The voice actors say Puru because they're speaking Japanese. They pronounce it "Pull" in the English dub of Gundam Unicorn because of the "Ple" thing. It's more that the spelling is unintuitive than the pronunciation, since your first instinct sans context is to pronounce it "Pleh."
Like regardless of what the VAs say, nobody is out here insisting you pronounce it "Gandamu"
I think "Puru" is alright but have long wished they'd solved it by calling her "Elpie Pull" or something in English, because saying it phonetically would preserve the pun. but then we'd be stuck with Pull-2, and somehow Puru-2 works better for me 😅
Definitely, "Elpeo Ple" is just an inherently unintuitive spelling if you're not in on the joke But I will never be a Puru-sayer
Dynasty Warriors Gundam 1 somehow uses both translations and gives us "Elpeo Puru" and it has a dub that predates Unicorn
I'm going to assume there was a bit more care and oversight from Bandai/Sunrise's localizatoin of their new international prestige OVA than there was on a video game that came out when Gundam was functionally dormant in the NA market. Though I don't remember what they went with on the ZZ BD subs.
watched ZZ again lately with the BD subs instead of the old SEA subs and it's officially localized as Elpeo Ple. I'm team Elpeo Ple I just thought that translation was interesting.
Oh it's definitely interesting and I totally get people having their own preference It's just that try as I might to be chill about it, insistence on "Puru" has always been a pet peeve of mine
Same, especially since Unicorn's dub in 2011 finally put to bed its legitimate English/Anglo pronunciation, but has gone largely ignored.
(which is part of why it's so fun for us to double down on it 😇)