Anime: Subs or Dubs?
SmilingSword
Member Posts: 827
So lets start a fight,
wait I mean lets see what all you anime fans think about this one
wait I mean lets see what all you anime fans think about this one
- Anime: Subs or Dubs?35 votes
- Subtitles57.14%
- Dub overs11.43%
- Either or it doesn't really matter to me14.29%
- Don't care, don't watch Anime17.14%
3
Comments
They mess up the tone of the show and it some cases the dubbed version will go so far as to remove elements of the show it does not deem family friendly or whatever. "see dubbed one piece, where Sanji doesn't smoke and nobody ever dies, making Nami's story line completely pointless"
Of course there are exceptions to the rule the only good dubs I can think of are DBZ, Samurai Pizza Cats and maybe Pokemon.
Some of the greatest animes of all time fall completely flat if watched in their dubbed versions, see Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo and FLCL just to name a few.
As a rule of thumb you could say that, the older the Show is, the more likely any Dub will be a letdown.
I will admit I did watch one series dubbed once. But since the English dubbing sounds horribad and cheesy as hell, and the characters were mostly dumbasses, the cheesy dub fit very well. I've actually tried re-watching it un-dubbed, and the characters just don't sound dumb enough.
I like to learn Japanese from Anime and manga. I adore this language. This is why I always watch Anime with subs;)
Also, the voice acting in Japan has a far greater prominence than voice acting in most other countries. "Seiyuu", as they're called, do a wonderful business. It's amazing really, very often the voice acting in Anime is top-class.
For example, Hiroaki Hirata, the seiyuu of Sanji from One Piece @SmilingSword posted, is one of the best ever and my favourite.
Another example is Yamaguchi Kappei, the seiyuu for Usopp in One Piece and in the same time he's also the seiyuu of L from Death Note. It's like two different people have voiced these characters, but in fact it was one.
Then again, what @SmilingSword said seems unbelievable to me. DBZ dub is good? Seriously? With scipt being modified for no apparent reason, to replacing original BGM with shitty emotionless music? Really?
Only in funimation dub, Son Goku, just after becoming Super Saiyan, is presented as superhero of justice instead of vengenful warrior. Even parody verion is more accurate than what funimation has pulled off. At least there Goku mentions his name and fact of being SSJ.
Only in funimation dub, Vegeta was evil because Freeza (yes, Freeza, not Frieza. Is that too hard to spell?) ordered him so.
Only in funimation dub can utterly ruin Gohan's SSJ2 transformation with shitty monolouge (what, viewers were too dumb to understand what Gohan was going throught?) and shitty music.
Only in funimation dub, the most charismatic villain in the story sounds like a F.A.G (Freaky Alien Genotype)
Only funimation could do so poorly that parody fandub sounds more natural and fits characters more!
Only in funimation you dumb down character names for no apparent reason (It's not Kakarot, it's Kakarotto. It's not Vegito (Vegeta + ?), It's Vegetto (Vegeta + Kakarotto, dudes, he even says that in the panel of the manga!), Tenshinhan instead of Tien.... The list goes on.
I could've made much bigger list, if I ever has enough patience for this travesty of a dub.
Also I watched the last DBZ movie in japanese and found it just didn't feel right to me, I'm kinda attached to the horrible english voice acting for the show, anyways doesn't really matter anymore because I can't watch DBZ ever again because I've been spoiled by Team4Star.
If you don't know Team4Star, do yourself a favor and go to youtube and find their channel now.
Then watch all their stuff, then find out they only do one Hellsing abridged a year at Halloween, then try not to cry,
then cry alot.
But mostly I'll watch things in sub
Personally I generally don't like subs because I prefer to be able to concentrate on the movie, rather than having to read at the same time. That said, some (many?) dubs are so terrible that subs are preferable.
For fun (although not anime) try comparing the dub vs sub on Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. At times its like having two completely different movies!
Any fan subbing group worth it's salt does subbing better that all of the subbing I've seen on asian dvds and bluerays.
Really strange they just don't reach out and hire these people who basically do this for free.
Also more weirdness, I said Samurai Pizza Cats dub was better than it's sub and this is true, because when the footage was sold to an american company, it was sold RAW " which means without being subbed.".
The company knew of no one who could speak japanese, so they just made up random story lines over the footage and it turned out to be way better than the original.
The creators of Samurai Pizza Cats have even admitted the american abridged version was better than the original.
Some jokes are better executed in subs as opposed to dubs though. Take this scene from Steins Gate, first in Japanese, then in English:
[spoiler=Sub]
[spoiler=Dub]
The premise of the joke stays the same, but... Execution is way different, and personally, I find the Japanese one funnier.
Now, as for 'decent' dubs, which just offer an english soundset, it still varies a bit. I love the Ranma 1/2 Dub (Genma and Soun just sound wrong in Japanese... The English dub imho fits their personalities better), but I can't watch Full Metal Alchemist dubbed. The Dubbed voices in FMA were like sandpaper on my ears, to the point of 'I'm not watching this, even if it is a favourite'. I love the Cowboy Bebop dub (anyone who doesn't LIKE the English Dub should reevaluate their tastes, it's objectively good, though Edward can get annoying), and am neutral on the Trigun dub, for example... some voices were very, very good in the Trigun dub, some were questionable, some downright bad. In FMA, the original voices were extremely well cast, meaning the Dub was almost doomed to stink... I'm not convinced ANYONE could properly deliver Alex Louis Armstrong's lines in English without looking bad compared to the original. That is SERIOUS talent and range for a voice actor, his Serious Mode and Lighthearted Idiot Mode are both executed perfectly, AND perfectly fit the character. But this level of 'perfect fit' is pretty rare in any language.
Yes, Samurai Pizza Cats was amazing. Never bothered looking up the sub though, just watched the American 'We Have No Translation, So We're Gonna Just Comment On What Seems To Be Happening' Edition, which is legitimately hilarious, on more than one level once you find out they did indeed BS the entire thing. And the guy singing the theme song is sloshed.
Most dubs are terrible though I agree.
This is funny, because literally on non-Orthodox Easter I went to dinner with my friend's family, and spoke to him and his girlfriend about this. They weren't as snobby as some other sub-lovers I've encountered (who look at me like I have three heads when I say I like dubs), but were still surprised. My girlfriend and I both prefer dubs.
1. Me no speaka Japanese! I speaka American English. I enjoy being able to understand the inflections and grasp the emotions of a character that is speaking. A lot of people who claim that the original has "better voice acting" are in my opinion, full of #@%& because they don't understand it in the first place, so they just take it at face value. For all practical purposes, I understand that if you don't understand the language this is the same thing, but for some reason whenever I say I prefer dubs people tend to be snobbish about the voice-acting.
I honestly find characters more relatable when they are speaking in my tongue. Anime tends to over-melodramatic, but you still can understand a character's disposition better when you speak the same language.
2. I honestly haven't seen a poor dub of animes I've watched. To better understand Full List: Monster, Berserk, FMA Brotherhood, FMA, Gurren Lagann, Claymore, Death Note, Attack on Titan, Neon Genesis Evangelion (horrendous anime btw) and Yu Yu Hakusho. Has anyone watched these dubs and found them poor? I honestly have not had a problem with any of them.
3. Honestly, when it is an anime like Monster where it takes place in Eastern Europe, or Full Metal Alchemist where it takes place in fake-Germany, or the X-Men and Supernatural animes that take place in the States, all the characters speaking Japanese throws me off
4. I don't like the censorship in Western adaptations or dubs, and I wish they didn't do that.
or maybe I'm lazy and don't want to read XD
I am going to make an assumption about you here now though, don't get offended if it's way off mark. I assume you're mono-linguistic, that you only speak American English. This being the case, you are actually spoiled. You can get through your entire life only ever having to know your native language; all movies and cool series are in your language, it's the default language for computer/video games and a good majority of the internet is English too. Most likely you're entirely comfortable with this (and why shouldn't you be) but I think it's also put this weird idea in your head that learning other languages is hard.
Naturally this varies for people but the best way to learn something is, generally speaking, using it. You don't think people who only ever watch anime subbed pick up parts of the language? That they're unable to detect "bad voiceacting" and that emotion can't be conveyed since fluency isn't at 100%? I do see you said "a lot of people" rather than "all", but that generalization still seems off to me. Lets put a twist on this: do you think the perceived problem exists also for us non-native English speakers in mainstream entertainment media, that since we don't understand the language fully we can't appreciate said media fully? I doubt Hollywood would be making as much money off your coasts still if that was the case.
Personally I started learning English one year before school (6) by playing/watching, and in order to enjoy, games/tv series. English education didn't start until 4th grade (age 10). While I can't prove this, I dare say I could grasp when something was supposed to be funny, sad or witty to a degree at age 8, without having to "take things at face value" because of the subtitles, and that's long before I dare say my English was fluid. Actually yes. Of the series I've completed, that one is one of my favs. Dubbed. The fact that the dub is so horribad, the VA sounding cheesy as hell and the characters really dumb, is what makes it good. It fits so perfectly. Because lets face it, Kuwabara and Yusuke are total dumbasses. Welcome to the rest of the world. This is a problem literally everyone encounters when characters in their supposed countries all speak in American English. Or American English with horrible accents that everyone supposedly has... obviously all eastern Europeans are incapable of pronouncing W? Ugh.
A lot of people claim the series "Vikings" is quite good, but I personally can't find enjoyment in it. Yeah, them speaking Norwegian wouldn't be accurate, but it would be hella much more accurate still as it's evolved from Norse. And at least all names wouldn't be butchered in order to accomodate laziness/lack of interest in learning to pronounce said names. At least there are no horned helmets from the little I've seen.
Sorry about the rant thingie here, but text walls does seem to spawn more text walls eh? :P
Also, Russian dubs are usually awful.
When I watch an Anime, I listen to the Japanese that I want to learn and in the same time read the English that I want to impove.
Killing two birds with one stone,
I also disagree that you can't appreciate the emotion and inflections of a character if you are reading a subtitle, but I DO admit that you need to be a very fast reader to still get the full experience, IE be able to effortless go 'Zen', reading without reading, to the point where you aren't even actively aware you're hearing a foreign language. This doesn't help me learn any new languages, but I am VERY bad at picking up new things, especially languages. Tried several languages, no luck at all, despite actually being interested in linguistics. Not sure if it's my close-minded nature or just my being dumber than a sack of hammers. But anyways, if you can read without any effort/awareness, you won't have any issues, but if reading the subs requires any effort at all, you're going to get much less out of the voice acting.
Not all dubs are bad, but not all subs are really good enough to let you enjoy a show or movie. If the timing is really bad, it can be harder to follow whats going on.
I'm quite good at languages, written and spoken, but I'm no good at all gaining knowledge from simply reading and I'm about as handy as a potato. I'd probably give a nail positive hit points by hammering it while somehow making it move backwards.
Being close minded will usually result in reduced effort, or greatly reduced quality of effort put into new things. Close minded doesn't just mean you're a bigot/racist/judgmental turd, but it does make it more likely. I'm best at learning by reading I would wager, as I learn VERY poorly from mistakes, enough that it's a waste of my time to do 'trial and error' for most stuff. However, I can read a manual, and have a decent memory. I was clearly meant to go into trades, but since everyone else in my immediate family was smart, this wasn't really grasped, and many years were 'wasted' on pursuits leading nowhere. That said, I don't believe most things are a complete waste, you never know when you'll need a bit of something you picked up in a previous life, so to speak. I'm decently well read, which would be very useful in certain trades, especially as in my area, people good at reading or math were encouraged heavily to do anything BUT trades. I always wondered if Guidance Councilors REALLY want to have their brakes worked on by the dumbest person in the school, or a bridge built by the kid eating glue in the corner.
So, yeah. They are shrieking children. -_-;;