This is the first time in any series, apart from maybe lois lane in smallville, that I found a lead so annoying and exhausting to listen/watch. By episode #3 I felt like putting a sock in ger mouth. The english voice is excruciating and hinges on fanaticism. I wonder if in real anyone with such high strung opinions would be allowed into space, not to mention be allowed to carry on working in this environment.
Does she lighten up?
Just started watching it myself and came to this forum to get an answer to this very question. The only thing making me hesitant to continue watching is Tanabe. She is so excruciatingly annoying!
shareShe gets better.
shareShe gets better, much better.
shareYeah, she did end up getting better, but she was still far and away the worst part about the series as far as I'm concerned.
It seems to be almost a trope in Japanese anime that there has to be at least one prominent character in every show who is so annoying you just want to punch them in the face. In Planetes, that character was Tanabe.
To be honest she never bothered me that much. Maybe you just made the mistake of watching the English dubbed version! You gotta stick with your japanese cast when watching anime!
shareTo be honest she never bothered me that much. Maybe you just made the mistake of watching the English dubbed version! You gotta stick with your japanese cast when watching anime!
On a side note, I haven't watched the English dub myself yet. Maybe I should check it out sometime (I just finished rewatching the whole series again, in japanese ofcourse).
I have just start to watch it, in Japanese, and what I liked less was precisely her voice pitch ;-) (or maybe compounded by the speed). In any event the series looks quite promising and I hope, as others have said, that her voice improves.
shareA highly excited Japanese woman produces perhaps the least pleasant sounds in human language. Ai Tanabe spends much of her early time being highly excited, so perhaps her English dub was selected for the annoying tones she produces when excited.
That being said, Julie Ann Taylor delivers some highly emotional, yet constrained dialogue on occasion. One of my favorites is in "Return Trajectory," where the casket of an astronaut buried in space is captured again by Earth's gravity and picked up by the crew of the Toy Box.
Everyone, including the astronaut's only surviving descendent, his daughter, is in agreement to return the casket to deep space, while Tanabe strongly disagrees. Her rebuttal, "Living alone... and dying alone... alone. How could anyone be satisfied with that?" is one of the early strong moments of the series. It demonstrates the strength of character of Tanabe, even as a rookie.
After watching the series four times now, she's really grown on me.
Julia Ann Taylor really delivers her best performance(that i 've seen), in my favourite role of her's so far. That scene you mentioned and the scene where she is hopelesly running out of oxygen while carrying Clair runs chills down my spine!!
Ai herself (and the characters in general) was one of the best things about the show and her constant positive outlook on every situation makes you wanna root for her every step of the way.
I cant lie that i generally prefer the english dubs over the slightly sometimes over the top performances of the japanese dubs, although i watched some of my favourite series like Lain and Elfen lied subbed. In any case, the realistic nature of Planetes requires imo more subtle acting, and the majority of the cast delivers.
Also, Hachi and Ai are now one my favourite couples in cinema.