Dream Tropes Wiki/Now Which One Was That Voice

Common in Anime and Western Animation. Prior to the 1990s, this was the standard in Western Animation in the U.S. (other countries have different standards for this) where voice actors are lumped into a simple list under the heading "Voice Characterization," or something similar. This makes viewers who recognize an actor's name have to do a search to determine which character they were, which can be especially problematic if they used an alias for this production (or if someone has a very large vocal range).

In anime dubbing, this is generally a sign that the voice acting was not unionized for the production and at least one if not the majority of the voice talent are using aliases.

This is also prevalent in dubbed Anime and Video Games, but only for the dub cast. The credits list the Japanese voice actor in the standard Actor-Role method, while the English voice actors, by contrast, use the stock-standard "block of names." Many live-action dubbed films go farther and don't list the English dub actors at all.

This trope is becoming less common as voice actors are slowly gaining more recognition and respect in and outside the industry.

There are three types of this...

## Uncredited Actors

Occurring typically with older anime English dubs and video games, in these instances the dub voice talent will not be mentioned in the credits at all. This is often a major sign that it's a non-union dub and thus a lower-budget production. Unfortunately, due to union issues (or lack there of), the chances of finding out any official info of the cast are close to none—especially if the majority of voice talent have little to no VA experience or it is an older production. Several games that constantly add new characters and content that requires voice acting (such as League of Legends) are often given this treatment for similar reasons.

In many cases, an official cast listing is made by the dubbing company/recording studio and sent to the game publishers, who publish it in the game credits at their own discretion.

## List of Actors names only

All VAs involved in the production are listed, but the credits do not tell you which characters they voice. While it does lead to guesswork and deduction in order to figure out who voiced whom, at the very least it creates a good starting point to go off of. Both non-union and union productions perform this type of crediting, although non-union credits run the risk of including aliases and leaving certain names out. This was very commonplace in western animation during the '80s and '90s, but in recent years has fallen out of fashion in favour of more specific, film-like credits.

## Main Characters only

This type seems like an aversion at first, since all major characters have their actors properly credited. On the other hand, any recurring, special guest, or otherwise minor characters are either relegated to "Additional Voices" or not even credited at all.

Not to be confused with when the Man of a Thousand Voices forgets which voice he used for a particular character.

## Western Animation, Same Language

* El TV Kadsre Animation has had examples of this:
	+ *Akari Kagamine and the Rainbow Mirror* only credits Akari Kagamine's voice actress with having voice her and lists the rest of the cast under the heading of "The Stars of the Show". Eventually, the voice actors began listing who they played in interviews: Andrew Kayos stated at a 1995 parliament meeting that he voiced Haruki Nijimoto and some additional characters, and Christopher Berger revealed in a 2003 El Kadsre ComicCon panel that he voiced Nurr D. Wart and several elder men characters.
	+ *Akari and Haruki's Child* takes it Up to Eleven and doesn't credit most of the voice cast. Like with the previous anime, conventions and interviews revealed who played who.
	+ *Monster Jam Heroes* lists the voice actors for the drivers and other folks in the animated segments in an alphabetical list, but not who they played. Even then some VAs used aliases, thus making them hard to track. It wasn't until Brock Baker and Christopher Berger revealed the true names of the VA's and who they played at convention panels that fans were able to identify which was which.