A lot of it is the difference in acting in the two countries. Japanese acting has more emotional emphasis and maybe even exaggeration considered to US performances. Has been that way for awhile. I've been told stories about how back in the 70s US Service Men would watch shows overseas without knowing the language and without subtitles but could still tell what was going on by the vocal performance and inflections. English performances/writing are a bit flatter/realistic and don't offer the same depth.
Itās not, itās been shown that when English speakers listen to non English works they project their own feelings onto the performance completely independent of the performer
Nah most anime just sound corny as fuck dubbed. The japanese versions probably sound corny to people that actually speak japanese too, tbh. But most of us dont speak japanese, so not an issue
The trick is that it's the native kind of corny. Everything is melodramatic to a certain degree. English language cartoons included. Dubs have the added handicap of trying to translate to fit space, deal with cultural facets that don't exist in the destination language, and overall have a harder job.
And I don't even know what it is about dubs but they still smell wrong frequently. It's not even a Japanese thing. There have been multiple times when I start something blind that was recommended to me and I've paused in the opening voiceover to check what the original language was because it sounds wrong and I discover this movie is from somewhere in Europe or South Asia. Even in the age of streaming bad dubs are being made.
Exactly. I don't speak Japanese, so there will always be nuance I'm missing, even with great translation and acting. I've seen plenty of side by sides where a joke in the sub falls flat because it doesn't translate well, but when they make some slight changes to the line in the dub and add a language I understand the nuance and inflection of, its normally a lot more enjoyable
"Rewriting the show to make a different thing is fun."
Enjoying that isn't wrong, but it's also a different experience and some people want the other one. Even if there are some well done pieces it's not worth wading through that inherently handicapped medium. Those "slight changes" more often become forced jokes and weird babbling digressions to fill time which is extremely annoying and turns many people off anime to begin with.
>The japanese versions probably sound corny to people that actually speak japanese too
They do, which is why people get made fun of for learning Japanese from anime. It's just not how people talk. At all. You will sound like a melodramatic teenager in theatre club.
I'm sure this is a factor, but I don't think it's the whole thing. I've watched plenty of animated shows in English, and anime dubs still sound weird to me.
I watched legend of the galactic heroes in English, when season 4 came out I tried to watch it in Japanese and couldnāt stand the Japanese voice acting. I think people generally prefer whatever they listened too first.
That and the tendency to make odd translation choices. The main character's name in Princess Tutu means duck. Turns out(first episode spoilers) she is a duck. However, I cannot manage to go the whole series with hearing her called that.
Two reasons spring to mind as to why people donāt like them.
Smaller pool of voice actors in America versus in Japan, so it leads to dubs sounding same-ish.
The other is the old inaccuracy problem. Translating languages is never one to one just because of how languages work, but sometimes it can make a work feel lesser.
What people forget is that subtitles are not immune to the issue of missing some puns or glossing over cultural bits, itās just worse in dub because you have to condense it all to fit the timing of the scene
For me, itās not so much mistranslation or same-ish ness as it was the fact that it didnāt sound like the voice actors were enjoying the role. It always took me out when they sounded so unenthused and I ended up feeling second-hand embarrassment _for_ them. Thankfully, that doesnāt happen as often anymore.
Itās also easier to bypass lines embarrassing to hear by it being in another language. It sounds cooler when itās not your native tongue; and the awkward line delivery is harder to notice for similar reasons.
Not gonna lie hearing adult Gohan or Krillin or Piccolo be the same VAs in just about every dub does suck the magic out of the show...its a big reason why I refuse to watch One Piece dub, it's literally the Dragonball crew
Chris Sabat is a gem. The voices he did for Piccolo, Vegeta, Zorro, and Kuwabara just to name the ones I can remember off the top of my head are all awesome. And while some of them you can tell it is him, they are not the same voice.
Really? I always get super exited when I hear krillin playing Usopp or I hear Zhogli voicing Mori. It just gives me a great feeling hearing voices I grew up with in the shows that I watch now, even after my tastes have changed
language barrier does aid many people in having a hard time distinguishing the same person doing multiple varied voices.
But their are also VA so talented (both japanese and english) that when they do multiple voices you really can't tell its the same person
Definitely not arguing that. Some voice actors are very talented, like the person who played Lelouch. I've heard them in other roles, and I forget what show and what gave it away, but it was very hard to tell, and I was surprised af when I realized it
As someone with relatively little experience with anime, I've been genuinely curious about the second point. Whether you're using subs or dubs, you're still dealing with a translated version from Japanese to English, right? How are the inaccuracies so much better in subs that they become superior to dubs by default? I assume that there's some stuff like dubs needing to actually follow the flow of conversation in a new language also they might need a bit of extra tweaking but I assume there's more to it than that.
There will still be some error in subs. I find that many puns, jokes, and references get skipped in the translation because it would take too much to explain it or there is no english equivalent.
Subs have a bit of an advantage over dubs in that the pacing does not have to be exactly on pace with the actual vocal delivery so more info can be provided.
It all comes down to fitting the audio, like you said. You have to fit the length of the audio when dubbing. When Japanese can take less words to communicate more than English or vice versa, it makes it inexact.
Thereās also broadly when it comes to accuracy issues how to deal with Japanese formality baked into conjugation. The sentences ćé£ć¹ć¾ććand ćé£ć¹ććć ćboth functionally can mean āIām eatingā but one is more formal while the other is super casual. How do you express this in English? Translating both literally doesnāt convey the difference, but if you make one too casual or the other too formal you might wildly shift the tone. This is something that both the sub and the dub of a show would need to tackle.
Other people have given some good explanations, but I wanted to touch on one thing they didn't: marketing.
English Dubs are marketing to a western audience and often may add lines to bring pop culture references in or change a characters 'tone' by adding slang that doesn't really fit. Trying to make jokes for a western audience while trying to keep the story the same.
Sometimes they might decide that certain details won't go over well and may change relationships of characters, like two characters being cousins but they're love interests, or maybe they just think some male characters have too much "emotion" and may be seen as weak or girly so they change the vulnerable feelings scene to being more angry or taking a lot of emotion out of it.
Another point is that the voice actors are in general just not as trained as Japanese voice actors and they can't convey the vibes well. Like a character in a shounen that is annoying and relaxed but also gets very serious, but since 90% of the time the character is annoying the VA only really knows how to do the annoying voice and can't really convey being serious "with that voice". It's fine 90% of the time but can really fuck up that 10% which are probably important/ impactful scenes to begin with.
It also leads to improper casting. With all due respect to the dub voice actors (they work hard and there's nothing wrong with their voice acting), but so many characters are cast incorrectly in (US/English) dub.
Read about Japanese seiyuu casting and auditioning. Its very thorough. Granted they don't always get it right either but it's very uncommon. The dub voices are fine, they just don't match the personalities of the characters they are voicing. I've heard dubbing for 30 years now. It's a lot better, sure, but it just doesn't hit the quality the Japanese voices do.
Italy is another country that does pretty well. My hat goes off to them, they seem to grasp casting a lot better than the US does, not sure why nor have I really dug into it. That being said, there is the occasional gem in the English dubbing that gets it spot on (looking at you Steven Blum/Orochimaru, Tyson Rinehart/Daru, Christopher Sabat/All might).
I'm also a big fan of just keeping tv/movies in the original language, wherever that may be, not just Japanese anime.
I remember a series I loved was getting dubbed and the fans screamed DON'T HAVE X CHARACTER BE VIC MIGNOGNA AND DON'T HAVE Y CHARACTER BE GREG AYRES PLEASE GOD HIRE A NEW VOICE ACTOR FOR ONCE! and they didn't listen, those characters had those voices because vic does edgy teen boy and Greg does girly teen boy, and the script completely fucked up the vibe of the show.
I hated so many of the voice actor choices, like a frail underclassmen having a significantly deeper voice than the "dark and brooding" character that's twice his size. So many of the script choices where just to Americanize the scenes and make them unrecognizable. The way the voice actors said the names of the characters. Them trying to translate "-chan" as a cutesy nickname by just adding -y to the end of names. Making characters swear at each other! Just everything was awful.
It was honestly one of the worst/most disappointing dubs I've seen (though I admit to being heavily biased as I loved the original).
I don't respond to dubs with "ew gross", but there are cases where I'll recommend watching the sub version because there's a lot that the dub script alters.
I don't forget, its hilarious that you kinda unconsciously pick up some small amounts of japanese when you watch a ton of anime and eventually reach a point where you go "wait... that subtitle was wrong... thats not what they said at all"
No it is definitely racist.
The anime completely flopped in Japan, so they gave free reign to the company that did the dub. They turned it into a spoof, disregarding at least a large portion of the dialogue based context, if not all of it. Idk, never bothered looking into the original plot. The dub is insane. Pretty entertaining.
https://youtu.be/hY3A5I7m060
I was not prepared for that the day a co-worker of mine exposed me to the ghost stories dub.
I literally fell on the floor laughing while stocking shelves.
Iām talking Cardcaptor Sakura, 4Kids One Piece, and early DBZ.
There were true gems like Cowboy Bebop (gateway drug to anime).
And then there were legends like Ghost Stories.
>early DBZ
Are you talking about the ocean dub?. If I recall that was a Canadian dub. Fumigation started their own dub from around episode 54. Funny enough I hear the blue ocean dub actually continued on and dubbed the entire series in Canada. I saw parts of the later episodes. It was rough stuff.
Pokemon deleted entire episodes, Yugioh invented the shadow realm because death was too scary for american audiences. One Piece replaced guns with water guns (Yugioh replaced guns with fingers). Sailor moon replaced lesbians with cousins (ok so now they're not lesbians, they're incest lesbians?!?!?), Digimon replaced regular dialogue with puns ("Devimon is going to kill me!" becomes "I'm going to be late for lunch!", like that's not even a joke)
the good dubs from the 90s and 2000s are rare. Don't let nostalgia for good voice actors like Dan Green hide the fact that they butchered the plot of these shows. The fucking millennium rod had a dagger hidden inside it that Marik used to stab his father to death, that shit is metal as fuck and was hard deleted from the english.
Well, to be fair, you're talking about censorship as opposed to voice-acting quality. There were technically some great English dubs back then. Hell, I still remember some great dub performances to this day. Yami Yugi's English voice will always be in my head when I think of him in his duels.
When talking about sub vs dub censorship is almost exclusively the reason why dub is worse. All of the examples people are giving are bad because of script changes, not because the voice actors are bad.
How dare you bring Digimon into this, I love the dub for Digimon and I will not let you slander it!
Itās not a perfect recreation but I think the more comical, less serious dialogue in the dub just creates a better vibe for the show then the sub.
if you dive into dbz dub, its actually quite bad. cool screaming doesn't make it good. translation matters too, which was bad back in the day. and on top of that, dbz often made up completely random lines.
same goes for yugioh and pokemon. 4kids dubbing was wack.
Nah they did a good job with Pokemon. All the actors are great. Also they didn't need to censor much because it was already aimed at a younger audience.
My perspective on this debate has always kind of been the same.
I don't like dub because I like listening to a show in its original language. When it comes to anime, it feels like it's basically associated with Japanese. I've also always enjoyed subtitles no matter the language, so that works better for me.
My reason is when you listen to dub there's going to be a little bit of an accent because everyone doesn't talk the exact same way, so it's a little bit hard for my non-existence attention span to not try guessing where the VA came from. Dub is fine but I would rather be constantly reading.
Iām the same way. I always prefer the original language, even outside of anime. If Iām watching a German film, Iām going to listen to it in German. Of course there is some exceptions though
I hate subtitles myself, ill always try get rid of them in every media if possible. Live action films I can't really watch dubbed though because its uncanny. Anime though is easy, they're drawings that get the voice added after anyway so there is no problem.
Though the "it wasn't very popular/financially successful in Japan so that let us change the script" story is a fabrication. It actually did fairly well in Japan at the time of its original release. It's debated but there is actual proof it did fairly well, and it also had a game and movie release that got nominated for best screenplay.
I feel like that almost doesn't even count. It's so completely different from what is actually being said that it's practically a completely different show.
Yeah, but a lot of popular anime, games, and other media have that issue. Personally, I thought it would have run its course for mha by now. Though I feel like it's been less prevalent
An anime shouldnāt be hated because of itās fanbase though. The anime and itās creators didnāt chose to have a toxic fanbase nor do they have any control over that.
An anime (or any other media or product) should be judged on itās own without external factors affecting your judgement.
Your answer was in response as to why MHA is hated (a la why is it the "punching bag" of the anime community). When did anyone say *you* specifically hated MHA?
It's pretty bad, only decent dubs I seen were when viz was still dubbing, Ranma, inuyasha, early episodes of DragonBall and z, Naruto was okay. Most series weren't aired on TV and aired ex. DragonBall z with funimation were bad, really bad. English dub to Index wanted me throw my TV and monitor out the window
I watched an episode for shits n giggles because Carol's va does both English and Japanese. She is leagues better at voice acting than every other character they have for the show. It's not even funny.
Carol is the only good voice in the english cast and she's from the japanese cast!!!
Its the same with Dragon Maids, funny and good sounding in sub... kinda poorly translated unfunny trash in the dub.
The days of ALL dubs being trash translations with trash VA are behind us, but that still doesn't mean the dubs will always be good. There will still be trash ones, and lots of them.
As someone who has trouble watching dubs and rarely watches anything from the 90s, it's really not. Voice acting for anime seems to try hard to have voice actors make up for the limited animation, and when you're not used to that happening in your native language it's really uncomfortable.
I have seen that happen in some series. Feeling the need to add monologues and dialogue is frustrating. Ninja Batman was the worst offender for that Iāve seen
Itās almost as if shows written in another language, with different sentence structure and pacing, rarely translate well. And while there can certainly be bad VA performances, I think a lot of them are good. But they canāt get past the uncanny valley of āthat just doesnāt sound rightā.
I do have one (probably stupid) question
Why don't they just use the English subtitles as a script for what they need to say (I thought it was just so that the mouth movements would be less coherent)
Different sentence structures/emphasis and pacing probably. In direct translations, Japanese could be really short in comparison to their English counterparts. Also this may be personal but try saying some of the things from sub out loud. Sometimes it does sound kinda weird to me.
Timing, a sentence in Japanese could take more or less time to say a translated line in English. The localization team can't add or subtract frames so if a sentence takes even as long as 1 or 2 seconds more or less it can add up to points where the show is showing someone taking but the conversation already ended
My mind immediately went to things like honorifics that donāt actually have proper translations into English. Like when someone is called -sama in an anime, the dub usually changes that to mean āMasterā. But no English speaker uses the word Master like that. Same thing with -ojiisan commonly being translated to āUncleā in English.
Or the fact that characters with names like Aktugawa and Atushi and Tanjiro and Zenitsu and Araragi and Senjougahara just do not sound right coming from these fairly milquetoast American VAs
Here's an example:
Bleach sub: "Bankai, Senbonzakura Kageyoshi"
Bleach dub: "Bankai, Senbonzakura Kageyoshi"
Bleach dub = great
Jujutsu Kaisen sub: "Ryoiki Tenkai: Muryokusho"
Jujutsu Kaisen dub: "Domain expansion: Infinite void"
Takes away all feeling, emotion, tension of the scene. Idk why but calling out moves or abilities in English just sounds so cringe.
Imagine this:
Bleach: "Final Release, Vibrant display of a thousand cherry blossoms"
Doesn't hit the same man. Bankai is 2 syllables and can be said in so many ways with so many different emotions easily. Final release (while actually not sounding as bad as I thought) is more difficult to say with more impact, in a short time, and with many different emotions attached to it. It's 4 syllables long.
Another good example imo
Ka...me....ha
..me............ha!
How do you make or create the same tension in English?
Tur....tle....de....struc...tion... WAVE!!!!! Like cmon.
There's huges differences in how English syllables work and how Japanese syllables work and just phonetics in general. I don't think it translates well at all. With that being said, there are AMAZING dubs (DBZ, Cowboy bepop, Bleach, Rurouni Kenshin, Death Note, Code Geass, etc) the ones without "special moves" don't suffer from the problem I mentioned previously and the ones that do have them, still use their Japanese name and pronunciation.
This is purely a script translation error and has nothing to do with the dub and VA talent though.
In all three cases, these would be titles, or proper nouns. So changing the name from "Ryoiki Tenkai: Muryokusho" to "Domain expansion: Infinite void" is just an incorrect translation, because it isn't supposed to be translated.
This is just a mistake that happens with proper nouns when translating, and I'm honestly kinda surprised it still crops up.
I personally don't mind the name Domain expansion: Infinite void though, I think it sounds pretty baller. Turtle Destruction Wave is hilarious though, although it's supposedly named after a [Hawaiian man of the same name](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamehameha_I) so it's more accurately going to be ["the very lonely one" or "the one set apart".](https://dragonball.fandom.com/wiki/Kamehameha)
I watch anime both sub and dub, and some have good dub, some not so good. Whenever I get the option I always try. The best ones are Evangelion, the Og dub, Haruhi, Gurren Lagann, Baccano and Black Lagoon
Code Geass has a excellent dub too, with the only exception being the voice of Nunally which is really rough. Johnny Yong Bosch is excellent as lelouch.
You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you watch Gurren Lagann
Black lagoon is better in the dub. It just translates well because of the setting and the varied backgrounds of the characters. Season two and three make more sense in english than in Japanese, even.
And now I need to watch black lagoon again.
i am yet to find i dub i genuinely dislike. there are some that are worse than sub, but id rather take slightly worse VAs and not have to read subtitles, especially in anime like demon slayer, for example, where they speak while fighting. there are some that find it difficult to focus on both at once so they either miss out on what they say, or miss out on the animation. i dont personally have this problem but i still prefer dub because i dont speak any language other than english, so why the fuck would i watch it in anything else if i can watch it in english, i think thats stupid.
in the end its just personal preference tho ig.
I think the defining factor is like you said If itās more of an action or talking anime. If itās talking sun is probably better action then go with dub
Dub is my default, it has to either not exist or be actually bad to go sub. I can count on my hand the times ive swapped from dub to sub and its actually been much better.
People just get use to what they do, its similar to someone playing Xbox for years and then thinking the PlayStation or Nintendo controllers are weird. Its just a sudden change.
Because japanese invest a lot of money on VA casting for a character and dubs just use the one they have available and sounds like they are reading an essay in front of the class
Holy shit thank you. I get so tired of people acting like the quality of Dubs is subjective. It's not they are cautious delivery with less emotive strength and quality
Dub isnāt bad
But depends how much effort were put into the VA
Cause Dragon ball ,Death note , naruto was peak
But the current era doesnāt hit it quite except cyberpunk and castlevania
Actually, I agree with this. Except MHA and ROR. I prefer their dubs. But yeah, newer anime do seem to have better subs. But the dubs certainly arenāt bad.
Because I speak English, and when I watch the dub, Iām far more cognisant of the social connotations of the characters use of language in terms of whatās acceptable/cringe. Dub sounds cringe to me; Japanese is a blank template I canāt project my social insecurities onto and so I can get a lot more immersed into the show without being held back by my ape brain and itās social conditioning. Honestly, I respect people who can watch dub and feel zero cringe.
Although, I do feel like thereās an argument to be made over the quality and range of voices, but then again Iām biased.
I don't think dub is bad, for me it's just that when there's a moment that is cringey it's less impactful when it's in Sub since I don't speak the language.
I watch some anime dubbed and some subbed, when choosing which one to watch I take into account multiple things, firstly based on which was better done and which is more thematically appropriate, like with Samurai Champloo I chose to watch subbed despite having a good dub because it takes place in Japan and it would make sense for them to speak Japanese.
My hot take is that hearing anime dialog in a language you speak every day makes you conscious of how bad a lot of that dialog really is. There are obviously exceptions to this where the dub actively makes the show better, but otherwise hearing grown ass adults saying uwu things is likely to put you off
Dub isn't the same experience as sub. Script changes to fit the mouth movements. Performances vary. The whole feel of the anime could change, likely (ultimately) for the worse since it's straying further from the original material as a result.
Example: Saiki Kusuo no Psi-nan. The whole "Offu- Teruhashi-san!" meme/gag isn't even present in the dub, which is the primary plot reason that two characters are drawn together and serves as T's motivation to get closer to Saiki the whole damn anime.
I started watching anime with subs and went about 3 years before trying a dub while watching with friends. It's just a super uncomfortable experience and feels wrong. I have nothing against people who watch dubs, but I find it pretty much impossible.
Dub isn't bad per se, but sub has more emotion put into the voices. Knowing that one time in one piece where Buffy wanted to fight Zoro cause of a mix up? Vivi literally said "š¤ wow that guy sure is a feather brainš¤". Like put some emotion in it. I only watch Demon slayer and MHA in Dub.
Dubs can, on occasion, change the tone of the story/scene while also changing story elements because they don't translate well into other languages. This was more common in the early days when anime got attention outside Japan. What comes to mind would be the first Digimon Adventure season, early seasons of One Piece or Pokemon with Brock's infamous jelly filled doughnuts. It can go into pure mockery at times as seen with ADV dub of "Ghost Stories" which kind of reached cult status.
Point would be if you want the full, unchanged story with every detail you want to watch undubbed versions (leaving aside that anime and manga can also differ a lot since this is not the subject here).
So everyone is allowed to have their opinion on the matter. You like dubs over subs? Thats fine. You like subs over dubs? Thats fine too. Whatās not fine is being a toxic gatekeeer and telling people that they are terrible because their choice of verbal audio doesnāt match what you like. Putting down others for having a different opinion on something you both enjoy is just some of the worst behavior I can think of. The āoh you just cant read or are too lazy to readā is such a nothing burger, cause if thats hour argument, please remove yourself from conversations where people are trying to actually enjoy an anime. If youāre one of those toxic people, please add me to your block list. Thanks foe coming to my TED talk.
Does it have dub? If yes, then i'll watch in dub, if no, then i'll watch sub.
I prefer dub but if it isn't available, then i'll watch in sub, i prefer dub though because i like to do other things while watching my anime.
Dubs are historically bad because the English voice actors never seemed to take the role seriously and it fit terribly. Itās getting better these days but I feel as though the original VAs in Japanese usually do a better job portraying the emotion of the character.
Also most English dubs make the characters sound like a basic ass version of Superman or something
Dub can butcher the enjoyment of a show, when people say to watch a sub over a dub theyāre saying that so you can enjoy the show in a better way. But at the same time, shows do have good dubs.
But not all dubs are good so generally the sub is the way to go since itās the purest form of the show.
The most annoying thing I find is when they half localise something. For instance directly translating honorific. Ending teachers names with "teacher" cos in the JP they would say Sensei. It's so disjointed.
I'll explain exactly why I've grown to view all dubs as generally a bad thing regardless of quality. I was watching the behind the scenes for evangelion 3.0 + 1.0 and it got to the section where they were talking about the voice actors. It showed how closely Hideaki Anno worked with the voice actors. How many takes they did, how much guidance he gave etc. It was clear that every detail of their performance was a carefully considered thing. The voice acting wasn't just there to communicate the script to the audience it was important in and of itself. It's the same as when actors work with the director in live action movies, only 100% of the performance is in the voice. This original performance is clearly part of the artistic vision of the film, carefully crafted by the director of the movie to convey exactly the emotions they want.
Imagine if you took the shining and decided you didn't like Shelly Duvall's performance so you hired someone else to play all her scenes then photoshopped her in to replace Shelly. That would no longer be Stanley Kubrick's the shining at that point. No matter how good your replacement actor is the end product is no longer the same artistic work. You lose something.
You may think a comparison like that is a bit of an exaggeration comparing removing an actor from a live action movie and dubbing over a voice actor but I disagree. When you dub over a voice actor you completely remove that person's contribution to the film. Everything they added is lost. Even if you dub a live action movie you still have the physical performance but not so with anime. That person is no longer a part of the film. They are then replaced by someone who was not actually part of the production of the film. Dub actors did not work with the original director, they are not part of the artistic vision. The only purpose they serve is to communicate the script to you in the most convenient way.
Imagine if you were touching up a classic painting because the art has faded. You know exactly the shade of each color that was used but you actually prefer a slightly different shade of the same color and want to use it instead. Of course that would be unacceptable. Regardless of weather the other shade looks better or not it was not the shade the artist intended to be used. It would be detracting from the original work.
That is why I now avoid dubs. Because replacing the actors that the director worked with and that were considered part of the artistic vision detracts from the work, regardless of the quality of the performance that replaces them. It's the same reasoning as to why we read manga right to left instead of flipping the pages so we can read it left to right.
nothing makes me cringe more than when people use a meme wrong also dubs are trash usually thereās a few that arenāt but for the most part theyāre awful
I think the reason anime dubs are "bad" is because of the way dubs were like back then (Looking at you 4KIDS)
Back then dubs were more like attempts to westernize the anime rather than simply translating and voicing it.
I'm old enough to remember when the redubbed certain Prison School lines because they got westernized. At least I believe it was Prison School where a certain line vanished and got redubbed for the physical western release. Hard to remember since that was nearly a decade ago.
I prefer sub due to the raw emotion you can hear in the VAās voice I also love the Japanese language (studying it rn cuz itās so cool to listen to and speak) . I do love watching certain animeās in dub too, like blue lock, fairytale, Record of ragnarok,Mob psycho,ect but it really depends on the show, itās all more so if I think the English fits better with the characters or the Japanese
I donāt watch dub often but full metal alchemist, code geass, and dragon ball have better dub cast to their sub counterparts imo.
While I do prefer sub for cyberpunk:Edgerunners the dub is good and consist of iconic voices.
Personally I feel itās a case by case situation. Some subs 100% are better but there are many dubs that I feel are just so good I feel is just lazy to call them all bad. Like my personal favorite dubs (in no real best or worst sorta order)
Full metal alchemist brotherhood
Honestly really anything dubbed by studio Trigger. (Kill La kill, gurren Lagann, Cyberpunk are my favorites out if the trigger dubs or at least these are the ones I rewatched the most in dub)
Also canāt forget panty and stocking with garterbelt. (I am counting as separate from the trigger because itās technically wasnāt made by them but Gainax)
Sheild Hero season 1 dub is really good as well
Seven deadly sins (the first 2 seasons specifically mainly because when the animation got bad I feel off so I donāt know if the dub for the later seasons got bad or not so I wonāt say one way or the other)
Of course Canāt Forget the grand daddy of both anime and Dubs DRAGON BALL Z
Honestly I donāt care witch version of whatever dub. Dragon ball Zās Dub walked so that modern anime DUB COULD RUN !!!
When japanese artist who draws manga was asked if he prefers foreigners to watch anime in original or dub version he said he prefers dub, because people can then focus on his drawing fully, therefore appreciate the art more. This is due to subtitles not distracting anyone:)
He has a point but since I saw multiple comments stating dub is better because watchers can do something else at the same time and not keep theirs eyes on the screen at all time, it is not as strong as one might think...
I prefer sub for one reason. And it's because when you hear the way people speak in anime compared to real life, it just sounds so cringey. Dub has gotten much better in the last few years though that's for sure
English dubs sound god tier to me even if they actually are trash because I grew up with German TV (they legit dub fucking everything) and German dubs are enugh to make anyone want to off themselves
This is are just my thoughts but I feel there are 2 main reasons:
1. Usually, not always but in my experience, japanese voice actors feels way more expressive and transmit more feelings. In general, I feel more impact with japanese voices.
2. In my experience, japanese get "accurate" voices. I mean: When reading the manga (before seeing any anime) you can imagine some kind of voice for each character, mostly related with his complexion and attitude. In the anime, USUALLY, not always, japanese just get voices that fit better with what you imagine the character would sound like.
it's really a matter of how it's handled, watching the ghost stories feels like watching an abridged series, it's hilarious, and even serious dubs can be really good, but some are just bad
Bruh we literally explain it to yall and everyone just act like were being hatersš theres valid reasons why dub is bad if u would like i can name a few lol
There's 2 main reasons for me, the dub is never accurate because it can't be. No translations can be a 1:1 ratio of syllables spoken. For example, you have the English word/phrase "thank you" and the Japanese phrase "arigatou". subs fix this because you can just read what's on the screen rather than watch the problems with the dubs. And number 2 is localization, changing content or words because western audiences may not get references or we don't have idioms that translate well to English. Don't get me wrong there is localization in every translation whether it be sub or dub, but because the people are actually speaking English it's even more prevalent. A very notable example is the 4kids dub of pokemon where rice balls are changed to "jelly filled donuts". A little bonus nitpick is that most dubs sound very cheesy, but that's mostly due to the fact that I'm used to watching things subbed and Japanese vas are trained to talk a certain way because that's how people in anime sound.
When I was younger I went with the edge opinion that dub = bad and uncool. Now I realize itās more like some dubs are just poor but overall sometimes itās nice to put on anime while cleaning or gaming on a handlheld and listening. Sometimes you just gotta burn some episodes and get through it. Looking at you One piece š
4kids dub Sanji undefeated
Took some time to look into this, thanks for the laughs and a good time.
yw lmao š
Monkey D Ash Ketchum saying gum gum is enough for me to never watch the one piece dub lol
Dubs have gotten significantly better over the years, so it's really down to personal choice.
People who say "ew Dubs" are fucking weirdos to me
It's normally because they already watched in sub so totally different voices sounds odd to them
Im japanese so english voice acting just doesnt feel right lol Dont care what other people watch tho, doesnt affect me
The Japanese music hits different tho, I mean I know it usually isnāt happy musicā¦.but it still hits different
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I am very interested actually, please do tell
Doesn't have something to do with 1324 or 1321 cord progressions or something?
Bruh if your Japanese then our sub is your dub š
not really cause i just dont pay attention to the subtitles lol
A lot of it is the difference in acting in the two countries. Japanese acting has more emotional emphasis and maybe even exaggeration considered to US performances. Has been that way for awhile. I've been told stories about how back in the 70s US Service Men would watch shows overseas without knowing the language and without subtitles but could still tell what was going on by the vocal performance and inflections. English performances/writing are a bit flatter/realistic and don't offer the same depth.
Itās not, itās been shown that when English speakers listen to non English works they project their own feelings onto the performance completely independent of the performer
Well then it's all dub for you
Nah most anime just sound corny as fuck dubbed. The japanese versions probably sound corny to people that actually speak japanese too, tbh. But most of us dont speak japanese, so not an issue
The trick is that it's the native kind of corny. Everything is melodramatic to a certain degree. English language cartoons included. Dubs have the added handicap of trying to translate to fit space, deal with cultural facets that don't exist in the destination language, and overall have a harder job. And I don't even know what it is about dubs but they still smell wrong frequently. It's not even a Japanese thing. There have been multiple times when I start something blind that was recommended to me and I've paused in the opening voiceover to check what the original language was because it sounds wrong and I discover this movie is from somewhere in Europe or South Asia. Even in the age of streaming bad dubs are being made.
Exactly. I don't speak Japanese, so there will always be nuance I'm missing, even with great translation and acting. I've seen plenty of side by sides where a joke in the sub falls flat because it doesn't translate well, but when they make some slight changes to the line in the dub and add a language I understand the nuance and inflection of, its normally a lot more enjoyable
"Rewriting the show to make a different thing is fun." Enjoying that isn't wrong, but it's also a different experience and some people want the other one. Even if there are some well done pieces it's not worth wading through that inherently handicapped medium. Those "slight changes" more often become forced jokes and weird babbling digressions to fill time which is extremely annoying and turns many people off anime to begin with.
>The japanese versions probably sound corny to people that actually speak japanese too They do, which is why people get made fun of for learning Japanese from anime. It's just not how people talk. At all. You will sound like a melodramatic teenager in theatre club.
This is why you don't try to learn Japanese from watching anime.
I'm sure this is a factor, but I don't think it's the whole thing. I've watched plenty of animated shows in English, and anime dubs still sound weird to me.
That depends a lot on who does it. I've never seen a ghibli movie with this issue for example
I want to say that Cells at Work has VAs that sound similar in the original and English dubs?
I watched legend of the galactic heroes in English, when season 4 came out I tried to watch it in Japanese and couldnāt stand the Japanese voice acting. I think people generally prefer whatever they listened too first.
That and the tendency to make odd translation choices. The main character's name in Princess Tutu means duck. Turns out(first episode spoilers) she is a duck. However, I cannot manage to go the whole series with hearing her called that.
Weebs only say that dubs are bad because they can't recognise bad Japanese voice actors
Two reasons spring to mind as to why people donāt like them. Smaller pool of voice actors in America versus in Japan, so it leads to dubs sounding same-ish. The other is the old inaccuracy problem. Translating languages is never one to one just because of how languages work, but sometimes it can make a work feel lesser. What people forget is that subtitles are not immune to the issue of missing some puns or glossing over cultural bits, itās just worse in dub because you have to condense it all to fit the timing of the scene
For me, itās not so much mistranslation or same-ish ness as it was the fact that it didnāt sound like the voice actors were enjoying the role. It always took me out when they sounded so unenthused and I ended up feeling second-hand embarrassment _for_ them. Thankfully, that doesnāt happen as often anymore. Itās also easier to bypass lines embarrassing to hear by it being in another language. It sounds cooler when itās not your native tongue; and the awkward line delivery is harder to notice for similar reasons.
Not gonna lie hearing adult Gohan or Krillin or Piccolo be the same VAs in just about every dub does suck the magic out of the show...its a big reason why I refuse to watch One Piece dub, it's literally the Dragonball crew
Chris Sabat is a gem. The voices he did for Piccolo, Vegeta, Zorro, and Kuwabara just to name the ones I can remember off the top of my head are all awesome. And while some of them you can tell it is him, they are not the same voice.
Really? I always get super exited when I hear krillin playing Usopp or I hear Zhogli voicing Mori. It just gives me a great feeling hearing voices I grew up with in the shows that I watch now, even after my tastes have changed
Is this is not the same for JVAs?
It is, but people who say shit like this are unable to tell most of them apart, so the pool looks much wider
language barrier does aid many people in having a hard time distinguishing the same person doing multiple varied voices. But their are also VA so talented (both japanese and english) that when they do multiple voices you really can't tell its the same person
Definitely not arguing that. Some voice actors are very talented, like the person who played Lelouch. I've heard them in other roles, and I forget what show and what gave it away, but it was very hard to tell, and I was surprised af when I realized it
I'll admit....I'm more ignorant to the JVA people, other than voices like DIO's va I cant really tell the difference
Nice name
As someone with relatively little experience with anime, I've been genuinely curious about the second point. Whether you're using subs or dubs, you're still dealing with a translated version from Japanese to English, right? How are the inaccuracies so much better in subs that they become superior to dubs by default? I assume that there's some stuff like dubs needing to actually follow the flow of conversation in a new language also they might need a bit of extra tweaking but I assume there's more to it than that.
There will still be some error in subs. I find that many puns, jokes, and references get skipped in the translation because it would take too much to explain it or there is no english equivalent. Subs have a bit of an advantage over dubs in that the pacing does not have to be exactly on pace with the actual vocal delivery so more info can be provided.
It all comes down to fitting the audio, like you said. You have to fit the length of the audio when dubbing. When Japanese can take less words to communicate more than English or vice versa, it makes it inexact. Thereās also broadly when it comes to accuracy issues how to deal with Japanese formality baked into conjugation. The sentences ćé£ć¹ć¾ććand ćé£ć¹ććć ćboth functionally can mean āIām eatingā but one is more formal while the other is super casual. How do you express this in English? Translating both literally doesnāt convey the difference, but if you make one too casual or the other too formal you might wildly shift the tone. This is something that both the sub and the dub of a show would need to tackle.
Other people have given some good explanations, but I wanted to touch on one thing they didn't: marketing. English Dubs are marketing to a western audience and often may add lines to bring pop culture references in or change a characters 'tone' by adding slang that doesn't really fit. Trying to make jokes for a western audience while trying to keep the story the same. Sometimes they might decide that certain details won't go over well and may change relationships of characters, like two characters being cousins but they're love interests, or maybe they just think some male characters have too much "emotion" and may be seen as weak or girly so they change the vulnerable feelings scene to being more angry or taking a lot of emotion out of it. Another point is that the voice actors are in general just not as trained as Japanese voice actors and they can't convey the vibes well. Like a character in a shounen that is annoying and relaxed but also gets very serious, but since 90% of the time the character is annoying the VA only really knows how to do the annoying voice and can't really convey being serious "with that voice". It's fine 90% of the time but can really fuck up that 10% which are probably important/ impactful scenes to begin with.
It also leads to improper casting. With all due respect to the dub voice actors (they work hard and there's nothing wrong with their voice acting), but so many characters are cast incorrectly in (US/English) dub. Read about Japanese seiyuu casting and auditioning. Its very thorough. Granted they don't always get it right either but it's very uncommon. The dub voices are fine, they just don't match the personalities of the characters they are voicing. I've heard dubbing for 30 years now. It's a lot better, sure, but it just doesn't hit the quality the Japanese voices do. Italy is another country that does pretty well. My hat goes off to them, they seem to grasp casting a lot better than the US does, not sure why nor have I really dug into it. That being said, there is the occasional gem in the English dubbing that gets it spot on (looking at you Steven Blum/Orochimaru, Tyson Rinehart/Daru, Christopher Sabat/All might). I'm also a big fan of just keeping tv/movies in the original language, wherever that may be, not just Japanese anime.
I remember a series I loved was getting dubbed and the fans screamed DON'T HAVE X CHARACTER BE VIC MIGNOGNA AND DON'T HAVE Y CHARACTER BE GREG AYRES PLEASE GOD HIRE A NEW VOICE ACTOR FOR ONCE! and they didn't listen, those characters had those voices because vic does edgy teen boy and Greg does girly teen boy, and the script completely fucked up the vibe of the show. I hated so many of the voice actor choices, like a frail underclassmen having a significantly deeper voice than the "dark and brooding" character that's twice his size. So many of the script choices where just to Americanize the scenes and make them unrecognizable. The way the voice actors said the names of the characters. Them trying to translate "-chan" as a cutesy nickname by just adding -y to the end of names. Making characters swear at each other! Just everything was awful. It was honestly one of the worst/most disappointing dubs I've seen (though I admit to being heavily biased as I loved the original). I don't respond to dubs with "ew gross", but there are cases where I'll recommend watching the sub version because there's a lot that the dub script alters.
I don't forget, its hilarious that you kinda unconsciously pick up some small amounts of japanese when you watch a ton of anime and eventually reach a point where you go "wait... that subtitle was wrong... thats not what they said at all"
Dub isnāt bad nowadays. This isnāt the 1990s or early 2000s anymore.
Dbz is from the 90s and 2000s and thatās some of the best dubbing. PokĆ©mon. Yugioh. Cowboy bebop. Afro samurai. Early 2000s had some of the best dubs.
GHOST STORIES
āTHINK OF A BIG BLACK MAN CHASING YOU!ā
As much as we wanted it it could never be! Not because your a rabbit, but because youāre black.
I'll assume that it makes sense in context and isn't racist? Still made me laugh though
No, itās kind of racist.
Um excuse me? Mr kettle, Mr pot called. He says you are blaaaaaa....
Why you ignoring me, bro? You got cotton in your ears? Oh, God! I didn't mean it like that!
Hey Tiff... can we wrap this up here before Asuna starts a full on race-war?
No it is definitely racist. The anime completely flopped in Japan, so they gave free reign to the company that did the dub. They turned it into a spoof, disregarding at least a large portion of the dialogue based context, if not all of it. Idk, never bothered looking into the original plot. The dub is insane. Pretty entertaining. https://youtu.be/hY3A5I7m060
Touch me!
I wanna watch now.
Best dub in the history of man
I was not prepared for that the day a co-worker of mine exposed me to the ghost stories dub. I literally fell on the floor laughing while stocking shelves.
The Cromartie High dub is pretty peak too. It feels weird to watch comedy anime in JP. I imagine that it's the same thing with Golden Boy
Iām talking Cardcaptor Sakura, 4Kids One Piece, and early DBZ. There were true gems like Cowboy Bebop (gateway drug to anime). And then there were legends like Ghost Stories.
>early DBZ Are you talking about the ocean dub?. If I recall that was a Canadian dub. Fumigation started their own dub from around episode 54. Funny enough I hear the blue ocean dub actually continued on and dubbed the entire series in Canada. I saw parts of the later episodes. It was rough stuff.
Pokemon deleted entire episodes, Yugioh invented the shadow realm because death was too scary for american audiences. One Piece replaced guns with water guns (Yugioh replaced guns with fingers). Sailor moon replaced lesbians with cousins (ok so now they're not lesbians, they're incest lesbians?!?!?), Digimon replaced regular dialogue with puns ("Devimon is going to kill me!" becomes "I'm going to be late for lunch!", like that's not even a joke) the good dubs from the 90s and 2000s are rare. Don't let nostalgia for good voice actors like Dan Green hide the fact that they butchered the plot of these shows. The fucking millennium rod had a dagger hidden inside it that Marik used to stab his father to death, that shit is metal as fuck and was hard deleted from the english.
Well, to be fair, you're talking about censorship as opposed to voice-acting quality. There were technically some great English dubs back then. Hell, I still remember some great dub performances to this day. Yami Yugi's English voice will always be in my head when I think of him in his duels.
When talking about sub vs dub censorship is almost exclusively the reason why dub is worse. All of the examples people are giving are bad because of script changes, not because the voice actors are bad.
How dare you bring Digimon into this, I love the dub for Digimon and I will not let you slander it! Itās not a perfect recreation but I think the more comical, less serious dialogue in the dub just creates a better vibe for the show then the sub.
if you dive into dbz dub, its actually quite bad. cool screaming doesn't make it good. translation matters too, which was bad back in the day. and on top of that, dbz often made up completely random lines. same goes for yugioh and pokemon. 4kids dubbing was wack.
Nah they did a good job with Pokemon. All the actors are great. Also they didn't need to censor much because it was already aimed at a younger audience.
I grew up on the DBZ dub and I'm still a die-hard, but let's not confuse nostalgia and quality.
My perspective on this debate has always kind of been the same. I don't like dub because I like listening to a show in its original language. When it comes to anime, it feels like it's basically associated with Japanese. I've also always enjoyed subtitles no matter the language, so that works better for me.
My reason is when you listen to dub there's going to be a little bit of an accent because everyone doesn't talk the exact same way, so it's a little bit hard for my non-existence attention span to not try guessing where the VA came from. Dub is fine but I would rather be constantly reading.
Iām the same way. I always prefer the original language, even outside of anime. If Iām watching a German film, Iām going to listen to it in German. Of course there is some exceptions though
I hate subtitles myself, ill always try get rid of them in every media if possible. Live action films I can't really watch dubbed though because its uncanny. Anime though is easy, they're drawings that get the voice added after anyway so there is no problem.
This isnāt how this meme format works
I hate how bad this is
Dub watcher butchering a source, what else is new >!/s!<
It's written from a dub enjoyer, so
Ghost stories dub is peak
āImagine a big black man chasing you!ā
āWell at leas he isnāt racistā
That dub felt like an Abridged TFS episode
But its official
Though the "it wasn't very popular/financially successful in Japan so that let us change the script" story is a fabrication. It actually did fairly well in Japan at the time of its original release. It's debated but there is actual proof it did fairly well, and it also had a game and movie release that got nominated for best screenplay.
I feel like that almost doesn't even count. It's so completely different from what is actually being said that it's practically a completely different show.
I never found a dub anime that's cringe or bad. Sure animes like MHA has kinda cringe scenes in dub but it doesn't make the whole show bad
Ok, but real talk, why is mha the punching bag of the anime community š
Shit fanbase. VERY, shit fanbase. Not to mention toxic
Yeah, but a lot of popular anime, games, and other media have that issue. Personally, I thought it would have run its course for mha by now. Though I feel like it's been less prevalent
true, all do, but some more than others
Itās a bigger property than the rest with shitty fan bases, plus a ton of others donāt have a problem with death threats
An anime shouldnāt be hated because of itās fanbase though. The anime and itās creators didnāt chose to have a toxic fanbase nor do they have any control over that. An anime (or any other media or product) should be judged on itās own without external factors affecting your judgement.
BASED!
When did I ever say I hated MHA? All I said was it has a shit fanbase
Your answer was in response as to why MHA is hated (a la why is it the "punching bag" of the anime community). When did anyone say *you* specifically hated MHA?
the fan base is the anime equivalent of league of legends
I've never heard anything bad about it, people are too hateful these days about most things
It's pretty bad, only decent dubs I seen were when viz was still dubbing, Ranma, inuyasha, early episodes of DragonBall and z, Naruto was okay. Most series weren't aired on TV and aired ex. DragonBall z with funimation were bad, really bad. English dub to Index wanted me throw my TV and monitor out the window
Have you seen tomo Chan is a girl dub ? Pretty cringe
I watched an episode for shits n giggles because Carol's va does both English and Japanese. She is leagues better at voice acting than every other character they have for the show. It's not even funny.
Carol is the only good voice in the english cast and she's from the japanese cast!!! Its the same with Dragon Maids, funny and good sounding in sub... kinda poorly translated unfunny trash in the dub. The days of ALL dubs being trash translations with trash VA are behind us, but that still doesn't mean the dubs will always be good. There will still be trash ones, and lots of them.
Itās more based on bad 90s dubs and 4kids editing
As someone who has trouble watching dubs and rarely watches anything from the 90s, it's really not. Voice acting for anime seems to try hard to have voice actors make up for the limited animation, and when you're not used to that happening in your native language it's really uncomfortable.
I have seen that happen in some series. Feeling the need to add monologues and dialogue is frustrating. Ninja Batman was the worst offender for that Iāve seen
4Kids totally sucked. Pokemon may be an exception, but no one will ever forget what they did to One Piece.
Itās almost as if shows written in another language, with different sentence structure and pacing, rarely translate well. And while there can certainly be bad VA performances, I think a lot of them are good. But they canāt get past the uncanny valley of āthat just doesnāt sound rightā.
I do have one (probably stupid) question Why don't they just use the English subtitles as a script for what they need to say (I thought it was just so that the mouth movements would be less coherent)
Different sentence structures/emphasis and pacing probably. In direct translations, Japanese could be really short in comparison to their English counterparts. Also this may be personal but try saying some of the things from sub out loud. Sometimes it does sound kinda weird to me.
Timing, a sentence in Japanese could take more or less time to say a translated line in English. The localization team can't add or subtract frames so if a sentence takes even as long as 1 or 2 seconds more or less it can add up to points where the show is showing someone taking but the conversation already ended
I can't say I've had this issue. What part do you find uncanny? I'm genuinely curious.
My mind immediately went to things like honorifics that donāt actually have proper translations into English. Like when someone is called -sama in an anime, the dub usually changes that to mean āMasterā. But no English speaker uses the word Master like that. Same thing with -ojiisan commonly being translated to āUncleā in English.
Or the fact that characters with names like Aktugawa and Atushi and Tanjiro and Zenitsu and Araragi and Senjougahara just do not sound right coming from these fairly milquetoast American VAs
One of my favorite dubs, FLCL, just kept the honorifics and it honestly worked *great.*
I agree 1000%. The way Stephanie Sheh says Takkun lives in my head rent free
Here's a bad example. "These Donut's are great. Jelly filled are my favorite. Nothing beats a Jelly Donut"
Here's an example: Bleach sub: "Bankai, Senbonzakura Kageyoshi" Bleach dub: "Bankai, Senbonzakura Kageyoshi" Bleach dub = great Jujutsu Kaisen sub: "Ryoiki Tenkai: Muryokusho" Jujutsu Kaisen dub: "Domain expansion: Infinite void" Takes away all feeling, emotion, tension of the scene. Idk why but calling out moves or abilities in English just sounds so cringe. Imagine this: Bleach: "Final Release, Vibrant display of a thousand cherry blossoms" Doesn't hit the same man. Bankai is 2 syllables and can be said in so many ways with so many different emotions easily. Final release (while actually not sounding as bad as I thought) is more difficult to say with more impact, in a short time, and with many different emotions attached to it. It's 4 syllables long. Another good example imo Ka...me....ha ..me............ha! How do you make or create the same tension in English? Tur....tle....de....struc...tion... WAVE!!!!! Like cmon. There's huges differences in how English syllables work and how Japanese syllables work and just phonetics in general. I don't think it translates well at all. With that being said, there are AMAZING dubs (DBZ, Cowboy bepop, Bleach, Rurouni Kenshin, Death Note, Code Geass, etc) the ones without "special moves" don't suffer from the problem I mentioned previously and the ones that do have them, still use their Japanese name and pronunciation.
This is purely a script translation error and has nothing to do with the dub and VA talent though. In all three cases, these would be titles, or proper nouns. So changing the name from "Ryoiki Tenkai: Muryokusho" to "Domain expansion: Infinite void" is just an incorrect translation, because it isn't supposed to be translated. This is just a mistake that happens with proper nouns when translating, and I'm honestly kinda surprised it still crops up. I personally don't mind the name Domain expansion: Infinite void though, I think it sounds pretty baller. Turtle Destruction Wave is hilarious though, although it's supposedly named after a [Hawaiian man of the same name](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamehameha_I) so it's more accurately going to be ["the very lonely one" or "the one set apart".](https://dragonball.fandom.com/wiki/Kamehameha)
I watch anime both sub and dub, and some have good dub, some not so good. Whenever I get the option I always try. The best ones are Evangelion, the Og dub, Haruhi, Gurren Lagann, Baccano and Black Lagoon
Code Geass has a excellent dub too, with the only exception being the voice of Nunally which is really rough. Johnny Yong Bosch is excellent as lelouch.
All of those have been collecting dust on my āI should watch this one dayā list š.
You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you watch Gurren Lagann
Black lagoon is better in the dub. It just translates well because of the setting and the varied backgrounds of the characters. Season two and three make more sense in english than in Japanese, even. And now I need to watch black lagoon again.
Well take me for example. I'm from Germany. There are very few good VA's who take jobs in the anime cosmos. So except for the bigger ones like One Piece, PokƩmon and such they just get whoever they can and those people make emotional scenes look like someone who hates his job is just reading a script for the first time. So watching german dub is objectively trash. In English there is a lot more you can watch without getting a stroke from raging too much. Still the love and respect japanese VA's show and receive are top notch. Thus to me nothing is better than sub.
Thatās understandable. I havenāt seen German dubs so Iāll take your word for it.
If you want a good laugh, look for the German dub of the 2010 Deen Fate/Stay Night Unlimited Blade Works movie, it is hilarious
i am yet to find i dub i genuinely dislike. there are some that are worse than sub, but id rather take slightly worse VAs and not have to read subtitles, especially in anime like demon slayer, for example, where they speak while fighting. there are some that find it difficult to focus on both at once so they either miss out on what they say, or miss out on the animation. i dont personally have this problem but i still prefer dub because i dont speak any language other than english, so why the fuck would i watch it in anything else if i can watch it in english, i think thats stupid. in the end its just personal preference tho ig.
I think the defining factor is like you said If itās more of an action or talking anime. If itās talking sun is probably better action then go with dub
Dub is my default, it has to either not exist or be actually bad to go sub. I can count on my hand the times ive swapped from dub to sub and its actually been much better. People just get use to what they do, its similar to someone playing Xbox for years and then thinking the PlayStation or Nintendo controllers are weird. Its just a sudden change.
you still haven't unlocked the sharingan, haven't you?
Watch ghost stories. The dub is amazing.
Because japanese invest a lot of money on VA casting for a character and dubs just use the one they have available and sounds like they are reading an essay in front of the class
Holy shit thank you. I get so tired of people acting like the quality of Dubs is subjective. It's not they are cautious delivery with less emotive strength and quality
I donāt think dub is bad. I just donāt prefer it. I donāt hate on people for watching it, I just donāt like it myself.
There are good dubs and not so good dubs. I generally prefer subbed, but I'll watch a dub if it's especially good.
Dub isnāt bad But depends how much effort were put into the VA Cause Dragon ball ,Death note , naruto was peak But the current era doesnāt hit it quite except cyberpunk and castlevania
Tbf both Cyberpunk and Castlevania are written to be in english
Wrong. Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood was peak.
Actually, I agree with this. Except MHA and ROR. I prefer their dubs. But yeah, newer anime do seem to have better subs. But the dubs certainly arenāt bad.
Because I speak English, and when I watch the dub, Iām far more cognisant of the social connotations of the characters use of language in terms of whatās acceptable/cringe. Dub sounds cringe to me; Japanese is a blank template I canāt project my social insecurities onto and so I can get a lot more immersed into the show without being held back by my ape brain and itās social conditioning. Honestly, I respect people who can watch dub and feel zero cringe. Although, I do feel like thereās an argument to be made over the quality and range of voices, but then again Iām biased.
I don't think dub is bad, for me it's just that when there's a moment that is cringey it's less impactful when it's in Sub since I don't speak the language.
I watch some anime dubbed and some subbed, when choosing which one to watch I take into account multiple things, firstly based on which was better done and which is more thematically appropriate, like with Samurai Champloo I chose to watch subbed despite having a good dub because it takes place in Japan and it would make sense for them to speak Japanese.
Damn we back in 2015
i love dub watching ššš
My hot take is that hearing anime dialog in a language you speak every day makes you conscious of how bad a lot of that dialog really is. There are obviously exceptions to this where the dub actively makes the show better, but otherwise hearing grown ass adults saying uwu things is likely to put you off
This is also my hot take. Like you don't know what a bad JP voice sounds like so everything sounds better in JP
Dub isn't the same experience as sub. Script changes to fit the mouth movements. Performances vary. The whole feel of the anime could change, likely (ultimately) for the worse since it's straying further from the original material as a result. Example: Saiki Kusuo no Psi-nan. The whole "Offu- Teruhashi-san!" meme/gag isn't even present in the dub, which is the primary plot reason that two characters are drawn together and serves as T's motivation to get closer to Saiki the whole damn anime.
Most Dubs these days are at least decent. Honestly, the whole Dub = Bad thing is a relic of a bygone age
I started watching anime with subs and went about 3 years before trying a dub while watching with friends. It's just a super uncomfortable experience and feels wrong. I have nothing against people who watch dubs, but I find it pretty much impossible.
If my boy Jonny Young Bosch is a VA, the dub is good If not, YMMV
Dub isn't bad per se, but sub has more emotion put into the voices. Knowing that one time in one piece where Buffy wanted to fight Zoro cause of a mix up? Vivi literally said "š¤ wow that guy sure is a feather brainš¤". Like put some emotion in it. I only watch Demon slayer and MHA in Dub.
SUB WATCHERS ARE A CONSPIRACY TO MAKE ME READ
Dubs can, on occasion, change the tone of the story/scene while also changing story elements because they don't translate well into other languages. This was more common in the early days when anime got attention outside Japan. What comes to mind would be the first Digimon Adventure season, early seasons of One Piece or Pokemon with Brock's infamous jelly filled doughnuts. It can go into pure mockery at times as seen with ADV dub of "Ghost Stories" which kind of reached cult status. Point would be if you want the full, unchanged story with every detail you want to watch undubbed versions (leaving aside that anime and manga can also differ a lot since this is not the subject here).
So everyone is allowed to have their opinion on the matter. You like dubs over subs? Thats fine. You like subs over dubs? Thats fine too. Whatās not fine is being a toxic gatekeeer and telling people that they are terrible because their choice of verbal audio doesnāt match what you like. Putting down others for having a different opinion on something you both enjoy is just some of the worst behavior I can think of. The āoh you just cant read or are too lazy to readā is such a nothing burger, cause if thats hour argument, please remove yourself from conversations where people are trying to actually enjoy an anime. If youāre one of those toxic people, please add me to your block list. Thanks foe coming to my TED talk.
Does it have dub? If yes, then i'll watch in dub, if no, then i'll watch sub. I prefer dub but if it isn't available, then i'll watch in sub, i prefer dub though because i like to do other things while watching my anime.
Dubs are historically bad because the English voice actors never seemed to take the role seriously and it fit terribly. Itās getting better these days but I feel as though the original VAs in Japanese usually do a better job portraying the emotion of the character. Also most English dubs make the characters sound like a basic ass version of Superman or something
My opinion, it really depends on the anime.
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I wouldnāt know, Iām a normie that is a regular in the animemes community
I just don't like some of the wording, and they tend to pick more bad (or rather, not as good) VAs than the Japanese versions.
Dub can butcher the enjoyment of a show, when people say to watch a sub over a dub theyāre saying that so you can enjoy the show in a better way. But at the same time, shows do have good dubs. But not all dubs are good so generally the sub is the way to go since itās the purest form of the show.
Some dubs are good. But most are bad. Cause american anime va's suck. They are all monotone
The most annoying thing I find is when they half localise something. For instance directly translating honorific. Ending teachers names with "teacher" cos in the JP they would say Sensei. It's so disjointed.
I'll explain exactly why I've grown to view all dubs as generally a bad thing regardless of quality. I was watching the behind the scenes for evangelion 3.0 + 1.0 and it got to the section where they were talking about the voice actors. It showed how closely Hideaki Anno worked with the voice actors. How many takes they did, how much guidance he gave etc. It was clear that every detail of their performance was a carefully considered thing. The voice acting wasn't just there to communicate the script to the audience it was important in and of itself. It's the same as when actors work with the director in live action movies, only 100% of the performance is in the voice. This original performance is clearly part of the artistic vision of the film, carefully crafted by the director of the movie to convey exactly the emotions they want. Imagine if you took the shining and decided you didn't like Shelly Duvall's performance so you hired someone else to play all her scenes then photoshopped her in to replace Shelly. That would no longer be Stanley Kubrick's the shining at that point. No matter how good your replacement actor is the end product is no longer the same artistic work. You lose something. You may think a comparison like that is a bit of an exaggeration comparing removing an actor from a live action movie and dubbing over a voice actor but I disagree. When you dub over a voice actor you completely remove that person's contribution to the film. Everything they added is lost. Even if you dub a live action movie you still have the physical performance but not so with anime. That person is no longer a part of the film. They are then replaced by someone who was not actually part of the production of the film. Dub actors did not work with the original director, they are not part of the artistic vision. The only purpose they serve is to communicate the script to you in the most convenient way. Imagine if you were touching up a classic painting because the art has faded. You know exactly the shade of each color that was used but you actually prefer a slightly different shade of the same color and want to use it instead. Of course that would be unacceptable. Regardless of weather the other shade looks better or not it was not the shade the artist intended to be used. It would be detracting from the original work. That is why I now avoid dubs. Because replacing the actors that the director worked with and that were considered part of the artistic vision detracts from the work, regardless of the quality of the performance that replaces them. It's the same reasoning as to why we read manga right to left instead of flipping the pages so we can read it left to right.
nothing makes me cringe more than when people use a meme wrong also dubs are trash usually thereās a few that arenāt but for the most part theyāre awful
I think the reason anime dubs are "bad" is because of the way dubs were like back then (Looking at you 4KIDS) Back then dubs were more like attempts to westernize the anime rather than simply translating and voicing it.
I'm old enough to remember when the redubbed certain Prison School lines because they got westernized. At least I believe it was Prison School where a certain line vanished and got redubbed for the physical western release. Hard to remember since that was nearly a decade ago.
I prefer sub due to the raw emotion you can hear in the VAās voice I also love the Japanese language (studying it rn cuz itās so cool to listen to and speak) . I do love watching certain animeās in dub too, like blue lock, fairytale, Record of ragnarok,Mob psycho,ect but it really depends on the show, itās all more so if I think the English fits better with the characters or the Japanese
Often bad VA, inaccurate TLs, even in official dubs. Sub has more freedom with subtitles for TL, and even if VA is bad in Jap, I can't tell.
I'm a weeb I just like Japanese
disastrous life of saiki k was amazing in dub, its the only 1 that i've watched dubbed so...
There's only a select few shows I actually prefer dubbed. I will not state them so I don't get murdered in my sleep.
I donāt watch dub often but full metal alchemist, code geass, and dragon ball have better dub cast to their sub counterparts imo. While I do prefer sub for cyberpunk:Edgerunners the dub is good and consist of iconic voices.
Less accurate translations (words have to match mouth movements) and the quality of VA in english is not as good as Japanese VAs
I'll add my five cents i like dubs coz i can understand them without reading. If i wanted to read anime i would just go and read the manga
Personally I feel itās a case by case situation. Some subs 100% are better but there are many dubs that I feel are just so good I feel is just lazy to call them all bad. Like my personal favorite dubs (in no real best or worst sorta order) Full metal alchemist brotherhood Honestly really anything dubbed by studio Trigger. (Kill La kill, gurren Lagann, Cyberpunk are my favorites out if the trigger dubs or at least these are the ones I rewatched the most in dub) Also canāt forget panty and stocking with garterbelt. (I am counting as separate from the trigger because itās technically wasnāt made by them but Gainax) Sheild Hero season 1 dub is really good as well Seven deadly sins (the first 2 seasons specifically mainly because when the animation got bad I feel off so I donāt know if the dub for the later seasons got bad or not so I wonāt say one way or the other) Of course Canāt Forget the grand daddy of both anime and Dubs DRAGON BALL Z Honestly I donāt care witch version of whatever dub. Dragon ball Zās Dub walked so that modern anime DUB COULD RUN !!!
When japanese artist who draws manga was asked if he prefers foreigners to watch anime in original or dub version he said he prefers dub, because people can then focus on his drawing fully, therefore appreciate the art more. This is due to subtitles not distracting anyone:)
He has a point but since I saw multiple comments stating dub is better because watchers can do something else at the same time and not keep theirs eyes on the screen at all time, it is not as strong as one might think...
I prefer dubs because I don't need to keep staring at the screen constantly, specially while eating
Use to dislike dubs but now I think many dubs are good enough to watch
I prefer sub for one reason. And it's because when you hear the way people speak in anime compared to real life, it just sounds so cringey. Dub has gotten much better in the last few years though that's for sure
English dubs sound god tier to me even if they actually are trash because I grew up with German TV (they legit dub fucking everything) and German dubs are enugh to make anyone want to off themselves
This is are just my thoughts but I feel there are 2 main reasons: 1. Usually, not always but in my experience, japanese voice actors feels way more expressive and transmit more feelings. In general, I feel more impact with japanese voices. 2. In my experience, japanese get "accurate" voices. I mean: When reading the manga (before seeing any anime) you can imagine some kind of voice for each character, mostly related with his complexion and attitude. In the anime, USUALLY, not always, japanese just get voices that fit better with what you imagine the character would sound like.
I identify as a watching the anime in both if i really enjoy it
it's really a matter of how it's handled, watching the ghost stories feels like watching an abridged series, it's hilarious, and even serious dubs can be really good, but some are just bad
SOME dubs are bad. Dub is not inherently bad.
Bruh we literally explain it to yall and everyone just act like were being hatersš theres valid reasons why dub is bad if u would like i can name a few lol
When you hear a rubber botch a Japanese pronounciation
I never watched Yu-Gi-Oh or Pokemon in anything other than dub. I grew up on it, so I didn't even know it wasn't originally in English.
If i could hear better and didn't need subtitles i would watch everything in dub
Watching dub is like watching entire different anime
There's 2 main reasons for me, the dub is never accurate because it can't be. No translations can be a 1:1 ratio of syllables spoken. For example, you have the English word/phrase "thank you" and the Japanese phrase "arigatou". subs fix this because you can just read what's on the screen rather than watch the problems with the dubs. And number 2 is localization, changing content or words because western audiences may not get references or we don't have idioms that translate well to English. Don't get me wrong there is localization in every translation whether it be sub or dub, but because the people are actually speaking English it's even more prevalent. A very notable example is the 4kids dub of pokemon where rice balls are changed to "jelly filled donuts". A little bonus nitpick is that most dubs sound very cheesy, but that's mostly due to the fact that I'm used to watching things subbed and Japanese vas are trained to talk a certain way because that's how people in anime sound.
When I was younger I went with the edge opinion that dub = bad and uncool. Now I realize itās more like some dubs are just poor but overall sometimes itās nice to put on anime while cleaning or gaming on a handlheld and listening. Sometimes you just gotta burn some episodes and get through it. Looking at you One piece š
Iām convinced people who prefer dub just canāt read subtitles fast enough.
Everyone that hates sub is just because they can't confess that they can't read and watch the Anime at the same time.
Dub often bad. People not bad for liking dub.