Junichi Kanemaru

I also love that he speaks English/Engrish at times when voicing him.

@Marusero Well, there's Toshio Furukawa, Masami Kikuchi, Takeshi Kusao, & Keiko Utoku, most of these being essentially prototype voice. Definitely more than one Sonic of the course of his career domestically (Sega is a Japanese company, so domestic is Japan for them).

But in general I think he's one of the best. He's like the Conroy/Hamill of Sonic voices, not to take away from any of his English ones (who are just great as well), just saying the directors & people who made the games & characters would think of him that way.

@TrueMyriad IMO out of Sonic's three canon voices, Roger Craig Smith is the one who sounds closest to Junichi Kanemaru.

@NCZ
I've always found the San Diego cast to be the ones must notably matching the Japanese VA's tones and inflections.

@rosebr10 That's at least partly down to the direction, I'd say. Ryan Drummond stated in an interview with Sonic Cult that due to the way the recording process was done, they more or less had to match the Japanese dialogue as closely as possible. As far as the voice itself goes, Roger is the closest followed by Ryan, but you do have a point.

@TrueMyriad To me personally, i think that Ryan's take on Sonic is more than match for Junichi more so than what Jason has to be honest. Roger's quite on-par with Ryan's and Junichi's take on sonic but not up to the level of what Ryan nor Junichi has to offer.

@SteelEthlan What about Jason's take on Sonic?

@Marusero He felt forced as Sonic to be honest with you, even with the improvements.

@SteelEthlan Yeah, Jason might've felt forced in certain installments, but in Unleashed and Black Knight, I thought he started to feel natural. And you can't stop me from liking him. As for Roger, while his acting is very consistent and he has a fair amount of energy, I think his voice is trying too hard to sound young and "cool". IMO, Roger would be a lot better as Knuckles than Sonic. Then again, we both have different opinions, and they deserve to be respected.

@NCZ I guess? IDK I always felt Ryan's voice was the closest

@HylianBelmont Vocal timbre/tone is always difficult to judge across language, due to how various languages are enunciated & inflected. Japanese as a language is pitch-inflected & the culture tends to be more...cautious, with a lot of people repressing their speech, so to speak. Thus it tends to be much more soft-spoken & also higher-pitched oftentimes. Ergo: if you had the same Japanese person grow up in an English-speaking country & speak English, they would sound very different.

Personally I haven't had played or seen enough Sonic to compare, but I think Griffith's voice, much as I enjoy his take (partly for nostalgia), is the most different from the Japanese one (although they all really do share similarities, I dont really have problems with any of em). Probably Ryan or Roger, maybe Jaleel White too...On that note, who *is* "the" Sonic, in this case? Kappei Yamaguchi was the first to dub Sonic for an extended period, into Japanese, Takeshi Kusao was the first "voice actor" to voice him...but it's actually Jaleel White who first voiced Sonic in a series.

Although on the other hand, the Sonic directors pre-2010 (at least) were all Japanese, & (I'm assuming) cast/directed/produced the whole thing in their own language, & Ryan (& by extension Jason & RCS)'s takes are all based on Junichi's, whose been doing it the longest, ever since Sonic games had voice-over....But I could totally imagine that Kanemaru's is based on Kappei or Jaleel White, just as Chikao Otsuka sounds kind of like Jim Cummings...Put on your thinking caps boys, time to find out *who made up dat voice!* lol.

@huzaifa_ahmed Well personally the general sound of their voices are pretty similar to me.

@HylianBelmont Oh yeah for sure, haha. I did go on way too many tangents though, lol.