Poll: Anime - Dub or sub?

solemnwar

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I preferred subs mostly because so many animes had AWFUL voice acting for women. They kept trying to replicate the Japanese sounds and it... really didn't work.

I dunno if they're better about it now or not. I dip into dubs occasionally on the DVDs but the only one I've actually ever liked is the one for Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt. Mostly because Garterbelt is a HYSTERICALLY over-the-top southern black man and it's pure gold (don't much care for the way Stocking is dubbed tho).

I know some people argue "well the Japanese voices can often be really badly voice acted!" but, see, here's the thing: I don't actually know Japanese! So I can't tell if they're bad! (Unless they're being EGREGIOUSLY terrible) Which makes it a much better experience overall than with English dubs, in which I can DEFINTELY tell they're bad.. I'm a very quick reader (I read a five-part series in as many days and if I wasn't awful anime trash, video-game-player, and employed it would've probably been 2 days) so the subs don't really distract me much.
 

Shoggoth2588

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I strongly prefer subs over dubs but there are exceptions of course. Hetalia was much better in English I thought because of all of the comedy accents that just weren't present in the Japanese language version. Then there's DBZ which just sounds odd to me in Japanese...well, Goku sounds odd to me in Japanese, but that's almost all nostalgia talking. Some anime from the 80's are hilarious in English, like Devil Man and Fist of the North Star which just have the most inappropriate swearing and tone of all time to great comedic effect.
 

Hochmeister

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As a native English speaker I can easily tell when the voice acting in a dub is bad. No such problem with subs. Furthermore, the Japanese voice actors tend to be a lot better giving appropriate inflection to the high energy reactions and rants common in anime. So, 99% of the time I'll prefer subbed. However, if the dub is really good I'll watch that over sub. Dragonball Z, Hellsing, and Baccano! for example. Sadly it's very rare that I find a dub I like, and not really worth the effort to look as subs are easier to produce.

On a side note, I'm continually amazed at how abridgers like TeamFourStar etc... often nail the inflection and delivery better than most professional dubs. If the official dubs were all done as well as Hellsing, DBZ, or Yu-gi-oh abridged I'd prefer them over subs by far.
 

Starbird

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thejboy88 said:
For as long as anime has been seen in countries outside of Japan, there is one question that always seems to be asked of it. Is it better in the original Japanese, or in whatever local language it's dubbed into?

So, I'd like your thoughts on the matter. Now obviously you'll have different views depending on what anime you watch, as each title will inevitably have different standards of voice acting in either Japanese or your local language, but if you had to pick just one, one way of generally experiencing it, which would it be?

And I apologise if this is a thread that's been done before.
It depends on the quality of the dub.

Dragon Ball Z: Fantastic voicing. Honestly prefer it to the Japanese.
Bleach and Naruto: not bad dubs at all. Some silly delivery and pronunciations that make me cringe, but pretty damn good overall.
One Piece: Subs all the way.
 

V da Mighty Taco

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Casual Shinji said:
V da Mighty Taco said:
With that said, the first person to tell me that Black Lagoon, Hellsing Ultimate, or uncut DBZ is somehow better in Japanese gets kicked through the fucking moon. You cannot seriously tell me that squeaky Goku somehow sounds better than booming-voice Goku or that the English voices of Revvy and Alucard aren't absolute perfection without me calling you a liar right to your face. I'm way too much of a voice-acting nut to hear such obscenities without blowing my top.
Well, prepare me for launch then, because when it comes to Revy I definately prefer the original voice. Yeah, when she goes into engrish mode it's ghastly, but she has a way more subdued vicious tone to her voice when compared to the dub. But then I feel the same about Spike in Cowboy Bebop; English Spike really tries to sound cool, while original Spike sounds naturally cool and laid back.


To be serious though, I like the fact that you were able to point to something like a specific inflection or tone as the reason for your preference. As mentioned earlier, I'm a bit of a VA nut and I'm not just talking anime, so to hear a specific explanation like that instead of a broad, generalized one does bring a smile to my face. :)

Rewatched a couple scenes from the sub, and I still gotta stick to my original opinion that the dub is much better. I do think I overrated the dub a bit (haven't seen it in a long time, and it's certainly not on Hellsing Ultimate's level of voice-acting), though I do still quite like it - especially since I think that the rash, aggressive, and abrasive tone of the dub's voice fits Revy much better than the more subdued tone of the original. Of course, all the Engrish really catapults the sub into over-the-top cringeworthiness as well, which sucks when there is so much of it.
 

Starbird

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madwarper said:
Dubs or subs? The correct answer is Manga. I'd rather read something at my own pace, than to be forced to spend the 20+ minutes watching the same amount of content.

Though, lacking a Manga, if the dub is good, then dub. If the dub is crap (which is usually the case) or if there simply isn't a dub (since a lot of great anime never gets translated), then sub is the only choice.
This also depends.

Naruto and Bleach were both (in my opinion, and obviously skipping fillers) better in the anime. Especially Bleach, which added a *lot* of good backstory and details in the anime before it went off the rails after the Aizen arc. Dragon Ball and DBZ were 100% superior in anime form.

On the other hand the One Piece anime is so insanely padded I generally just get the manga. And let's not even go into anime that completely changes and wrecks it's source material (original Hellsing and FMA) or is completely inferior (Ruroni Kenshin).
 

ecoho

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Starbird said:
thejboy88 said:
For as long as anime has been seen in countries outside of Japan, there is one question that always seems to be asked of it. Is it better in the original Japanese, or in whatever local language it's dubbed into?

So, I'd like your thoughts on the matter. Now obviously you'll have different views depending on what anime you watch, as each title will inevitably have different standards of voice acting in either Japanese or your local language, but if you had to pick just one, one way of generally experiencing it, which would it be?

And I apologise if this is a thread that's been done before.
It depends on the quality of the dub.

Dragon Ball Z: Fantastic voicing. Honestly prefer it to the Japanese.
Bleach and Naruto: not bad dubs at all. Some silly delivery and pronunciations that make me cringe, but pretty damn good overall.
One Piece: Subs all the way.
agreed if its done well dub is great like cowboy bebop, outlaw star, and most of the gundam series.
sometimes it doesn't matter cause they sound about the same like vandred.
Then there are the ones like one piece and zero no tsukaima were the dubing is so bad it actually screws the show not only in delivery but in the tone of the characters.
 

maninahat

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It depends on the anime, basically. If the anime is a comedy, and is likely to be filled with puns or humourous references to things particular to Japanese culture, I prefer a dubbed anime. Subbed comedies have to rely on reams of explanatory foot notes to explain the joke or reference, whereas a dub just replaces the joke or reference entirely with a more universally understood pun.

If it is serious, I prefer subs, because I tend to find the teenage/child American accents annoying when they have to do excessive crying or shrieking (which always seems to be the case in anime). There is a tendency for dubbers to phone it in as well, which might add to the humour of a comedy, but undercut the drama of a serious story.
 

Treeberry

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It depends.

I usually prefer subs because there are a lot of dubs with crappy dubbing and I can't be bothered to sift through them all. So subs are default. Besides I like the clarity of how subtitles - even with a dubbed or English version of something I like to have subtitles on. The problem with that, though, is that the subtitles and the dub don't always match up and sometimes the dialogue can be almost or completely different. So, subs, again.

Besides I have a hearing issue* and I don't like loud television/music anyway. I'm a considerate neighbour unlike some neighbours I've had.

There are some anime where I think the dub is genuinely better than the original - such as Outlaw Star. Some of the original voices made me wince when I tried to watch it in Japanese. Then again there are some where the choice is a lose-lose situation either way - the original Sailor Moon had horrible voices in both English and Japanese. Sadly I can't watch the later seasons that I missed when I was a kid because of that >_<

*I just want to say that it really annoys me when games don't have a subtitle option or when you can't activate subtitles until you've already begun the game and had to watch cinematics. Even without my 'issue' some games have awful acting, voices or are just unclear anyway.
 

Aesir23

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It really depends on the anime but overall I prefer listening to it dubbed.

I just like to be able to actually focus on what is happening with the characters and simply be able to listen to what's being said without having to concentrate on reading subs because it doesn't allow me to really get into the anime. That and I just find it annoying to have to almost constantly pause or "rewind" because a particular sub went by way too fast for me to read. This is also going to sound really bad but I also often find the chipmunk variety of female voices to be extremely annoying due to my dislike of high pitched noises.

However, I will watch subs if a dub is either really bad or not available.
 

evilengine

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from my experience I favour Sub over Dub in most instances. Dub often sounds incredibly detached, like the actor (regardless of how good they are in other things) never seem very involved in what they're saying, literally as though they're just reading the script, in many cases the voice sounds rushed as though they're trying to cram in as much dialogue as possible. The last major anime I saw was The Wind Rises, it was the dubbed version, and whenever characters talk in english their lines never seemed to run smoothly, rather it sounded like they were changing subject several times within the same sentence, all with the same dead-pan delivery. It's hard to explain.

Dubbed has it's uses, I suppose anime's aimed at kids (Pokemon and the like) don't really matter that much, since a squeaky kid in either language is just as annoying, though personally a shrill Japanese child is somehow slightly more tolerable than a shrill American child, not that there's a huge difference.
 

infohippie

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maninahat said:
It depends on the anime, basically. If the anime is a comedy, and is likely to be filled with puns or humourous references to things particular to Japanese culture, I prefer a dubbed anime. Subbed comedies have to rely on reams of explanatory foot notes to explain the joke or reference, whereas a dub just replaces the joke or reference entirely with a more universally understood pun.
I have the opposite opinion on that, I'd much rather have the original joke and learn the context than have the joke changed to a different one. On top of this, I actually occasionally have trouble clearly understanding some American accents, to the point I sometimes have to go back over a scene again and again to figure out what was said. Occasionally I'll try half a dozen times, still not understand what they said, and just give up. Obviously, subs don't have this problem. And this isn't just an issue for me with dubbed anime, I run into the same problem with American TV shows too.
 

PsiChaos

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Generally speaking, I prefer subbed anime to dubbed, but there are times where I prefer dubs over the sub. Generally it's when the setting the show takes place in makes more sense with English speakers, like FMA or Baccano, though there are times when the dub actually has a lot of effort put into it and is better than the Japanese voices. In some cases, the dub is just so bootleg it's comedy gold.
 

Timeless Lavender

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I loved both. Some animes characters sound better with subs while others sound better with dubs in terms of their voices matching their personality.(for example mephisto from blue exorcist for subs and Edward from full mental alchemist for dubs)
 

Vicarious Reality

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Subbbed
Watching movies without subtitles is kind of weird, but watching them dubbed into a language i do not speak is even weirder
 

Edl01

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Dubs are over-hated. People dismiss fantastic dubs like Baccanno and Bebop because of a few bad apples like Higurashi, where most of the time modern dubs are quite high quality. With that said...I can go either way, I usually listen to both versions, and then decide my favorite. For Panty and Stocking and Gurren Lagann I prefer dub, while I couldn't imagine watching a show like K-ON or Bakemonogatari dubbed, but most of the time I don't think it makes a difference.

So I guess I could be put into the, "Either", category, which I think should be added to the poll since I don't think, "I don't know", describes my position, which is that the answer depends entirely on the show that I'm watching.

Now as I feel I got a bit serious towards the end of my second paragraph I'm gonna try to end on a bit more of a lighthearted note - a few weeks ago the first episode of Yuri Kuma Arashi came out, and the fansub for episode 1 contained the fantastic line, "Everything is going to be daijoubu", which had me rolling on the floor laughing for several minutes afterwards. The moral of the story being - a lot of unofficial fan translations have just as many issues as the dubs that people complain about.
 

Ishal

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I don't watch much anime, since it's not really my scene. But I will say all that I have watched I prefer dubbed.

After spending time with friends who are straight weebs, it's become apparent to me that if you're going to be into anime, you have to like, or at least be okay with the culture. And I'm just not.

I don't like the way a lot of anime is written, it's very repetitive. That combined with how the Japanese language is, it sounds odd at the best of times and cringeworthingly robotic at the worst of times. My friend told me that the Seiyu are trained in the Kabuki tradition, which is very different from spoken Japanese. Apparently this is why everything is so exaggerated and the tone is all over the place, something I can't stand. The tropes are pretty bad, too.

It's been said that the Japanese and English languages don't mesh very well. That seems to be the case. But even so, I'd still prefer a dub. Best way for me to like an Anime is to Westernize the shit out of it. Or, to put it another way. Strip away everything a weeb loves, and replace it with everything a weeb hates. Now it's right up my alley.
 

Johnny Novgorod

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Edl01 said:
Dubs are over-hated. People dismiss fantastic dubs like Baccanno and Bebop because of a few bad apples like Higurashi, where most of the time modern dubs are quite high quality.
Oh I've heard Bebop. It sucks compared to the original. Completely retools Spike's character.
 

RebornKusabi

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I got dubs every time I can because I don't speak Japanese. The only time I watch subbed movies or Tv shows is if they're live action like The Raid series and Pan's Labyrinth. For anime however, it's animated and there a ton of great voice actors out there that do their jobs as well as Japanese voice actors (seiyuu?) do. In fact my, for a lot of my favorite anime (Cowboy Bebop, Outlaw Star, Blue Gender and Attack on Titan) the characters are usually Caucasian or at the very least native English speakers so hearing Japanese leave their mouths is cognitively weird for me unless there is an in-universe narrative reason for it. Having people named Erin Yeager speaking Japanese when it's stated in that world that the Asian countries were hit first.

I don't know, it is just my preference and I've made up my mind but I know dub fans like me are in the minority.