11th Anniversary of Sarah Natochenny

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AG146 - Bulbapedia, the community-driven Pokémon encyclopedia
11 years ago yesterday, Season 9 Episode 1 introduced the third voice actress for Ash, Sarah Natochenny. She is to date the longest actress for Ash and also has voiced Ash in every region except Johto. (Kanto included (flashbacks, M20)).
So, after these 11 years, how do you feel about her?

IMO, I love her. I actually grew up with her, as I was still a child back in the DP days. And you can clearly hear her grow from inexperienced to experienced with the course of like 3 years. I think the only problem with her nowadays is her fake laugh, but that's about it.
 

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I did grow up watching the 4kids dub when I was younger, but as I got older my tastes changed. I think that Sarah is my favorite because of how criminally underrated she is and how I got to see the Dub evolve as the years went on. As for movie 20, she'll do great and while I do miss Taylor a bit, Sarah will just continue to impress me more now these days. BTW, 11 years that's insane!
 
Gosh, 11 years? Time just flies past.

I found the voice on her Ash to be a bit... iffy throughout the rest of AG, it wasn't until DP when she really started to grow on me. It was great to see how she gradually settled into Taylor's big shoes when the new series went on.
 
I remember reading an interview about her in The Guardian when Pokemon Go was quite successful last summer - here is a link to it, if you would like to read it. It's an interesting piece, and it must have been quite horrible for her to have received such vitriolic emails from people over a casting switch.

I don't mind her voice acting role as Ash - though I do agree with the OP, the laugh can come off as very wooden but I do think recently, she has emoted Ash better.
 
She's definitely gotten much better over the years but there's still something about her performabce that keeps me from fully liking it. But I don't think its her acting talent because I've heard her do other voice over roles and be great in them, so it must be a voice direction thing.
 
Sarah Natochenny is one of the TPCi actors that I have slowly started warm up to. If you compare her Ash from the very first Episode of Battle Frontier, to the most current episodes you can tell she has improved alot. Unlike Zoppi and Bill Rogers that started sounding pretty decent at first (as Meowth and Brock) then on the most recent episodes they have appeared in, they sound very gruff.
 
I like Sarah's voice for Ash. I do generally prefer the 4Kids cast, but Sarah has improved immensely since she started her role back in the Battle Frontier days. It was pretty bad during that first season and I don't think that she really got comfortable in it until sometime around DP's first season, but once she started to try doing her own voice instead of attempting to mimic Veronica Taylor's voice, she got much better. Her voice since around DP has been fine.

In fact, I think she has done a really great job with Ash during XY and SM in particular. She was able to convey Ash's happiness, anger and some quite moments pretty well during XY. I think one of the reasons I do like SM Ash is because he sounds so happy and upbeat almost all the time in the dub. It fits with his design and the overall tone of the show. She does have good talent as an actress and she does a pretty good job in the role all things considered.
 
She did start pretty terrible during Battle Frontier, but that actually reminds me of Veronica Taylor during the earlier episodes too. I like her current voice acting for Ash and think it's on par with the previous actress.

I often find the acting during TPCi's era to sound less natural than 4Kids's, but I'm pretty sure that's a problem with the voice direction. (Not that I know much about how English actually sounds IRL anyway.)
 
I'm going to echo what others said. I could tell she was struggling to mimic Taylor and convey Ash's emotions in BF and early DP. Now she's become a great Ash in her own right, and I can tell she's having a lot of fun recently in SM. But I'll be the first to say I actually like her awkward laugh; it adds to the character's charm in my opinion.
 
I'm late, but Happy Anniversary Queen. :)

Seriously, Sarah Natochenny has improved a lot since she first started as Ash. The voice really suits him and I actually prefer her to Veronica Taylor in some ways. I really like the way she conveys Ash's emotions and actually makes it sound believable, something I never felt with Taylor. Don't get me wrong, Veronica was great in her own way, but it's much easier for me to take Ash seriously when he's angry, sad, etc now.
 
She had a really rough start in Battle Frontier, but I thought she did a pretty good job in DP. Haven't watched enough of the other dubs to really form a solid opinion overall.
 
Happy 11th Anniversary! I'm sorry I didn't notice the voice switch until episode 1 of DP XP

I like both Veronica Taylor and Sarah Natochenny as Ash, but in many aspects, Natochenny is better for me. Her voice sounds gruffer and more masculine and Ash really sounds stronger when he's angry/serious than he did when voiced by Veronica Taylor. Of course, Veronica Taylor is most of our iconic beginnings with Ash, Sarah Natochenny has been doing a fine job for him since then!~ Keep up the wonderful work!
 
It honestly kinda appals me that despite performing the part for so long and having really grown into the role over the years (indeed, I thought some of her work during the Team Flare arc was really top-notch) there's still people out there who are desperate to see her get fired so Veronica Taylor can come back.
 
^ Incliding Veronica Taylor herself. I follow her on Twitter and she constantly brings out the #OriginalAsh hashtag and gives a platform to fans asking her to come back to the show. In the months leading up to M20's release she kept saying how much she wanted to be the voice actress again.

I get she's still sad that she lost her job so suddenly and (seemingly) with such little explanation as to why. And there's nothing wrong with wishing you could return to that job. But the fact of the matter is Sarah Natochenny is still doing that job and to go on your public platform and constantly vocalize how you basically wish you could steal her job is in such poor taste. I've never once seen her deflect a fan asking her to come back to the show by saying something like "I miss when I was Ash's voice actress but the wonderfully talented Sarah Natochenny is currently in that role, please support the show". It doesn't matter if she thinks Ms. Natochenny is godawful at her job, this level of unprofessionalism is quite appalling.
 
kantoskies said:
^ Incliding Veronica Taylor herself. I follow her on Twitter and she constantly brings out the #OriginalAsh hashtag and gives a platform to fans asking her to come back to the show. In the months leading up to M20's release she kept saying how much she wanted to be the voice actress again.

I get she's still sad that she lost her job so suddenly and (seemingly) with such little explanation as to why. And there's nothing wrong with wishing you could return to that job. But the fact of the matter is Sarah Natochenny is still doing that job and to go on your public platform and constantly vocalize how you basically wish you could steal her job is in such poor taste. I've never once seen her deflect a fan asking her to come back to the show by saying something like "I miss when I was Ash's voice actress but the wonderfully talented Sarah Natochenny is currently in that role, please support the show". It doesn't matter if she thinks Ms. Natochenny is godawful at her job, this level of unprofessionalism is quite appalling.
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I had actually just been curious if VT had ever expressed wanting to dub Ash again and I guess she's been VERY active in that regard. If this is the case, I pretty much agree with you. It's perfectly understandable to want to voice the character you were the original dub actress for again (that many fans know you for having that role, no less), but 10 years in basically saying you want this other woman's job that she's at this point has been doing for longer than VT had herself is just a bit side-eyeable.
 
kantoskies said:
^ Incliding Veronica Taylor herself. I follow her on Twitter and she constantly brings out the #OriginalAsh hashtag and gives a platform to fans asking her to come back to the show. In the months leading up to M20's release she kept saying how much she wanted to be the voice actress again.

I get she's still sad that she lost her job so suddenly and (seemingly) with such little explanation as to why. And there's nothing wrong with wishing you could return to that job. But the fact of the matter is Sarah Natochenny is still doing that job and to go on your public platform and constantly vocalize how you basically wish you could steal her job is in such poor taste. I've never once seen her deflect a fan asking her to come back to the show by saying something like "I miss when I was Ash's voice actress but the wonderfully talented Sarah Natochenny is currently in that role, please support the show". It doesn't matter if she thinks Ms. Natochenny is godawful at her job, this level of unprofessionalism is quite appalling.
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Well, I can't really blame her for not saying that exactly. Based on how the voice changed happened, she probably wouldn't think too highly of the new cast or would want to support the show. It may not be the most professional thing to do, especially when any issues she has with the TPCI cast should be directed towards TPCI instead of the voice actors themselves, but I can at least understand it from an emotional perspective. I remember how she and the other 4Kids actors reacted to the sudden change and it was pretty rough for all of them. They may have moved on with their careers, but that would probably still be a sore spot for them.

I'm also not sure if she actively wants fans to get her back on the show or that she wants to steal Sarah Natochenny's job exactly. Granted, I don't read her tweets so I may be missing more details on what she has said before, but I thought her desire to come back for Movie 20 was just for the movie and not coming back to the show proper. Besides that, she moved to California a couple of years ago, so that would make it difficult to voice a main character where the dubbing primarily takes place in New York. I think she knows that she can't get the role back for various reasons, but she still expresses how much she misses it and would like to come back. That's at least how I've read her comments about it over the years.
 
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