In an episode of the Filipino-dubbed version of “Yu Yu Hakusho,” more popularly known in the Philippines as “Ghost Fighter,” Youko Kurama’s Filipino name Denise was suddenly changed to ‘Dennis’ after voice actors mistakenly perceived the character as a woman.
For those who are unaware, the episode debuted in 1996 on IBC-13. An entire generation of Filipino children was inspired by this renowned shonen anime, making them rush home from school to watch the latest episodes and act like they had spirit energy shooting out of their fingertips as in the show.
In a viral Facebook post showing the scene where Denise transformed into Dennis, the Filipino voice actors were said to have encountered difficulty in determining whether Youko Kurama was male or female. Initially confused, they decided to dub the character with a female voice throughout the “Artifacts of Darkness,” only to realize later that Youko Kurama is a Bishōnen (Japanese term that means beautiful boy).
The dubbers themselves confirmed this somewhat amusing story during an interview with ‘Nerd Rage TV’ in a specific episode titled ‘Nerd Rage Weekly: Ghost Fighter Special.’
The Filipino voice actor Montreal Repuyan, known for dubbing Vincent, and Bonner Dytoc, who lent his voice to Eugene, shared how they used to do their jobs back in the day. Repuyan stated that everything was analog at the time. When they were recording, they would even cram themselves into a warm room and use one microphone between them.
Furthermore, the internet had not yet been invented at that time. As a result, they were ignorant of the true plot of the program.
“Kung ano ‘yung binigay sa iyo, wala, ‘yun lang. [Whatever was given to you, that’s it.] You work on that piece of transcript,” Montreal said.
Eugene’s voice actor Bonner Dytoc claimed that they simply assumed things based on the appearance and voices of the characters, resulting in them making some honest mistakes.
“Mukhang babae, boses babae, o sige babae to. Tapos sinabi sa amin, hindi babae ‘yan, lalaki ‘yan [Looks like a girl, sounds like a girl, okay, she’s a girl. Then we were told that she’s not a girl, she’s a boy],” he stated. “It’s an honest mistake, wala kaming backgrounder diyan [We don’t have background information on that],” he added.
Eventually, they resolved this misunderstanding and used an improvised plot twist to clarify Denise’s transformation into a boy: Dennis was only disguised as a woman in the human world.
Aside from this, the narrative became even funnier than Denise becoming Dennis as the voice actors never realized that Master Jeremiah was a woman.
“Until the show ended, we never knew,” Bonner said.
Despite all the chaos that happened, the voice actors took satisfaction in their part in creating an anime series that would go on to become a classic that is still remembered fondly by Filipinos.
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