Re: Do you hope Terra will get a new Voice Actor?
Personally, I wasn't bothered too much by either Jason or Willa's performances. They were far from the best, but in my opinion, they were far from the worst. As others have already pointed out by now, voice direction is
extremely important. If the voice direction sucks, then the performance itself sucks however good the voice may be. Not helping matters was the fact that this was most likely the first voice acting gig that either of them had.
I just think that Willa & Jason needed to break into their roles and as the game went on I got very invested in their characters because of the acting.
Agreed. The voices themselves are actually really good, they just needed more time to adjust to their roles. Willa Holland sounds really good in the Secret Episode and I could have sworn that Jason Dohring was doing some voice work for a series of audiobooks.
Also, on another note, Jason's acting is best when he's allowed to emote (i.e.: during the flashbacks where he sounds like a teenager instead of a young adult). This is especially evident when hearing his war cries whether in gameplay or in the cutscene. One of Everglow's videos (from back when he still went by Pacey) had him take all of his war grunts from the game - gameplay and cutscene - and his war grunts show that he definitely can get the job done. The one that plays at
13:29 (taken from when he lets lose in the cutscene before his one on one battle with Master Xehanort) comes to mind.
I don't blame Jason Dohring's performance on him, but a mix of him being new to voice acting and the fact that the Japanese voice director directed them in English as well.
Japanese voice direction is very different from English voice direction because the Japanese language flows in a completely different way, and it can lead to wooden performances in English because words that should be emphasized aren't or words that shouldn't are and just a whole slew of issues.
So, no, I don't want Terra or Aqua for that matter to be replaced. Either the Japanese voice director needs to allow for a more fluid, natural reading of the script in English or they need to actually hire a good English voice director to do the English voice over work.
It always boggled my mind that they never have an English voice director working in tandem with the Japanese one. As you already pointed out, Japanese flows differently than English so why don't they have an English voice director as well to keep that in mind?
As to who they could get as an English voice director, why not Richard Epcar? He's already in there voicing Xehanort's Heartless...