Vinland Saga VA leaves Crunchyroll after accusing company of stealing mail

Key Takeaways

• Voice actor David Wald accused Crunchyroll of opening and giving away his fan mail.
• The situation escalated, sparking legal challenges and a lackluster response from Crunchyroll.
• Wald announced that he would not return to his voice acting role at Crunchyroll due to the abuse allegations.

The voice acting business is not always a friendly business. There are rivalries, diva behavior, and sometimes conflict with the studio itself. Recently, voice actor David Wald made headlines when he announced that he would not be returning to his many famous voice roles and, in fact, would never set foot in a Crunchyroll office again.

What happened to make one of the studio's biggest voice actors publicly criticize the studio, and there's absolutely no hope for reconciliation? Read on. Because this is one of the weirder controversies Crunchyroll has faced.

Who is David Wald?

David Wald is a voice actor and ADR (automatic dialogue replacement) director primarily known for his work on English dubbing of Japanese animation. In addition to voice acting, he advocates for positive LGBTQ+ representation in anime and has supervised the dubbing of Yuri and Yaoi titles. He primarily worked for anime dubbing companies Sentei Filmworks, Funimation, and Crunchyroll. He is also famous for communicating with fans through platforms such as X and Twitch.

What are some of his more famous rolls?

David Wald has voiced numerous characters in popular animated series, some of his most famous voice acting roles include:

1. Gajeel Redfox fairy tail
2. harness and clown attack on titan
3. Bulat Inn Kill Akame!
4. master chief halo legends
5. Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu Inn My Hero Academia
6. Golgo 13 inches Golgo 13
7. Iskelad Vinland Saga

In addition to voice acting, he also directed English dubbing of shows such as: Love Stage!!, Flowers Bloomand hitorijime my hero.

What's the situation with Crunchyroll?

On October 25, 2024, David logged into X and made the following shocking claims about his primary employer, Crunchyroll:

In the tweet, David claimed Crunchyroll has been dumping fan mail for years and handing out content to employees at freebie tables. After finding out about this, he expressed his displeasure with It was eventually returned to him).

Not only was he angry, but fans who had paid and sent him gifts were equally angry and demanded an explanation from Crunchyroll management. David has been contacted by the press about his situation (Game Rant has also reached out for comment), but there was some hope that things could be resolved, as he said he had to hold off on saying anything because of a series of issues. First, it was a meeting I had to attend with Crunchyroll executives.

fallout

Crunchyroll eventually ended up issuing their own statement claiming that they believed this was an isolated incident but that they would be conducting a full investigation into the matter.

Many fans immediately criticized this, calling it a 'corporate response' that did not answer or deny any wrongdoing. Still, the last public statement on the supposedly abandoned Kickstarter campaign ultimately resulted in the company providing a more substantive update on the project a few weeks later, so there was hope that this would be the start of a real investigation. It ends with all parties reaching an outcome that is deemed mutually beneficial to all involved.

These hopes were dashed when David made further announcements about his X account a few weeks later.

This is the last situation we know of, but it is far from over. It's yet to be seen whether Crunchyroll will follow up on the investigation and make its findings public (since the situation at hand involves gifts from fans, it would probably be a good idea to do a public follow-up). From all that is known, it appears that many of the Crunchyroll employees who took the freebie were unaware that it was a gift to David, and several have personally apologized for taking it.

But there are still more stories we haven't heard, and David has promised to share them all on his future Twitch live streams. Hopefully there will be another role for him outside of Crunchyroll or a resolution that will allow him to return to the studio and continue his work.