English voice actor calls out Crunchyroll for lack of Jujutsu Kaisen residuals

An English voice actor, who dubbed the lead in the recent Jujutsu Kaisen film, is calling out Crunchyroll for not paying residuals.

Anime is one of the biggest industries right now. Once unknown by the west, anime series and films are now distributed worldwide to major success. A large part of this success is due to subbing and dubbing, in which companies such as Crunchyroll employ translators and voice actors to adapt the original work into different languages.

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One of these cases include the recently released Jujutsu Kaisen 0, a prequel film for the Jujutsu Kaisen anime series, by Studio MAPPA. The film has seen massive success, now having been confirmed by Crunchyroll to be the 6th highest-grossing anime film worldwide.

However, this success has allegedly not applied to everyone, as today a voice actor who worked on the film criticised Crunchyroll in a series of tweets, namely involving the case of residuals.

According to Kayleigh McKee, “Residuals are something simply never put on the table” at Crunchyroll

English voice actor Kayleigh McKee, who voices Yuta Okkotsu – the main character of Jujutsu Kaisen 0 – recently quote tweeted a statement by Crunchyroll, who were celebrating the success of the film.

In response to how well the film was grossing, McKee posted – we assume sarcastically, “Always love seeing that sweet residuals money for playing the main character in English hit my bank account.”

McKee continued her tweets, stating, “I’m so grateful to the team and legitimately enjoy the hell out of the person who cast me, he is wonderful. I also love the show, the fans, and my fellow cast. None of that is counter to the fact myself and my castmates deserve more for a blockbuster hit.

“Yeah, I signed a contract for less than 1k. I was also living in Section 8 housing at the time.”

For McKee, the issue was the fact that allegedly no one on the cast had received any residuals, despite the film being financially successful.

Dexerto reached out to McKee, who explained the situation further: “Residuals are something simply never put on the table in anime. For standard series, I can maybe see why, maybe budgets are smaller- but for theatrical release movies, which will make vastly more, and who our contemporaries in every other genre of blockbuster film receive these benefits, it is very… harrowing. To see such a level of success with a total pay check of $600 and a good luck.”

In her tweets, McKee also mentioned how “Live action movies that earn far less and with lower budgets routinely pay their actors in the hundreds of thousands.”

She also made sure to state that she wasn’t blaming the crew members she had worked with: “None of this is on the recording teams, contracted studios, adapters, directors. In fact, they deserve far more too. It’s ALL on the corpo brass at Crunchyroll and by proxy Sony Pictures et al., as well as studio MAPPA. Worker exploitation and manipulation exists in all fields.”

Voice acting and payment is not a new issue

These statements come during the wake of other controversies surrounding voice actors and payment. The English voice actor for Mob in Mob Psycho 100, Kyle McCarley, recently posted online that he was not returning to Mob Psycho due to union conflicts, and just last month Bayonetta’s voice actor, Hellena Taylor, went under fire due to mixed reports of payment.

McKee even mentions this in her tweets, adding, “I just hope that a similar tale which occurred last month that was shown to have some falsities does not detract from the fact that these stories are real and this one definitely is, and this problem needs tackling for us, especially as anime explodes as a market stateside.”

“Unfortunately, the only thing that ever seems to get the attention of office squatters like that is a little bit of a stink – so here is mine – carefully formulated, with almost a year of consideration, thought, and effort trying and failing two change something outside public eye.”