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Can you think of a reason, why you dislike/hate dubs?

Carna

Banned
Originally, as a 90s kid. I primarily watched anime on tv (Dragonball, Monster Rancher. Digimon) and transitioned to watching subs in the 2000s. after the dub of Naruto. I noticed the reuse of the same voice actors for everything and quickly got annoyed with it. was it because I preferred Ocean Group? hate jyb and Yuri lowenthal, or did I just prefer to watch anime with the original intention in mind.

But whenever I try to give a modern dub a chance, I just can't enjoy it. the voice actors are uneven, sometimes there's one voice actor that has a good voice/range/can emote. but for one, there's a bunch of crappy other ones who aren't up for the job, but probably got it out of nepotism.

I tried watching the dub of Magi, but I couldn't stomach any of the voice actors besides morgiana, alababa's voice lacked any type of distinction and range, it sounded like he was forcing out a hoarsed/whiny voice. the other voices just sounded generic and substandard.

deku from MHA's voice, is just uninspired. dub fanatics will just hold any dub actor in high regard because they are the "main character" of a popular series, Funimation happens to dub. or am I wrong and just don't "get" dubs.

Look at this scene from little witch academia, and try to tell if sucy's actress. is actually delivering and emoting her lines properly. It just doesn't sound right:
 

Hinedorf

Banned
I love dubs because I like to watch rather than read. If I am ever given a choice I take dubs. To the annoying elitist community who frowns on dubs that's your problem.

My problem is not with subs/dubs, it's with the people who feel like there is some purity in watching it with subtitles because you get all the actual words without any censorship which is I guess really important to the purity of the art......you know the purity OF A MOTHERFUCKING CARTOON.

I have zero problems watching anime with subs but it's never a desired preference, to each their own!
 

O-N-E

Member
I wouldn't say that subs are guaranteed to be better, but they're the safer bet so I nearly always go with that.

Last time I went with dubs was with Space Dandy, and that was pretty good.
 
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HarryKS

Member
The music's too loud. Can't hear other people.

Edit: fudge, completely misread that. Missed OP. My bad.
 
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#Phonepunk#

Banned
ill watch dubs or subs either is fine.

i took several years Japanese language in college. it was eye opening and explained a lot of things to me. for instance Japanese words are much more compact than US English, you can say a lot with fewer characters, and fewer words. this makes it so when they translate it into English, they have to cram in more words, the pacing is off, etc. this is really noticable when characters just run through their lines super fast in order to match the animation.
 
Dubs used to be absolute shit aside from some of the big budget releases. They have gotten way better now though I still prefer subs most of the time
 

Werewolf Jones

Gold Member
Dub quality in the 2000s was the apex, decent voice acting talent and didn't try really hard on over pronunciation. It's pretty bad now.

Btw anyone who says only dub VAs use the same voices needs to watch more anime in Japanese. A lot of VAs in Japan are auto pilot as fuck.
 
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GymWolf

Member
For me anime is only japan language, i cringe hard when i listen to eng dub or even worst italian dubbed anime...

Japanese put their souls into anime dubbing.

Only exception is slam dunk that is legit better in italian (hard to believe i know).
 
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GreyHorace

Member
I'm not against the idea of English dubs, but in my opinion most of them suck.

A lot of English voice acting is not good and fails to capture the nuance and subtleties that the original Japanese seiyuu convey in their performances. Not to mention that back in the 90's when anime was starting to become mainstream anime dubs would cast voice actors that didn't fit the character. It was particularly grating when they'd cast high pitched male actors as characters with lower and manlier voices in the original Japanese audio.

That's not to say there aren't any good English dubs. I thought the dub for One Punch Man was excellent. Another excellent dub is the Media Blasters release for Rurouni Kenshin. The guy they cast as Kenshin was hilarious.
 

davepoobond

you can't put a price on sparks
For animation I’m fine with them, generally. Unless it is some historical piece that is important to watch in the native language.

You’re reading a translation or you’re hearing it. The animation is originally already having voice overs so it doesn’t really matter to me what language it is. I prefer it in one I don’t have to multi task as pay attention 100% of the time like when it is subtitled.

Live action will always be original language with subtitles. You feel the inflections in the actors voice and that is important. Also the mouths aren’t moving out of sync with the audio.
 
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I don't watch anime but I like Shenmue and Yakuza.
I just couldn't picture myself playing those games without the original japanese voiceover.
 

kunonabi

Member
Modern dub actors just arent very good. There are some older dubs that are great and in some cases better than the original Japanese voices but these days it's just nails on a chalkboard. The fact that dubs are taking more and more liberties and putting more of the translators' personal politics into things doesnt help matters.
 

Happosai

Hold onto your panties
I have no problem with all dubs. I like both. I wish someone could explain to me why in most Yu Yu Hakusho dubs, Kuwabara has the voice of a 55-year old chain smoker (he's supposed to be 14-years old...). The Crayon Shin Chan dub was a chalked up with Western 2000's pop-culture references that I nearly dismissed it until I got to hear the original Japanese.
 

Happosai

Hold onto your panties
Dubs vary between good and bad. I guess, in my case, if the dialogue in the dubbed language literally distracts me from the overall story...I switch to subbed (eg -- Dark Cat OVA, Cyber City Oedo, or live -action).
 

johntown

Banned
Unless it is an anime I cannot wait for like Attack on Titan then I wait for dubs. My main reason is I don't want to read.
 

Yoda

Member
I generally don't like subtitles, but w/anime the translations usually suck and it leads to insanely awkward dialogue.
 

DESTROYA

Member
Don’t mind dubs as long as they are done right, some are so distracting and awful it‘s enough for me to not want to watch.
 

Happosai

Hold onto your panties
I have no problem with all dubs. I like both. I wish someone could explain to me why in most Yu Yu Hakusho dubs, Kuwabara has the voice of a 55-year old chain smoker (he's supposed to be 14-years old...). The Crayon Shin Chan dub was a chalked up with Western 2000's pop-culture references that I nearly dismissed it until I got to hear the original Japanese.

I still can't figure out why they did that and why people say the dub of YYH is one of the best in anime with that voice 😮 In the Japanese version, his voice sounds closer to a teenager.
 

GAMETA

Banned
I don't have a problem with brazilian portuguese dubs in anime and cartoons in general... I also don't have a problem with the original voices in american cartoons, they are awesome. But why are your anime dubs so fucking bad, man?
 

Doom85

Member
I generally like most dubs, at least if we're talking ones that were made in the 2000's to now. Go to the dubs made in the 90's and earlier, yeah there's a few good ones but quality control was not on point then.

This is just for anime dubs. Live-action dubs, no thanks. Even if the performances of one were to be solid, I just always notice the lines and lips don't match.
 

sol_bad

Member
I don't like anime dubs because the voice actors feel emotionless. I might be wrong but I think it comes down to how the shows are recorded.

In Japan the actors are together in the recording booth like a radio drama they act and emote together. Where as in the west they have each actor stand in a booth alone and just say lines over and over.
 

Happosai

Hold onto your panties
Authenticity doesn't matter if it works for the character. Anything Chris Sabat touches is gold.

And the dialogue... *chef's kiss*



Generally speaking, the YYH dub as a whole isn't that bad ,to me. I just never understood why they put such a weird voice to Kuwabara. Btw, off topic...I see Kawajiri/Neo-Tokyo thumbnail as your avatar...much respect. ✌
 
By far, I think it's all about everything that's lost in translation, mostly figuratively.

It's like this: you can watch 'The Irishman' and you can play the 'Yakuza' series and as much as the subject they explore is relatively similar, they couldn't be more different than one another. In the same vein, japanese voice acting just fits anime and its quirks, whereas english rarely does.
 

Pejo

Member
I moved away from dubs about 5 years ago, when I saw how much nuance and emotion japanese VA's give their parts. English dubs are usually all from the same group of people, and they're what I liken to "drama club nerds", who overact everything and are bombastic about every single line. If you want a perfect example of awful dubs, look at the 2-3 second clips in FIre Emblem Heroes. It's amazing to me that even though I barely understand the language, I can get the emotion from a VA in most native japanese movies/anime. The Studio Ghibli movies were especially notable for this, as the english dubs tend to have this run-on format where they just keep yammering to fill mouth animation, I guess, but all the characters have this feeling that they're late for something and reading off of a sheet of paper. Not to say every dub is bad, I still really like Full Metal Alchemist and a few others, but overall the japanese really do a bang up job. I guess the profession has a lot more notoriety over there though, so I guess it makes sense.
 

haxan7

Volunteered as Tribute
Too hard to eat and read subtitles at the same time, especially with anime where I have zero chance at understanding the language without translation. I’m pretty sensual with my food.
 
some anime, like Cowboy Bebop and Space Dandy, is more suitable for dub due to it leans more towards Western culture. but a lot of others that's more Japanese culture focus feels kinda cumbersome in dub. plus often times the JP VAs are just better in terms of their performance.
 

poppabk

Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
I know this is mainly talking about anime dubs, but I have been watching a lot of foreign shows on Netflix and I have to say that the dubbing is excellent. One show I didn't realize was French and I actually restarted my computer because I thought I was having some audio delay issue because the mouths didn't quite match up. The only issue I have is the limited number of voice actors, you start to hear the same voices from show to show.
 
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