Buffy Season 8: The Motion Comic on Blu-Ray

My nephew Jonathan surprised me last week with the Season 8 Motion Comic on Blu-Ray!  Yay me!  I was not expecting it and opening the envelope, I squealed loudly and jumped around a bit.  My daughter looked puzzled, but what can ya do?

 After my workout and shower that evening, I went and popped the Blu-Ray in on our PS3.

Tee Hee!  PS3 Blu-Ray Avatar.

I was JAZZED!  Excited!  Woo to the Hoo!!

And then, I hear the voices.  *thunk*

What.the.french.toast?

Holy bad casting, Batman! WHAT happened?  They weren't even trying!!   

I am sure they are all perfectly wonderful voice actors, but they were not cast right for the roles.  Should I care that the voices don't match the actors from 7 series' worth of episodes?  YES!

It's not even about the voices. The inflections were wrong.  The cadences were off.  I was distracted by the NOT-NESS of them. Buffy is played by Kelly Albanese.  No idea who she is, but she did not have the cadence and the "hipness" of Joss-speak.  I will say out of all the characters, she grew on me the most.   

Xander is played by Daniel Taylor (the 23rd 'Daniel Taylor' on IMDB.)   No idea who he is either.  He has a fine voice, just not Xander-like.  

Dawn I hated as a character anyway, so who cares what she sounds like.

The two characters who did a pretty passable job were the actors for Giles (J. Anthony McCarthy ) and Faith (Whitney Thompson - Winner of America's Next Top Model?  SHUT the Front Door!)  Sometimes they grated, most of the time they were spot on.

Most awkward, IMHO?

Willow

 Willow is played by Natalie Lender as a squeaky Minnie-Mouse version of our wonderful Will.  Yes, Willow is dorky.  She's hip-dork.  The voice was TOO young or too small.  Not sure how to describe it.  Willow gets some of the best lines in the show.  She's one of my favorite characters, so I was most disappointed here.  My son walked in on a Willow/Buffy conversation and thought the voices belonged to the opposite character.  "That's WILLOW?!!?  WOW, that's bad."

I GET that these are not the same actors that played the tv shows, and they don't sound like them, etc.  I just wanted them to attempt the fun Joss-speak we all are so used to.

ASIDE from the distracting voices, guess what?  I love the comics in motion.  It was well done visually and kept me interested.  The music from "The Gift" was a nice touch during the sadder moments.   It has helped me understand SO MUCH BETTER what is going on with the entire series.  I truly got lost a lot of times, even reading the books 3 times each and was exasperated.   Seeing them and hearing them (painful as it was) really did help sort the stories a bit for me.  Things I had forgotten or taken for granted (why the heck was the government after them? Oh yea, Buffy's stealing, etc.)

This disc included episodes/books 1-19. Here's to waiting on Disc set # 2.

P.S.  They panned to a scene in London at one point and I said "Whoa."

Anyone else think this guy looks a bit like The Dr.?