Japanese ‘South Park’ Slaps Because Cartman’s Japanese Voice Actress Is An Absolute Maniac
When a Japanese animated series is adapted for an American audience, the die-hards often declare “Subs Not Dubs,” meaning that new fans of the anime should watch episodes with the original Japanese audio and English subtitles due to the inadequacy of American voice actors’ attempts to capture the energy of their Japanese counterparts. In fact, when we discovered the Japanese-dubbed version of South Park, we started watching that with English subtitles too.
The Japanese-language voice role for South Park’s most popular character, Eric Cartman, is currently played by Kimiko Saito, who, as fans of the series recently discovered on Twitter, is an absolute menace on the microphone who cannot be matched. Saito is an accomplished and veteran voice actress whose body of work includes original roles in many anime that have accrued sizable followings in the United States, including performances in One Piece, Death Note, One-Punch Man and Tokyo Ghoul, among many others.
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There was once a time when we considered Trey Parker to be the definitive voice of Eric Cartman, seeing as he both created the character and has played him in every single South Park episode over the last quarter century. But Saito’s performance proverbially killed Parker’s parents and fed them to him.
