123 replies to this topic

[Naddy-chan]

I prefer for sub more
Dub sometimes cut some parts ( like on Digimon Frontier )
and i wanna hear the voices of the seiyuu

[SunnyBunny]

I prefer sub because it keeps the original charm of the anime~
Dub also sometimes cuts outepisodes and stuff.. *COUGH*SAILORMOONDUBB*COUGH*

[mixedmedia]

Not an anime-related case, but saw the World Premiere of the Gantz live -action movie and the dub was utterly failtastic! Whoever was responsible for getting those "1970's kung-fu dubbing rejects" to do the dub should be fired and never be able to be allowed anywhere near any foreign films for the rest of their lives.


I don't know how the people responsible for having Gantz show in 333 theaters across the US last night felt that tossing on a half-assed dub would help crossover appeal. The dialogue was a bad literal translation IMO and none of the voices fit the actors. If anyone has seen the parody movie Kung Pow Enter The Fist, it had that same vibe which it shouldn't have since it was a sci-fi action movie and not a comedy. I can't even judge how the film was b/c the dub ruined the mood. I was laughing at so many inappropriate parts b/c the voices were so silly.

Anime might not be as bad, but when it's a movie featuring kind of famous Japanese actors/idols (Ninomiya from Arashi and Matsuyama Kenichi) and at least half the audience came to see/hear them, dubbing robs them of at least half the experience IMO.

Had to vent b/c I'm still pissed at the crap dub. Certain things can't be translated clearly in Japanese IMO and while it may be bad to see in a sub, it becomes much worse when dubbed. Something about when the characters get angry or convey other emotions in English also doesn't work for me.

I'm thinking there may be some decent dubs out there, but as someone learning Japanese I see no benefit for them personally. As far as movies go though, they shouldn't be dubbed. If you can't read subtitles, you probably wouldn't enjoy foreign movies anyway and should just wait until they Hollywood tries to make an English version.

I'll probably not watch any dubs but if I'm forced to I'd rather it not feel as if the people responsible for it are looking down on the audience or not taking it seriously. It was hard to believe the ppl who dubbed Gantz actually thought they did a good job dubbing it unless their objective was to piss people off and make the movie look stupid.

[sailormari]

^ i see your point bad dub does piss me olff


but then when something dub right then it works

[zam（仮）]

I usually prefer subs. So far I have seen 1 anime which I could acually enjoy the dubs. The anime was Tower of Druaga. The voices fit the characters nicely, especially the voice talent who has British or Irish accent. I couldn't recall having heard any other dubs that had used such voice talent with this accent before.

[michikodesu]

Ah, the dub vs. sub argument. The bane of anime lovers everywhere.

It's really just a matter of opinion and preference like many have said.

I prefer subbed; but I had been watching subbed movies ever since I was little. My mom liked to watch different foreign films and they were always in the original language with the subtitles. And since I liked reading, I would watch/read with her. Not to mention I hated watching dubbed martial arts movies. So for me, dubbed wasn't really a choice.

As I started to learn Japanese, I wanted to listen to the original soundtract just to see if I could understand what's going on. I know that there are some companies who do a really bad job at translating the script. And some subbers just like to put in as many 4-letter words as they can and it just loses the context of what's going on. But, even with bad subbing, I still want to hear the original voices.

What I dislike about dubs is mostly the choices that the voice actors make when voicing a character. Like for instance, Sailor Moon's voice. Yeah, she's a ditz; but that doesn't mean that she needed to have a voice that was at an octave 5 times higher than normal. And not all magical girl characters are spastic and stupid. Same with the guys. A 10 year old that sounds like a 25 year old seems rather strange to me. Also, (especially in some of Miyazaki dubs -- which I give Disney the Stink Eye), they add a narrative or they'll add extra lines in that are not needed. There's a reason why a part is completely silent in the original, yet in a dub they'll add someone talking. I also don't need to have things explained like they do in dubs. And why oh why do some of the characters have southern accents (southern accents that don't sound good at all)? They're horrible (but I am biased because I hate it when American actors try it as well). But those are my pet peeves.

There is actually one anime that I do like dubbed and that was Cowboy Bebop. The voices just matched and they did a good job. Ed didn't have an overly hyper and squeaky voice and she sounded like a kid, Faye wasn't too over sexualized, Spike sounded like a normal calm guy, and Jet sounded like a rough ex-cop. And even the background voices and minor characters weren't bad either.

All in all I will choose subbed over dubbed. But that's just my preference. I don't make fun of those who watch dubbed because they're getting the same enjoyment out of it as I am. I mostly watch fan-subs of the anime that I cannot get over here, that hasn't been licensened; but once it becomes available, I go out and buy it. But it seems like many of the good ones that I've watched so far aren't out here yet.

[Luffy Foxtrot]

I may have a few minor differences in opinion, but I agree with what michikodesu said for the most part. I don't really mind the voiced additions in dubs whereas it's silent in the original voice track, but I don't think it's necessary.

When it comes to subs, more recently I've had a preference to watch it on Crunchyroll, as doing so supports the producers and so on and so forth. If I'm unable to watch it on Crunchyroll, for reasons such as not being available for streaming in Australia, not being there at all, or in Bleach's case, the episode I'm up to isn't uploaded, then I go looking for a fansub somewhere. For the most part, the fansubs are good, but where I've tried my hand at watching a fansub of Pokemon: Best Wishes!, currently I've only found one; and it is terrible to the point that I've decided to wait until 4Kids start releasing their dubbed episodes, despite them practially being the worst dubbing company out there, considering they change just about everything.

Summed up, I would also prefer watching any particular anime in subs, but I don't really have much of a problem with official dubs. Really, I'll watch either, it's just a matter of which one I can find first.

[zam（仮）]

Another anime that I just remembered that had good dubs is Love Hina. To me the voice actors seem to fit nicely with the characters.

[Corrugo]

^ I actually wasn't too fond of the dub

As for me.. it usually depends on which I watched first.. but there's other things to take into account..

If it's an action anime, you gotta look down and read quickly during the fight scenes and possibly miss an epic move being used. Another would be that subs are good because you get to hear how the person was meant to sound (or very close to)

Overall.. I find myself looking for subs rather than dubs because I like to hear it as it was meant to be heard - plus the mouth flapping is usually much closer.

[panda-chan]

Back when I used to watch anime it was always with SUBS!!! The voices just sounded better in Japanese.

[writerserenyty]

I WISH I had to choose with my favorite anime. My favorite anime of all time and my fandom love is Emma: A Victorian Romance, and it's set in Victorian era London. Meaning the characters SHOULD speak English. But there's no dub. So annoying...

[Eeyore]

For live action I tend toward subs.
For anime I tend toward the dubs... especially if it's a series rather than a movie... but sometimes I find the subs better.
The decent releases of decent anime movies these days have reasonable acting talent, so the dubs are reasonable... Princess Mononoke for example.

But on the whole I'd choose dub over sub for anime.
It's a personal preference, and the quality varies so it's not a hard and fast rule.

[PrincessKeitorin]

When I was an Anime fan, I hated dubs, They sounded so terrible, So I liked to watch anime with subs

[BigDnm01]

Definitely, subs, because Japanese seiyuu seems to be much more skilled and high quality than English dub. The expression can be felt so intensely, and I love how they crack me up during hilarious scenes. The voices make the characters, and I see Japanese voices does it better. I watched several anime with english dub and comparing it to japanese version, I find many of them off on their emotions, I just don't feel it.
growing up in America and watching shows on Cartoon Network/Toonami, I was used to English Dub, but when I started watching in Japanese, I felt that all this time, I should've watch it the way it was meant to be watched, or heard. Seiyuu just bring out the character more, imo.

for example, Bleach and Naruto sounds terrible, I don't like it very much. the only anime I felt comfortable watching in english dub is Fullmetal Alchemist, Dragonball Z, and Sailor Moon. DBZ and SM, I never watched it in Japanese dub. Fullmetal Alchemist in english is actually pretty good.

[Mei.ka~]

I don't really watch anime that much anymore (Mostly because I haven't found one that I like), but it depends. For the majority of the time, I'll like the subs or dubs of something if I'm used to it. For example, when I used to watch Naruto, (Not that much now, but sometimes for nostalgia) I preferred dubs since I watched the dub versions before I watched the subbed versions. So in that way, I was used to them speaking in English and the style of their voices. Same thing happened with Lucky Star, Haruhi Suzumiya, Parakiss and a couple other random ones my dad bought.
Another time, I watched the Naruto Shippuden subbed versions and so when I watched the English versions, they just sucked real bad even though the voice actors were the same for the most part. Also, I find Wendy Lee's version of God Knows (Or something like that) really awkward and bad, but that's cause I was used to the original. I don't remember any other animes that had the same situation, but I know there must be at least one or two more that I'm forgetting.
However, I say that it also depends with the jokes since it might be referencing to something only a person familiar with Japanese entertainment would get. There are exceptions, though. Like I can watch both the subbed and dubbed versions of Lucky Star and Haruhi Suzumiya. (What I said above with these two animes was before I watched the subbed versions. When I did, I was instantly hooked by their voices. Aya Hirano is so talented!). So I guess I'm pretty mixed. Don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, though. For me, I am pretty sure it is.

Edit: Oh, now I remember! It was Kaito Reinya that made me think Reina's voice would be the only possible suitor for Reinya. If there was a dub of it, I would watch it for the curiosity of it, but I most likely wouldn't like it.

[taylorniw]

I prefer subs, but I'm not completely adverse to dubs. I feel there's been much more effort put into dubs than when they first started out, and I've seen many where the dialogue is almost identical to that of the subs. They're trying harder and harder to keep the originality there, and there are some series (like Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei or Lucky Star) where the dubs will always be meh because the puns and pop culture references don't translate over, but dubs are no longer something I would never in my life consider watching. I have a video game where I actually vastly prefer the English voices to the Japanese ones. And really, dubs are a blessing to people who can't keep up with subs and the story at the same time. The voices may not always fit as well, and western VAs have different kinds of voices than their western counterparts, but it works in reverse. Ever seen a dub of something American/European in Japanese? It's just as horrible as watching an American dub, I promise you.

[Luffy Foxtrot]

^
Shows that also toss around jokes using the japanese language (how some phrases are written differently, but are pronounced indentical) don't work well either, since you don't really have that same problem in english speaking areas.

I ended up hearing a Japanese version of Why Should I Worry? from the Disney movie Oliver & Company. My word, that was bad D:

[Mab]

I don't think that any dubs are necessarily bad. I think that the acting talent is about the same if you compare a japanese vs english dub.

I recently made a japanese friend on a game I like to play. One day we were talking about movies while playing, and I asked her if she liked to watch American movies with japanese audio(dub) or english audio and subtitles. Of course, I was thinking of threads like these when I asked the question, since it seems hardcore anime fans are so biased against english dubs, and I wanted to get a flip side perspective of it. She said that she pretty much always watches with english audio and subtitles, because she thinks the movies lose flavor when they are in Japanese. I asked if that was normal, or just her preference, and she thought that as far as she knew that most people would do that as well.

Anyways, my point is that I think it's more just a product of fandom to keep something like it was originally made. Rather than some type of "dubs suck" type of thing.

[Pex]

In general, I prefer dubs. I like to be able to follow the action in my own language and not worry about missing important visual material because of trying to read the subtitles. Having said that, however, I am much more tolerant of subtitles now than I used to be. I honestly have H!P to thank for that, because I want to know what the girls are saying and I want to hear them say it in their own voices. So, for example, I bought "Yo-Yo Girl Cop" on DVD, I watched it with the subs because the thought of Charmy not sounding like Charmy was unbearable to me. But if I first encountered something as a dub, I'd rather have the dub than the sub, nine times out of ten.

For example, I was raised on Star Blazers, and when I watch a subbed Yamato film, it messes with my brain trying to figure out who Kodai and Yumi are, when the only ones I ever knew were Wildstar and Nova. Plus, English Dessler (Desslok) has one of the most amusing/creepy/awesome Dub voices ever.

Also, it's been a long time since I watched it, but I honestly don't think I could watch Mach Go Go Go. The cadence and speed (pardon the pun) of the Speed Racer voice actors is not only quaint and charming, it just feels right to me because that's what I've always known. Plus, the Speed Racer theme kicks so much butt, the original theme doesn't even compare at all, even though they use somewhat the same music.

As for modern stuff, I can't imagine Sailor Mercury without that high-pitched wobbly nervous voice of hers or Team Rocket's Meowth's "That's right!" It just isn't the same, man...

[I♥Sayumi]

I always watch anime subbed and I like it that way. The only time I watch a dubbed anime if it is Ghibli movie.