Mob Psycho 100: Kyle McCarley Not Expected To Reprise Titular Role In English Dub Adaptation

Don’t expect Kyle McCarley to be the voice of “Mob” in the upcoming English dubbed third season of Mob Psycho 100. The longtime veteran voice actor cites being unable to come to an agreement with Crunchyroll due to the fact that he’s a SAG-AFTRA voice actor and the TX-based streamer doesn’t deal with unions, ergo, no deal.

Kyle also claims that he attempted to make a deal where if he reprises his role as “Mob”, Crunchyroll would agree to sit at the table with SAG-AFTRA in the future to work out a deal where SAG-AFTRA actors could potentially dub Crunchyroll-produced anime. Note, if you hire ONE SAG-AFTRA voice actor, then it locks out potential other actors that have no union affiliation, essentially making SAG-AFTRA a monopoly in this situation by not allowing actors that prefer/are non-union to participate in the production of an anime that would now require only SAG-AFTRA actors from being part of the production. This raises the cost of every anime series and essentially reduces the number of series that can be ordered because there’s only so much money a company could throw around on production before a series becomes unprofitable.

It’s also worth-noting that the English-dubbed anime produced by Crunchyroll could potentially become a loss as sometimes rights to a franchise may go back out on the market where the likes of AMC/HiDive, Netflix, Amazon, and others could pounce on the series and re-dub the series anyway. For example, did you know that Sentai Filmworks has one English dubbed version of Vinland Saga while Netflix has an entirely different English dub of the same series? Who the fuck wants to navigate that shit?

Does it suck that Kyle doesn’t want to reprise his role? Sure, it would’ve been nice to see him back. But, Crunchyroll’s line in the sand makes sense for long-term profitability in a still very fledgling English dubbed anime business. Crunchyroll is expected to recast the “Mob” role, probably with a TX-based voice actor which is the typical norm for the streamer.