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, triggering legal concerns and a lackluster response from Crunchyroll.
• Wald announced he would not return to his voice roles at Crunchyroll due to alleged abuses.

The voice-acting business is not always a friendly one. There are rivalries, diva behavior, and sometimes there are conflicts with the studio itself. Recently, voice actor David Wald made headlines by announcing that he would not be returning to several voice roles he was famous for and, in fact, would never set foot in the offices of Crunchyroll ever again.

What happened that would cause one of the studios’ biggest voice actors to publicly condemn the studio on such a large scale, and is the situation such that there is no hope for reconciliation? Read on, as this is one of the stranger controversies that Crunchyroll has found themselves in.

Who is David Wald?

David Wald is a voice actor and Automated Dialogue Replacement (ADR) director primarily known for his work in English dubs of Japanese anime. Outside of voice acting, he is also an advocate for positive LGBTQ+ representation in anime and has directed dubs for Yuri and Yaoi titles. He has primarily worked for anime dubbing companies Sentei Filmworks, Funimation, and Crunchyroll. He is also known for communicating with his fans on platforms such as X and Twitch.

What are Some of His More Famous Rolls?

David Wald has voiced numerous characters in popular anime series, with some of his most famous voice-over roles including:

1. Gajeel Redfox in Fairy Tail
2. Hannes and Clown in Attack on Titan
3. Bulat in Akame ga Kill!
4. Master Chief in Halo Legends
5. Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu in My Hero Academia
6. Golgo 13 in Golgo 13
7. Iskeladd in Vinland Saga

In addition to voice acting, he has also directed English dubs for shows such as Love Stage!!, Bloom into You, and Hitorijime My Hero.

What is the Situation with Crunchyroll?

On October 25, 2024, David logged onto X to levy a disturbing allegation against his primary employer, Crunchyroll:

In the tweet, David claimed that over the years Crunchyroll has been throwing away his fan mail and giving away contents to employees on the freebie table. Once he found out about this, he voiced his frustration on X and asked anyone who had grabbed any of the stuff in a picture he shared (in a later tweet) to please return those items (he would confirm later on that some of the stuff was ultimately returned to him).

Not only was he outraged, but fans who had spent money to send him gifts were equally outraged, and demanded an explanation from Crunchyroll management. There was some hope that things could be resolved, as David reveled that while he had been contacted by the media about his situation (Game Rant also reached out for comment), he would have to hold off on saying anything because he had a series of meetings he needed to attend with Crunchyroll management first.

The Fallout

Crunchyroll would end up making their own statement, in which they claimed that they felt this was an isolated incident, but that they would be undergoing a full investigation into the matter.

Many fans were quick to denounce this as a “corporate response” that neither answered nor denied any wrongdoing. Still, their last public statement about a Kickstarter campaign that had presumably been abandoned did ultimately result in the company giving a more substantial update on the project weeks later, so there was some hope that this would be the start to a true investigation that would hopefully end with all parties reaching an outcome that would be considered mutually beneficial to all involved.

Those hopes were dashed when David made a further announcement on his X account a couple of weeks later:

Currently, that is the last we know of the situation, but this is far from over. We still have yet to see if Crunchyroll follows up on their investigation and makes their findings public (since the situation at hand involves gifts from fans, it would likely be a good idea to give them a public follow-up). From everything that is known, it seems many of the Crunchyroll employees who took the freebies were unaware that they were gifts to David, with a few personally apologizing to him for taking them.

Still, there is more to the story that we have not heard, and David has promised that he will be sharing all of it on a Twitch livestream in the future. Hopefully, there will be other roles for him outside Crunchyroll or a resolution comes about that allows him to return to the studio to continue his work.