The Persona 4 anime is coming to Blu-Ray and DVD later this year courtesy of anime localizer and publisher Sentai Filmworks. Sentai Filmworks made a lot of fans of the original game pretty happy this weekend when they announced that they had re-hired all of the voice actors from the game’s original, pretty good localization, to reprise their roles for the anime. Unfortunately, it seems like they forgot to tell the voice actors about this good news.
“I’ve heard back from half a dozen cast members, and none of us have been contacted,” voice actor Yuri Lowenthal said in an email to Anime Vice concerning Sentai Filmwork’s announcement. Lowenthal portrays Yosuke Hanamura, one of the Persona 4’s central characters.
Other voice actors from the cast were apparently equally surprised to hear that they had been hired to dub the anime, as apparently nobody from Sentai Filmworks bothered to actually tell them. It remains to be seen whether they’ll actually be involved in the anime’s dub.
Outside of the usual overzealous weeaboos who complained that Persona 4 was (properly) localized instead of literally translated, most critics and fans were pretty happy with Persona 4’s localization and English dub, so here’s hoping that the anime receives a similar treatment. I’m sure that Sentai Filmworks will eventually get around to, y’know, properly hiring the people they said they’ve already hired, but regardless, this has certainly been a strange story.
At the very least, some of the voice actors involved with Persona 4 let it slip that while they might not be working on the anime, they did do voice work for the upcoming P4 spin-off fighting game, so it’s good to hear that Atlus is speeding through the localization of that game.
Source: Anime Vice
Rian Quenlin
Reminds me of the time I met someone who was a secret genius. Sadly he wasn’t let in on the secret either.