DUB vs SUB

As the person at the top has said: Dub is good if you're doing something else and can't properly watch the screen.

Personally (and I hope I don't offend anyone), I pretty much hate English dubs for anime, all of the dubs I've heard sound so annoyingly fake/forced for some reason and it's just awkward. I don't think American/English-speaking Voice Actors suck because they do a pretty great job when they're voicing a character that originated in an English-speaking country and in some cases, characters that originated in other countries but for some reason, they sound silly while dubbing anime. I've always wondered why is that, it's a mystery to me. I have yet to hear an English anime dub that I like.

I'm from a Spanish-speaking country (latin Spanish, not Spain's Spanish) and I think the dubbing here is really great (mostly it's the Mexican voice actors who shine the most, but there are some good Chilean/Venezolan dub actors) and that the dub here is the second best after the original Japanese (and in some cases, better) so I actually really like the Latin American dub... But in the end I prefer subtitles because sometimes the Latin dub goes with American name changes or different/so-so translated versions of the openings and endings and I'm not too fond of that and also some Japanese puns and other things can only be found when listening to the original (and reading the translator's notes when you yourself don't know Japanese, lol).

As an extra note: Spain's Spanish dub is pretty bad, actually. Some Latin dub elitists will tell you that it's because of the accent but that's not actually true (yeah, it's a little awkward at times because we're not used to their pronunciations but if you're open-minded, you won't start/agree with the petty rants those elitists always come up with over accent). The truth is that most of the times it's because the person they cast doesn't really fit the character/doesn't sound good playing the character or I'm guessing isn't a very skilled voice actor. Also they (not sure how common this is these days) used to take the name changing to the next level and often came up with awkward names for the characters or literally translated things...

But some dubs made in Spain were actually good, personally I listened to the Spain's dub of Mermaid Melody, Captain Tsubasa and Pretty Cure (first and second season) and I actually liked them and can say they were pretty good. Mermaid Melody has never been translated to Latin American Spanish but I think that them beating the dub made by Spain would have been tough: the songs weren't 100% accurately translated from Japanese but their adaptations were pretty good and the singing was also nice, they scored a hit because they didn't do unnecessary and awkward name/opening changes and the dub actresses/actors suited the characters. I first watched Captain Tsubasa with the Latin dub but I was 3 or 4 years old so I don't remember how good it was... but last year I watched a couple of episodes with Spain's dub and I liked it... I switched to Japanese with subs because it was easier to find the episodes like that and because I wanted to watch/hear the series without the American name changes Spain's dub went with. Finally, a Mexican dubbing studio tried to dub Pretty Cure but the few episodes they dubbed were terrible: the VA were bad (I'm guessing not very skilled/experienced too), for some reason they made the enormous mistake that Spain often did of literally translating names (they translated Cure Black as "Cure Negra" and Cure White as "Cure Blanca" which are part-literal translations of their names and honestly it sounded stupid, thank goodness they didn't translate the "Cure" part literally as "Cura" but they still screwed things up... Also the - catchy btw -part of the opening that says "Purikya, purikyua/purikyua, purikyua, purikyua, purikyua/ puriti de kyua kyua, futari wa PURIKYUA!" as "somos bellas, somos bellas/ somos bellas, somos bellas, somos bellas, somos bellas lalalasomethingelseIdon'trememberhere PRETTY CURE!"... just awful... p.s. "somos bellas" means "we're pretty/beautiful", it sounds pretentious and silly doesn't it? Also the rest of the opening's translation wasn't exactly great either) and it was just a disaster... I think that dub is one of the main reasons Pretty Cure isn't really popular in Mexico and all of Latin America. Spain's dub on the other hand was actually decent and enjoyable though the Japanese one is 80 time better.

I also watched all of Code Lyoko (~~yeah, I know Code Lyoko isn't anime but I wanted to mention it~~) in Spain's dub and I loved it! The Latin American dub isn't bad but I preferred the one made by Spain because I thought the voices they gave the characters there gave them more personality and charisma. I actually think the Spanish dub of Code Lyoko is the best one out there (even better than the original French were Odd sounded like a girl lol)... though I'd like to listen to the Japanese dub.