Just a thought that came to mind because IIRC, most of why offshoring happened is because Americans refuse to get paid at the low rates that the Chinas and Vietnams of this world will accept, so because wages are one of a company’s largest costs, will any of this even work long term? I don’t think there’s as many ‘disillusioned men’ that will take up the jobs as people think, but I also absolutely understand a country needs to produce a lot of its own goods to counteract stuff like war after all.
Honestly surprised that no one other than me has mentioned this in any posts over the past few months, but to give a TL;DR about the original purpose of the strike: SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) is the primary union for voice actors, actors, journalists, DJs, singers, etc in the United States, and on July 26, 2024, began striking against several game developers and recording studios, including Activision, Epic Games, Disney Interactive, and most important to this post specifically, Formosa Interactive, due to the lack of ability to come to an agreement with various studios about the usage of their members' voices in LLMs to create machine generated voices for their content. In contrast to these studios among others, a deal was made with Replica Studios for usage of AI, including a time limit on using said LLM without either destroying the data or sending another payment to the actor the LLM was trained on.
In contrast to the US, South Korea, China and Japan actively have laws in their federal code against using AI voices for profit without the consent of the people/persons the LLMs will be trained on, so none of this is an issue. Because of the way that Hollywood developed and the current makeup of our government, I believe that such a law getting passed in the US is essentially impossible, but a law like that wouldn't solve every problem, as the strike has moved passed that, but let me explain why the strike has begun to bite Western VAs in the ass.
Under the Taft-Hartley Act (or the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947), non-union members are allowed to work on unionized jobs (this specifically means a show/movie/commercial/whatever that has signed an agreement with SAG-AFTRA to only hire union members) and with SAG-AFTRA, have to write a Taft-Hartley 'report' and are only allowed to do this three times during their lifetimes (which isn't in the act, but imposed by SAG-AFTRA), before either no longer being able to join 'union projects' (which is what I will refer to this as for the rest of the post), or having to join SAG-AFTRA. SAG-AFTRA's one-time joining fee is $3,000, with annual dues of $236.60 as well as taking 1.575% of 'covered earnings', up to one million dollars, with the ability to take out a loan or put said joining fee on a payment plan if a prospective member can't join the full fee at the time of joining.
Formosa Interactive is the studio that Hoyoverse originally contracted to lead the recording of the English dub of their games. For those who are unaware, Hoyoverse, formerly known as MiHoYo, is the developer of Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail, Honkai Impact 3rd and Zenless Zone Zero, and is on a generational run, when it comes to getting even casuals who don't play many other video games to play their games, similar to Pokémon GO, but even more sustained than that. The only current 'controversies' are people malding about the lack of melanated characters and the ratio of limited five-star females to males for the past year which even then isn't that big of a deal.
Because of the strike, Hoyoverse switched to a different studio, which they already agreed an AI protection deal for, Sound Cadence Studios, owned by the English voice actor of Genshin Impact's Furina, Amber Lee Conners.
The current hubbub that blew up over the last few days, and why this post is getting made, is that the original voice actor of Kinich, John Patneaude has been replaced by Jacob Takanashi, who based out of Japan, and after that, many of Genshin Impact's voice actors have been active on Twitter over the past day or so, which I will link below with various Reddit posts and tweets, since it's been very wild.
The Western community as a whole has actually sided with Hoyoverse, mostly because of the reactions of several different voice actors, but on that same note, it also came up why Western voice actors for anime are who they are, and a lot of it has to do with the way that voice acting for animated content was treated on the inception of it in the various regions. In Japan, China and South Korea, voice actors are just as respected and famous as real life actors, to bring this to a Western example, Tara Strong would be just as famous and well known as Angelina Jolie, when in actuality, that is not the case at all, because animation was shamed as something only for kids, so no one took animated shows and movies seriously until very recently, which meant that training for voice acting wasn't as formalized in the West as it could have been, and some rare crossovers with a traditional actor, such as Mark Hamill being the voice of Avatar: The Last Airbender's Ozai, or Regular Show's Skips were nowhere near as common here as they are over there.
To add to this, in Japan specifically, specific voice actors are so adored that they have become part of the marketing and how Hoyoverse sells specific characters to the player base. Hu Tao's Japanese VA is Rie Takahashi, who voices Megumin in Konosuba, Emilia in Re:Zero, Mash Kyrielight in Fate/Grand Order and Ai Hoshino in Oshi no Ko, just as one example.
To end, I'll go over other things I've heard about foreign unions since looking deeper into this whole situation. In Europe, unions are not able to force people to join them, which is what the limit on using Taft-Hartley does, benefits such as AI protections would benefit all people in specific job, not just members of the union and dues are much cheaper. In addition, one thing I forgot to mention up above is that it is very difficult for a non-American to join SAG-AFTRA, so if Hoyoverse were to sign the 'interim agreement' that the union is asking for, it would essentially ice out all foreign voice actors as well as limit the pool to union voice actors.
I personally believe that SAG-AFTRA has much overplayed their hand and has essentially fucked up public opinion of them, because if this was just about AI protections, this would have already been finalized by now and there wouldn't be a large section of the casts of Hoyoverse's games that have silent voices when using the English dub.
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https://old.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact/comments/1jl23uo/khoi_dao_albedo_en_va_on_non_union_worker/
https://x.com/khoidaooo/status/1904969482675884332
https://old.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact/comments/1jkx91y/china_actually_already_has_some_protection/
https://x.com/NathanNokesvo/status/1905109307126874437
https://old.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact/comments/1jkrc15/other_hoyo_vas_have_started_chiming_in/
https://old.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact/comments/1jkkqq4/why_the_hell_are_vas_targeting_the_new_guy/
https://old.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact/comments/1jl067k/shara_kirby_candace_va_opinion_on_hoyo_and/
https://old.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact/comments/1jl2psc/good_riddance/
https://old.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact/comments/1jkvyrc/im_tired/
--------------------------------- Link Dump Over
We shall see what happens next.
Edit: Here's another summary on Reddit that goes into a few more specifics on the agreement itself instead of just the backlash https://old.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact/comments/1jl6h4f/i_dug_through_the_sagaftra_interim_act_genshin_va/
This was just something that came to mind when I was reading over those posts (which I do plan on making something else later, as some other things came to mind that I wanna address later), but to keep to the title of the post, I do honestly feel like we're just throwing the word loli at anyone under the age of 18 in an anime when that has never been the case.
Kanna Kamui, from Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, is a loli.
Anya Forger, from SPY X FAMILY, is a loli.
Eri, from My Hero Academia, is a loli.
Genshin Impact specifically has a 'short female' model, which nine playable characters have, and eight of them would be lolis, using the actual definition pre-'New Right' era (Diona, Kachina, Klee, Nahida, Qiqi, Sayu, Sigewinne and Yaoyao).
Why am I going through these examples? Mostly because I want to show people what characters fit under the classical definition used before the past few years of the anti-anime movement trying to use 'language creep' to muddle the definition.
I don't care which side of the argument you're on, I just wish that people would at the very least use the actual definitions of words because saying that Satsuki Kiryuin, Ryuko Matoi, Marin Kitagawa, among many other 'under 18 but visibly not like the kids I mentioned above' characters are lolis is rather bullshit and only serves to work against the right.
Just my two cents on the topic, but overall, whether or not things become legal or illegal, I am hoping that people are at least able to actually work with the true definitions of words rather than abusing language to get whatever they want. Attempts to ban Eastern media isn't going to make people suddenly love current Western media, it's going to make people further check out of society.
I absolutely understand the value of a country being able to produce its own materials, but one thing I’ve always question is how many people, man or woman is actually willing to work these positions once they get back to the US.
Most of why they were outsourced is because corporations can pay (or not pay) people in third world countries much less than they can Americans, but how do you convince companies to open these mines and factories in the US, and how do you convince these companies to actually play their employees first world wages? A lot of the regulations we have in place in terms of operating mines is because of corporations cutting corners, intentionally hiding the health risks until they were unavoidable and similar actions, so it’s just something I honestly can’t wait to see how it actually comes into action.
Watching at home until after halftime, but honestly I'm mostly interested in the ads, because it's very interesting to see the ads that companies prepare for the Super Bowl
For those who aren't aware: Miriam Adelson is the new owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, having bought Mark Cuban's majority share in June of last year. However, she was unable to take the seat of 'govenor' (essentially the person who represents team leadership at league meetings and CBA negotiations between owners and players, which is usually just the owner of the team), mostly because of virulent hatred of Palestine, as she is very proud to be a member of the Triple Parentheses Gang, and openly wants the West Bank to be annexed. She is also one of, if not the largest donor to Trump, having donated over $100 million to his campaign for 2024. Her money comes from her second marriage, being married to fellow member of the TGG, Sheldon Adelson, founder of Las Vegas Sands, a corporation that formerly owned several resorts and casinos in Vegas, and still owns multiple resorts and casinos in South East Asia.
The reason my sports fandom made me aware of her is because at midnight EST, a trade was finalized that sent Slovenian star player, Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers for what is essentially pennies on the dollar.
The trade itself isn't the point, although the trade itself is absurd, but what I learned about Miriam and her family is that apparently most of why they purchased the Dallas Mavericks is because they're trying to push legalization of gambling in Texas, which isn't illegal through a law, but through the state's constitution itself. The alleged main reason for this is because the lease for the American Airlines Center (the arena the Mavericks play in) is up in 2030, and the ownership wants to build a new arena attached to a casino. I'm curious about what Texans think about gambling and whether it should be made legal in the state, but what also surprised me as I was reading more and more about her is that she donates so much to the GOP instead of the Democrats, but owning casinos probably makes that make more sense.
What a lot of people are saying because the value of the trade itself is so absurd, is that the ownership of the Mavericks is trying to tank the fan attendance in order to justify moving to Las Vegas if trying to legalize gambling in Texas falls through, which makes sense but is utterly absurd. I'll keep it here because I'll answer more of the sport questions in the comments, but Miriam Adelson is someone to watch out for, as she has the ear of Trump and the money and influence to back it up.
Was just reading some articles and a lot of wealthy areas have lost a lot of the homes in them, which is honestly somewhat surprising, but fire does not descern between poor and wealthy after all. IIRC, environmentalists make controlled burns controversial in left-wing areas, so that's a lot of why wildfires happen in the first place, when they aren't done via arson anyways.
