Monday, February 21, 2011

Upon A Star Promo Will Make Your Ears Bleed

I don't know what it is with Mega Man and promotional spots -- they're awful. These brief thirty second ads almost always feature children professing, no, screaming about their love of the blue bomber. The idea sounds cute on paper, but its execution comes off as, well, pretty annoying.

Continuing this tradition is a recently unearthed promotional spot for "Mega Man: Upon A Star", viewable below. This ad, like many before it, once again features children (or at least adult voice actors attempting to sound like children) as they gloat about how spiffy Mega Man is. It gets real bad towards the thirty second mark...




Yikes. Well, thankfully, this promo did not hit airwaves; it was originally attached to programs released on DVD by ADV Films.

One of these days, we'll get ourselves a real commercial. You know, something on par with the quality produced by Japan; those are soooo much cooler than the ones we get in the west.

Thanks for the submission, Jake!

21 comments:

  1. Hey, what's that red stuff on the- Oh, wait, that's the blood coming from my ears.

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  2. FFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUU

    that was awful.

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  3. I don't know about anyone else, but I found it funny. Also, it was nice to see Mega Man 5 getting some attention.

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  4. "And his friends, Roll..."

    I guess they are friends, technically.

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  5. I stopped watching at the first 7 seconds of it.

    Well, I guess it could have also been worse...

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  6. Disregarding the voice acting, which is really horrible by the way, this should have been a very persuading power to CAPCOM to make an anime series. For some thing like this being how old? That's some pretty "spiffy" animation.

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  7. The commercial is almost as horrible as the OVA itself.

    Seriously, the only bright spot of that OVA is Scott McNeil's awesome Dr. Wily voice, though it pales in comparison to the German accent he used for the American cartoon.

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  8. yeah.. that's why I stopped watching anime in English. At least the squeaky Japanese voices have ACTING talent.

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  9. @Tcat: That's why I find it difficult to watch some anime in japanese: some seiyu are cast because they are celeb status rather than whether they fit the role, something which the English voice casting (to a lesser extent) does do with certain typecasting of VAs. At least with us, we try a casting call: whether they succeed is a matter of personal taste, and I for one enjoy the VAs we have today.

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  10. The boy in the promo sounds a lot like Naruto's voice actress, lol. Now that's bad. I've never seen this, but I have the DVD and it is pretty good.

    I'd just like to express one thing though. I really don't know how anyone can outright say Japanese vocal tracks are "better" than English. Most Japanese girl voice actresses sound exactly alike. Very little differences if any and are just as or more annoying as this. Mot of the guys sound pretty much alike too. I just really think people don't give English voice actors enough credit.

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  11. @MegaMac: Thank you for that sentiment, although I think you should mean to include English Voice Actresses as well (and I mean that in the best way).

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  12. "I really don't know how anyone can outright say Japanese vocal tracks are "better" than English."

    My experience with this is that lots of English VA's (or, cast directors) tend to treat acting for the equivalent of fantasy TV dramas in the same manner as say, Saturday morning cartoons. As a result, VA's voice might fit the role but the resulting characters still turn out really awkward. ..But I guess it's becoming less of an issue nowaday with the genre slowly growing out of nichdom.

    That being said, the VA in the promo is on-genre. And terrible. :P

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  13. i agree with MegaMac and Rock-X. And to add to that, i think English VAs have to work harder than the Japanese VAs. so people, give EVAs credit too.
    :)

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  14. You know, I bet the Japanese think their "quality" commercials are lame, since they're so used to them.

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  15. I for one can't understand how someone can say japanese seyuu sound all alike and are annoying.

    Maybe it's because I'm not a english native speaker, but whatever.

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  16. That was mildly annoying. But despite complaints? Accurate to what kids sounded like back in the day. I recall getting into conversations with my childhood friends that sounded an awful lot like that. "Hey, wouldn't it be awesome if Sonic were real?" "Oh, yeah! And he'd zip around and collect rings and stuff!", and so forth and so on.

    Maybe that was just me and my friends, though. I dunno.

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  17. I think Capcom needs to recruit the marketing team that Sega had in the early 90's.

    Those commercials could sell me any game based on how goddamn funny they were.

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  18. That sounds like and I'm pretty sure that's Greg Ayers doing the boy voice.

    He's always a hit and miss for me. I still like him and I think he's a pretty good VA It's just characters he voices for sometimes don't go with his voice. Especially when he voiced Negima... *cringe*

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  19. ^,^

    THIS IS CUTE! Had to watch it twice to believe my ears, I believe it IS our ol' Greg Ayres! He's one of my favorite voice actors!

    If anyone has the SyFy channel (though it was FINE as "SciFi" before), you can hear Mr. Ayres as the good devil Chrono, in the anime "Chrono Crusade," it's a great series. I have the entire DVD set! I think the show now airs on Tuesday nights at 11pm (that might be PST). This is the first time I've seen it being broadcast anywhere.

    Oh! And he also voiced Son Goku in the original "Saiyuki" anime as well. :)

    I wonder who voices the little girl? It's adorable how she says "MEGAMAAAN!" with that enthusiasm!

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  20. "ADV 'dun gone and screwed up my hearin' again...." *shot*

    Alright, I'll be honest and say it wasn't that bad. (But honestly, ADV Films wasn't exactly one of the better dubbing companies back then last I checked.)

    Besides that, I think they did a good job on the commercial.

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