Just when you thought it was over, okay actually months and possibly years after you thought it was over, one of the greatest controversies in all of voice acting history has resurfaced. Vic Mignogna will be re-entering the dubbing industry with a new studio. Let’s build some context starting on the historical side. The Vic controversy initially started around January of 2019. A domino effect occurred where people started sharing stories of weird or creepy things they supposedly had seen him do, and this chain eventually reached high profile VAs including Monica Rial and Jamie Marchi. They too shared stories of harassment regarding Vic. At this point accusations were high on all sides and proof was low on all sides, which meant the only logical thing to do was go to court. Vic brought a defamation lawsuit against Rial, Marchi, and Funimation itself, however it ended up dissolving out as the claims were dismissed and neither side really saw much of a definitive victory. With the rise of COVID then happening by this point, it was the last time I heard about any Vic-related news until recently.
Now, the story continues. Entering into the fold is a new player: Anime Matsuri. Anime Matsuri (which if you watched too many romance anime you probably know Matsuri means “festival”) is an aptly named anime convention that takes place in Houston, Texas. They streamed a special announcement on July 17th that they were moving into the world of dubbing and planned to do two movies soon with a cast including Vic. I wouldn’t get too excited though. The movies are Zip! Shimezo and Genbanojou, so uh not exactly blockbusters coming down the pipeline so far. Still, any project involving Vic is going to become high profile to the Twitter mongoloids. As you can imagine, things immediately heated back up with people disappointed that he was back in the game, even at this level. Several users wanted Anime Matsuri to immediately remove him from the cast and felt bad that the other actors on the project were going to be dragged into the controversy. So far I haven’t seen any statements of reconsidering their casting decision and Vic is still listed as a guest on the website. Considering that, well, the con starts in a few days on July 28 he probably won’t be removed before then. Time shall tell though. For the sake of journaling I’ll leave the announcement video below, but I don’t seriously expect many people to want to sit through the 38 minute video entirely.
Where do I stand on it? This case has so many moving parts that I gave up on trying to hold a definitive opinion long ago. I’m not sitting here trying to blindly defend Vic, someone I don’t know in the slightest, and at the same time I won’t blindly join a hate crowd dogpile in an attempt to feel morally superior either. I honestly don’t know enough to make any sort of judgment call as this is another classic case of he said she said but nobody’s holding much evidence. At this point I simply hope that if Vic did do some weird ass shit that he's now course corrected himself before beginning work on these new projects, or if he was innocent all along then I hope Anime Matsuri treats him well and can open a gateway back into the industry.
The new voice was solid, but just never hit the same.
Alright, time to see where this development leads. I’m personally still surprised that a convention is moving into dubbing, I’m not familiar with cases of that happening before but hey maybe I’m living under a rock. Did you follow the Vic controversy? Are you happy or sad to see he’s returning in some capacity? Do you want to go to Anime Matsuri this year, or another convention? Buy a badge, warm up your vocal chords, spend hours walking around and voice your thoughts in the comments below!
