“Super Driver” and “Tomare!” English Versions

Haruhi Suzumiya Fansite

Ads by Project Wonderful! Your ad here, right now: $0.30

2 February 2010 16 Comments

As a follow up to the post about the English Haruhi Suzumiya season 2 DVD announcement, posted below are the English versions of “Super Driver” and “Tomare!” Both songs are performed by Christina Vee; Christina’s recent appearance on the ASOS promo video pretty much confirmed that she will provide the vocals for the OP (and possibly the ED) songs on the English version DVDs. You can check out Chistina Vee’s Youtube Channel here. Thanks to Abraham for sending this in. If you have Haruhi-related news or media to share, please send it in.

English Version	Japanese Version

16 Comments »

SonicDaMan said:

Honestly, why do they even bother? Can’t they just leave the songs alone? There are a number of North America licensed animes that keep the original song, why not this one?

# 2 February 2010 at 4:23 pm

S.O.S. Brigade Underling #1 said:

If’ it’s not Aya Hirano it’s bullcrap. Japanese voice dubs have SO MUCH more money going into them then the crappy American studios who have to put one mediocre person for 20 characters cause they got no cash.

Let the people with the original language and the voice talent do the work and stop raping good material.

The fact that they’re still making this sort of crap means Aya doesn’t know about it. Or else she would’ve killed everyone involved with the project with closed spaces.

# 2 February 2010 at 6:27 pm

Guest said:

“The fact that they’re still making this sort of crap means Aya doesn’t know about it. Or else she would’ve killed everyone involved with the project with closed spaces.”

I think Aya Hirano has better things to worry about than how some foreign nation localizes its version of the show.

Christina Vee’s rendition is surprisingly good considering most attempts at this sort of thing fall flat. It will be interesting to see how Bandai handles the English dub going forward between Wendee Lee’s original take on the Haruhi role versus Christina Vee’s take on the new opening and ending tracks.

# 2 February 2010 at 8:33 pm

devious_sos said:

I actually like Christina Vee’s dubbed songs.
Of course NOTHING ever beats Aya Hirano, but compared to other attempts christina’s isn’t bad at all.

# 2 February 2010 at 11:29 pm

kyon (author) said:

I don’t think anyone can top Aya Hirano and her wide vocal range (I’m always amazed that the same person who voiced Konata also sang God Knows). I think Chistina did a pretty good job considering who she is trying to emulate. And look at it this way, the producers could’ve saved money by just leaving the OP and ED in Japanese, but they chose to spend time and money to redub them. I’m sure both versions of the song will come with the DVDs, so they’re simply trying to satisfy dub fans along with sub fans.

# 3 February 2010 at 2:04 am

Deadbutt said:

Regarding everyone here’s seemingly blind love of Aya Hirano,

I actually think Aya Hirano is a perfect example of how anyone can sound good in a studio recording environment with a ton of re-takes and processing applied to their voice, live, she is one of the worst singers I have ever heard and animu singers like HIMEKA just put her to shame in terms of sheer delivery of vocals, regardless of vocal range.

Japanese dubbing might have way more money going into it, but all the money in the world doesn’t stop Aya Hirano from being nothing short of average as far as singing is concerned, with most of that money probably going into re-recording and ironing out her unecessarily vibrato’d vocals.

As for Christina Vee doing the vocals on a dub, this is just assumption on behalf of whoever wrote the article, the video actually confirms nothing other than whoever wrote the article is jumping the gun. She does ask if she will get a roll in the show, but that could be something as mundane as an extra asking a question in some background dialogue.

Even if this turns out to be true, why even get bothered by it?
DVDs come with dual audio for a reason
And I’m sure they won’t be using these particular recordings if they do go ahead and sign her up to sing the music.

# 3 February 2010 at 8:24 am

Abraham said:

I agree with kyon that nobody can Aya Hirano, but you guys have to give credit to Cristina. Few dub actors and actresses can sing like she does.

# 3 February 2010 at 9:32 am

Kyon16 said:

THESE AREN’T EVEN THE REAL WORDS!

# 3 February 2010 at 11:19 am

random bystander said:

i gotta say they’re better than the first seasons dubs though

# 3 February 2010 at 12:00 pm

S.O.S. Brigade Underling #1 said:

Despite having bad moments at concerts when she adds too much vibrato she’s one of the best seiyuu out there. Besides that there isn’t much of a problem. I’d be an occasional crappy singer to be Jap’s #1 female seiyuu any day. You better watch more of her live because there are way more good than the bad.

FYI = All the voices are edited as special as Aya is she’s not the only one getting special treatment.

Regardless Aya isn’t the only one who made the show great. Dubs just knock out all the momentum it had when it overwrites all the big names it had attached.

# 4 February 2010 at 8:58 pm

Virexius said:

to be honest i think the versions are okay besides the tomare one, i think a better version of it came out last year you can actualy hear what the girl is saying at least, heres a link if you wanna check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaZql53-lEQ
and i do agree that no one beats aya hirano in singing

# 5 February 2010 at 5:03 am

Tchi said:

…
Hmph
Well, for the engdub-fans’ profit, it wasn’t as bad as I expected However, I’m not going to bother.

# 6 February 2010 at 3:50 pm

haruhi said:

lyrics changed a bit high and a real good effort i like it regardless of the high voice pitch may need improving but yet reading the comments on this this may very well skyrocket sales to fans either way it’s about time someone has made TMOHS world wide and global bto all that hear it and aren’t we supposed to spread Haruhi Suzumiya all across the world! if so examples like these really make Haruhi proud!

# 9 February 2010 at 3:14 am

coh said:

What a lot of you fanboys seem to be missing from some of the above posts is that, criticisms of Aya Hirano’s talent aside, the final published result of her work is something that has to some extent been filtered and remixed for maximum effect. You don’t have to hate on Aya Hirano to acknowledge that, though you might need to step back from the pedestal you’ve put her on to see it (repeat after me: “Aya Hirano is not the end-all be-all of voice acting (talented though she may be)”). So if this bears any fruit at all, you can bet that Christina Vee’s final “published” work will sound better than the “rough cuts above,” just like Aya Hirano’s published work sounds better than her audition.

# 13 February 2010 at 12:36 pm

urutapu said:

@Kyon16: I don’t know if you’ve ever tried literally translating a song, but it will come up crappy 90% of the time. So either you change them (annoying extra work) or leave them alone (cheaper and safer because people like you accept nothing else). That’s why Utada left Kingdom Hearts.

# 19 February 2010 at 6:05 am

haruhi said:

but kingdom hearts was a vain attempt to turn disney into anime and with final fantasy? WThe? no offense though at least they tried it and plus i’m not at liberty to talk about it and critisize it either.

any way i think Aya,Lee and Vee’s version of Haruhi are great!

# 23 May 2010 at 4:12 am