So, some day just for fun I wanted to look up who the German voice actors are. And quite a few of these casting choices are... strange, especially in hindsight.
To start off: in the original film, Littlefoot is voiced by Kim Hasper. Back in the 1980's he was a child actor who voice acted in a bunch of rather well-known films, but as of the 1990's, he has predominantly acted in TV and Anime series. I bring him up because Hasper is also the German voice actor for
Light Yagami from "Death Note". No, I am
not joking.
Spike's voiced in pretty much all films by Mario von Jascheroff, who for several decades at this point has been the German voice actor for Mickey Mouse. Funny enough, his son Constantin (the German voice actor for Sora from "Kingdom Hearts") voices Chomper and his wife Juana-Maria voices Ruby.
In the original, the narrator role was taken by Ernst Wilhelm Borchert, a theater actor who also dubbed Richard Burton, José Ferrer and Bing Crosby among others. In the sequels, the narrator is instead voiced by Roland Hemmo, who voices the narrator in the Winnie-the-Pooh films. Funny enough, he's also the German voice actor of a character in
another dinosaur film, specifically Yar from Disney's "Dinosaur".
In TLBT X, Shorty is voiced by Hannes Maurer, a relatively prolific German voice actor, who also had his start as a child actor. Among other things, he's the German voice actor of Shinji Ikari from "Neon Genesis Evangelion". Which makes it funny that in the TV series, Bron is voiced by Erich Räuker, who voiced Shinji's father Gendo in the original series. So the dynamic between him and Shorty has some... odd implications behind it.
Cera got voiced by Andrea Wick in the original (Lex from "Jurassic Park"), but then got voiced by Magdalena Turba (Young Nala from "The Lion King") in the sequels. And her father is voiced by Helmut Krauss, who is the German voice actor for...
Mr. Ed. Again, I'm not joking. Strangely, Turba also did Ali's singing voice in TLBT IV.
Some other examples I'd care to name would be Doc's German voice actor, Volker Lechtenbrink (most likely chosen because he covered one of Kris Kristofferson (Doc's original voice actor)'s songs), and Rinkus' German voice actor, Santiago Ziesmer, probably one of
the most well-known German voice actors, most notable for being the German voice for Spongebob Squarepants.
I would be interested to hear what y'all think of this. I for my part am at the same time surprised yet also happy to see these voice actors in the series, although admittedly they probably won't be associated with this series all that much.
Edit: I messed up. I thought Juana-Maria von Jascheroff was Mario's daughter, but she isn't. She's his wife.
