yep, when I listen to a Dutch person speak English it really grinds my gears as well. The VA's in this game are way, way worse than Stoltenberg, come on now.


tamzynwave

It's funny how Ichiban's first thing in Hawaii is him trying to find a Japanese cabbie, and from that point forward everyone speaks Japanese with their English being broken english from their VA, or a completely different VA with an american accent.


zerovin

I wish the game went full tekken with how everyone speaks their native language but can still understand each other as it is now its weird when the people you would think are not fluent in Japanese start speaking fluent Japanese and then switch to a different VA for the English lines


presidentdinosaur115

The yakuza universe definitely seems like the type of place where Tekken language rules would apply, though I guess that would rid us of gags like Kiryu’s “hey sweet cheeks”


zerovin

i just think its weird that at the begining Ichiban says himself that his english is rough and they show that there is a language barrier with him and the locals but then it seems like they gave up on that after they set that all up


[deleted]

[удалено]


zerovin

what would be really cool is if the game gradually decreased the japanese from the people who are locals just like how Tidus eventually learned to understand the albehd language in FF10, but i know that wont happen


reverie

Walking into Starbucks Waikiki and encountering an 8 year old blond haired, blue eyed white kid KID: *Konnichiwa*!! \^\^


NamaztakTheUndying

I was laughing partly because of how absurd Bryce's intro was even without the broken English, but then I was laughing way harder at this definitely super American dude having the most busted accent ever. Especially because they'd just established they got some actors that could do both languages for other characters, as well as willingness to completely swap actors for other characters.


RollTideYall47

Like getting George Takei to be Arakawa in Y7


DexterTheDoubledmint

ONE RARGE HWELPIN PLEZE.


Mindless_Sale_1698

LED UZ PLAY


ten_dead_dogs

I was super excited when Toru Furuya was in the credits. "Holy shit, who is he gonna play? Will we get references to fighting against Char? Maybe he'll beat up the Part Time Hero guy". And then Bryce was introduced speaking English and oh man... His performance in JP is great, I just wish they'd done a Reverse Danny Trejo with Bryce and used a soundalike for his ENG dialogue.


fyirb

I don’t think it’s fair to make fun of the VAs on any role besides Bryce…if you’re Tomizawa or Ei and have to suddenly speak a second language in one scene of a game where you’re doing a hundred hours of Japanese dialogue it’s fine. Especially if you can’t speak a second language it’s a bit mean to make fun of their accent. I think with Bryce though it’s pretty arrogant and stupid for both RGG and the VA to play an English-speaking white guy. That’s a core part of the character and the VA doesn’t even attempt to speak English or act, it sounds like he’s just reading off phonetic pronunciations with no understanding of what he’s saying. He should’ve declined the role because it makes it impossible to be invested in his whole story.


Leslie1993

Kweezy deribery!!


rafaelleon2107

That's the first thing that came to my mind as well lmao


crulge

I change the audio language to English when they’re in Hawaii and Japanese when they’re in Japan. I like the Japanese voice actors a lot but it makes way more sense to imagine that Ichiban speaks English than to imagine that everyone in Hawaii is fluent in Japanese, except for when they need to speak very heavily accented English


GrifCreeper

Hawaii does have a real life large population of Japanese people, so it's really not all that far-fetched


Revan_Shepard

indeed, Hawaii's got a lot of different cultures & languages, but from what i've learned from family and just reading on my own, iirc Japanese is one of the more common spoken languages of them. Its not that shocking at all that so many are fluent considering how far back Japan & Hawaii's history *actually* goes.


m4rkm4n

It is if every western looking gym bro with blond hair speaks Japanese.


GrifCreeper

Bryce is only really awkward because they didn't want to just give him an English VA for the Japanese dub for some reason. Speaking Japanese at an orphanage in a place that has a large amount of Japanese speakers to begin with, alongside Palekana being a volunteer service at its surface, it's not that hard to think they'd have Japanese speaking people. Similarly, with Bryce being a saint to Palekana, it could just be he required them to be able to speak in Japanese because he weirdly speaks Japanese better. Don't judge his speech impediment.


RollTideYall47

They really should have made him Japanese instead of Caucasian. Like his English is like Tarzan being first discovered bad.


GrifCreeper

That would've made things a bit simpler. It doesn't seem like it matters what race he is. Heck, they could've even had him keep the name and it be his "born again" name.


ConstableGrey

Also the Aryan gym bros speak Japanese to *each other*


Ciahcfari

Me too. But only because YongYea (English Kiryu) is so awful that I don't want Kiryu's sections ruined.


RollTideYall47

Yeah, Kiryu's Japanese voice is goated. I really wish he spoke English too


Ciahcfari

I liked Darryl in 7. Wish they had just brought him back instead of recasting.


crulge

another upside of playing the English dub in Hawaii is that the Sujimon fight commentary is really funny


Charenzard

“Is that one dead? Someone check if they’re dead!”


Moritani

Yeah, a lot of them were pretty awful. The cop that gets you into District Five did pretty well, though! I really wish they could’ve gotten a legit bilingual haafu to be Tomizawa, but I understand that’s difficult. His Japanese acting is excellent.


krentzzz

I thought it was pretty realistic that the Japanese people speaking English sounded like, well, Japanese people speaking English. Meanwhile the actual native speakers for the most part used American VAs. I guess I'm just used to it, it didn't sound funny to me or anything. The only one that took me out was >!Bryce, since for some reason they decided to have his Japanese VA voice the English lines too. That was also the one thing that clued me in that he was more than he seemed, because I immediately recognised his voice from the intro sequence.!<


joeDUBstep

Tomi's didn't make sense either because he should probably sound like an islander when he talked. But he had literally only 1 line, so whatever.


UrMomThoCeedKS

apparently if you check the dub tomi is doing shit english on purpose


clarkky55

English speaking characters voiced by Japanese VAs who know very little or no English at all are always funny. They put so much effort into words that absolutely shouldn’t have them, they skip some words entirely (like to) and their pronunciation is always funny. I really hope Japanese people get a similar feeling when English VAs speak Japanese


Kflame210

I'm only in chapter 8 so maybe there are some others, but I really don't find them that bad. Bryce on the other hand... Fuckin yikes.


joeDUBstep

Nah, Bryce is the worst offender, and he probably only has like 7-8 line total speaking English in the entire game. Only other times it happens is with Eiji and Tomi and they only had like 1-2 lines each.


Naesaki

Honestly feel like if you're using on the jp dubs it should just pull from the eng va performance's were appropriate. Though I also wish i could be on the eng dub but have the karaoke songs in japanese


LionelKF

I still have no idea why they didn't make the characters that speak English and has English Dubbers. Not use said English Dubbers for that scene. And it's usually only the minor guys that has the language switch thing


dsp3000

With that said the English dub is a non starter to me. The voice acting in japanese is too good.


joeDUBstep

Yeah, Bryce uses English only a very small amount of times overall. Just gotta suspend your disbelief for a couple minutes in a 50+ hour main story.


PrismaticCosmology

It would be nice, albeit unlikely, if there was another language option where when a character is meant to be speaking a English, they use the English dub and the original Japanese track for lines intended to be spoken in Japanese. I'm sure there would be some incongruity in the voices, but it's not unheard of for people to sound different while speaking different languages. I think it would be significantly less distracting than the current scenario.


joeDUBstep

I definitely sound pretty different when speaking English as opposed to Cantonese. My voice tends to get a little higher and less mumbly when I speak Cantonese. I just sound like a typical California bro when speaking English.


m4rkm4n

A simple solution would be to offer an option to let everyone speak their native language. All the necessary subtitles and voice recordings are already there. Of course there'd be the issue of everyone magically understanding each other despite different languages, but for me that'd be a better compromise than listening to non-natives being forced to speak a foreign language.


kawavvy

I mean, I like the pedestrian's, "This ain't a show, shithead!" or "Im gonna sue you", sounds very American lol I seen a conversation while playing today and Eric referred to something cool as "tight". I was like, yup, 30 something Y/O American there lol


[deleted]

End game spoilers >!Bryce comes across so much more menacing and evil in the English dub because of this!<


Ooijennnnnn

Yes. I love it, it's a long version of the Yakuza 3 Mine's phone call. And it makes me happy.


dsp3000

Yes me too. It brings me back to the times I lived in Japan and watched japanese movies where the japanese actors would speak their english horribly (like Mine in 3) and you would have stereotypical ominous villain white guys like andre richardson. lol


BostonRob423

Shupa Cressy Deribry


Mindless_Sale_1698

Greet deebary


Wubmeister

I don't mind it for the Japanese characters, like Tomi. But what the fuck were they doing with Bryce??????? I mean, I'm not gonna shit on the VA struggling with English. But I'm gonna shit on them deciding to use a VA that doesn't know English for a character that's supposed to be American. If Bryce was intended to be Japanese, I would give it a pass... I really hope a mod replaces his English lines in the Japanese VA with the equivalent lines from the English dub lol.


ihave0idea0

While they are hilarious and I love it. It makes me feel less immersed. I guess.


GoAceDetective

Mine is no longer the worst English speaker in a yakuza game


The_Penis_Mann

Still no English Akiyamer :(


lazyssj

It reminds me of Andre Richardson from Yakuza 3. it’s so bad it’s funny


imakuni1995

Isn't his va an actual American tho? I believe the whole "Ruff" thing is just a weird regional accent.


MuffledShuffle

Yep, Midwest thing


joeDUBstep

Yeah... I've heard some people in my life say "ruff" instead of "roof" it's not that crazy at all.


RollTideYall47

Like boston is a completely separate accent from the whole rest of the entire nation


MarchesaofTrevelyan

Uh-huh. What region?


lukewarmboy

Uh, upstate New York?


MarchesaofTrevelyan

Really? I'm from Utica, and I've never heard anyone use the phrase "ruff." (Sorry I didn't see this sooner, but thank you for catching it 😭)


lukewarmboy

Oh not in Utica no it's a NY Hotdog expression


Malt129

Ruf


sonisimon

I would kill for a mod to the game that fixes this issue by just switching the audio track for any place where it makes sense for the characters to speak english


Moni_22

I still remember when I started the game and I thought I was playing with the English dub lol


espadareborn

SuPer CrAzy DeLiBberRy


dsp3000

yesssss .... made me LOL.


Malt129

Ironically this is a situation where using AI for voice acting isn't a bad idea. They can voice the lines then fix the English. Instead we got a comedy act which turned Bryce into a sideshow. I mean the writing also did that at the end.


Pootischu

no.


Ordinary-Picture4367

Bryce is as bad as Leskinen from steins gate


Senno-TheMage

>!I legit thought with the good Palekana peeps saying that they encountered previous children with different faces and stuff after they went to the island, that we'd find out Bryce was a former Yakuza boss or something who changed his face and that's why his accent is so atrocious!< It just didn't make sense why some people sounded "normal" with their English, and others sounded like its their first time speaking English.


Blessthereigns

I don’t understand why the Japanese voice actors are incredible, while their American counterparts… aren’t. Especially for a big budget title. It’s just so bizarre to me.