Okay, I know it's been a while since I watched the Cloverway dub, but I just gave the Pharaoh 90 defeat scene a re-watch to compare it to the Viz version... and, boy, is there a bunch of weirdness going on in that scene.
First off, why is everyone's (even the professor's) voice so echo-y? Not in any "powerful-sounding" kind of echo-y (like in the old DiC dub's transformation sequences), but in the kind of echo-y that makes everyone sound like they're all speaking inside a large echo-y room like an indoor pool or something. It really clashes with everyone's being outdoors in the scene, surrounded by the loud swirling noises of Pharaoh 90's wanton destruction. There shouldn't be any echoing going on with their voices, with the sole exception of Saturn when she first appears, since ghost-like characters like her in her first appearance in this scene can have that echo-y effect to their voice.
Secondly, every line spoken by Uranus (before her final line in the battle's aftermath) sounds so whiny and forced, with the moaning added to her collapse to the ground being so exaggerated as to be unbelievable, she almost sounds like a parody of herself.
And, Jennifier Gould's acting is perfectly fine as Saturn, but good gravy, she makes Saturn sound like a fully grown adult! People knocked on DiC/Cloverway Luna for sounding too old, but not Saturn? She sounds like a wise old sage, but while "wise is fine, "old sage" is far from how Saturn should sound like.
And during Sailor Moon's first bout of agonized begging, WHY does she say "Moon Crisis Power Transform" for the first two times instead of just "Moon Crisis Power"? It's not done as a means to better fit the lip flaps, it just crams more syllables into the lip flaps, as after the first two times, she switches to properly saying "Moon Crisis Power" without issue in matching the lip flaps. Those first two times had the same number of lip flaps as the rest, so there was no reason for her to add in a "Transform". It just makes the scene look bonkers.
And sadly, on her final "Moon Crisis... Power!", she doesn't sound like she screaming it like the animation shows, she instead just sounds like she's saying it normally with only the tiniest additional amount of vigor.
And this is all
before I take a look at the Viz version, which I shall do now.
No needlessly echo-y voices is a plus.
Neptune's "It's over" isn't quite as powerful sounding as Cloverway Neptune's "It's the end!", so I'll give Cloverway that.
Uranus's lines read WAY more natural and distressed here than in Cloverway by a wide margin. There is no comparison.
I didn't mention this before, but now hearing the Professor's "Hotaru!" in this version, Cloverway had him sound so goofy in his more puzzled-sounding "Hotaru?" Here, his line may be brief, but in that briefness we get a sense that he's utterly shocked by the very small, hopeful prospect of his daughter may still be alive, whereas Cloverway just made him sound like he was giving a confused "Huh, what? Someone say my daughter's name?" kind of response. Jeff Lumby may have been one of the better Cloverway actors, but Keith Silverstein brought the exact perfect emotional reaction for this single line of his in this scene.
Now for Saturn. I previously said that Jennifer Gould did fine in her acting (while not in her voice), but now that I'm starting to thinking that she did her acting a little too well for this scene. Look at how Saturn is standing, look at her facial expressions. This is a person who is calm, who at peace with herself, who has come to terms with the fact that she is going to die. Yet, she isn't welcoming her death with open arms, but has come to accept that it is both nigh and inevitable. This Saturn, in her acting, fully captivates that notion. Her voice is calm and serene, excised of any excess emotion that would betray her peaceful demeanor. She knows she is going to die, neither afraid nor longing of death, having made peace with that, and Cabanos' acting, while not perfect, reflects that so much more than Gould's did. By comparison, Gould's acting made her Saturn feel a bit more determined and proud, as though she was looking forward to her death. That's a bit more of a morbid take when you think about it, and which also clashes with the Japanese mindset of one who rushes into battle only to meet with death head on isn't dying with honor but dying a dog's death. It is foolish. Had Gould dialed it down a bit on her Saturn's sense of vigor and willingness, it would have better matched with the more calm and peaceful way Saturn was animated in the scene.
THAT SAID, while Cabanos' acting matched the scene adequately, her voice, like Gould's, sounded a bit too old. Not nearly as old as Gould's sounded, but still older than Saturn ought to sound. People in this thread were worried that Cabanos' Saturn would sound too high-pitched like her Madoka voice, but maybe if she had just raised it a tad more from how she did it here,
without going full Madoka, it might have sounded better. Granted, she doesn't sound
awful, but, hearing a teenage-sounding voice coming from a preteen is still a bit jarring. Not as jarring as hearing a full grown adult's voice, but still a bit off.
And having now heard Stephanie's Sailor Moon in the moments where she speak to Saturn before the latter jumps into Pharaoh 90, I can again say that there is no comparison between her and Linda in these two lines. Stephanie nails the distress in Sailor Moon's lines while Linda just sounded goofy. No, I'm not talking about the screaming agony moment, that comes later. I mean the parts where Moon and Saturn are just talking to each other.
And now comes the big moment.
Before I get into Moon's agonized "Crisis Make Up!", I gotta say that the moment right before that when she charges into Pharaoh 90 and gets knocked back, Stephanie's screaming "HOTARU!" is way more anxious and powerful than Linda's "Hotaru, ah--", as the latter is presented as Sailor Moon merely being inconvenienced a bit while the former's is definitely more of a person who is on the verge of losing someone they care about. And what' more, after Sailor Moon gets knocked back, Stephanie's straining actually matching the animation in that it actually sounds like a person who's speaking through their teeth clenched or their mouth nearly closed, whereas Linda's grunts and groans were instead of the kind of heavy breathing that a person can only make with their mouth fully open. It's these little nuances that a lot of people miss and just gloss over when examining a vocal performance, and that's a tremendous shame. It's fine is people simply don't care about this kind of minutia, but objectively, the little things like this can make a world of difference between "translating a Japanese role in English" and "performing an English version of a Japanese character". In this instance, Linda did the former, while Stephanie superbly did the latter.
And when Stephanie gives her big "Crisis Make Up!" screams... I... surprisingly, kinda feel it's really only just slightly better than Linda's acting-wise. I will admit, Linda did a good job as far as acting out this scene in her version, putting as much of her all into it as she could while trying to hold on to her Sailor Moon voice (as it wasn't her natural voice), even having her voice get a bit hoarse in the process. But while she nails the sadness and frustration of the scene, Stephanie's gets both of those and sheer weight of the agony of the situation. Linda's Sailor Moon was distraught in her Super powers not working, but Stephanie's Sailor Moon is completely
destroyed by it. The devastation and desperation are made much more in Stephanie's performance than Linda's, especially in the former's final "Crisis... Make UUUUUUUUUP!" when compared to the latter's far more calm and far less gut-wrenching "Moon Crisis Power!" Don't get me wrong, Linda really gave her best in that scene, but Stephanie's take just inches out by capturing more of the right emotions for that scene.
HOWEVER, Stephanie's version, to be fair, is also supported by two advantages from outside of the acting department that Linda's version didn't have. One is that Stephanie's voice actually sounds young enough to fit Sailor Moon. I never liked how much older and deeper Linda's Sailor Moon voice sounded. To me, Linda sounded at her best only when she was playing either Princess or Neo Queen Serenity. But as Sailor Moon herself, she sounded too old and too deep for the character. Whereas Stephanie's Sailor Moon voice always sounded far more age appropriate for the character, and tended to better match the little nuances and finer aspects that Kotono originally put into the character, thus creating a far greater sense of consistency across the board in the performance of the character.
The second advantage in Stephanie's version is how, because of the Viz's dub's overall greater sense of consistency and continuity, she doesn't get stuck with utter nonsense terminology like the random two bouts of "Moon Crisis Power Transform" that Linda got stuck with. Every one of her transformation cries in this scene are scripted consistently as "Crisis Make Up" without any awkward deviation. Thus, while Stephanie and Linda both gave excellent acting performances in this moment, it's Stephanie's that had more emotion and a superior production side, and so eases forward from not just an acting but also a technical standpoint.
Though, Kotono's painfully-agonized still has both women beat, acting-wise.
As an aside, this may be a small thing, but when Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, and Venus all say Sailor Moon's name, of those four, I actually feel that Susan Roman's version was slightly better than Amanda C. Miller's version. It's just one line, but Miller seems about to cough or choke or something right before she says her line, whereas Susan Roman just says her line and sounds like she's straining in pain to say it, which is fitting of Jupiter's situation of the scene. But as for other three, the Viz versions sounds better to me.
Saturn's final "Goodbye": Definitely the Viz version. In Cloverway's version, it sounds too happy, like "See ya later!" type of goodbye. In Viz's, it not only better matches the calmness and serenity of Saturn's earlier demeanor, but also has a slight sense of sadness to it, as though we may never see her again, adding to the overall sense of tragedy that we're supposed to feel for Saturn in this scene.
Also, it just hit me that all those extra grunts and groan noises that Cloverway added to Pharaoh 90 makes that version of him sound less like the Eldritch abomination that he's supposed to be and more like the Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil. Whoops!
Viz was wiser to not try anything like that.
