Why is it always subs over dubs?

[Rafe]

I think the Japanese voice actors are better for the job most the time, maybe because it's a part of their culture and may seem alien to English speaking voice actors.

There are the exceptions of Full Metal Alchemist, Blood + and Dragon Ball Z which have fantastic English dubs.

 

[LadyRhian]

Three things I've noticed:

1)For some reason Japanese voices speaking Japanese fits alot better, and just sounds awesome with all the tone they hit.

2) the people who do the voice-overs can never do justice to the characters

3)After a while (at least for me), my voice reading the subs in my head merged with the voices of the characters so it was like the best of both worlds in my head

Oh my, there are some really bad dubs out there. There was one about a bunch of female spacers, who, at one point, need to move a car. So they get the one who can drive at the wheel, and since her legs aren't long enough to reach the pedals, they send the smallest one to push the pedals as the other lady drives. In the Japanese Sub, it was explained that, since she was the smallest, she could better fit down there. In english dub it was "Get your fat ass down there and push those pedals!" It's been so long since I saw that one that I don't remember the title, unfortunately.

There are also companies (in England) that actually *add* curses to the English Dub simply to make the anime seem like it's for older teens/adults.

And anyone who lived through the late 70's and the 80's remembers some pretty godawful dubs shown on TV. Battle of the Planets (aka Science Ninja Team Gatchaman), or the even worse "Phoenix Force" (of which so much was cut out, they had to add in a cutesy robot named 7-Zark-7 and his robot dog 1-Rover-1 to actually make up the time from all the footage they cut out of episodes). Star Blazers (aka Space Battleship Yamato), which was frankly eviscerated by the Dub. And then there was "Robotech", three unrelated series dubbed to be parts of all the same series. I admit, I watched Robotech when I was a kid, but I never knew it was supposed to be three different series until I actually got online. (The three series were Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross and Genesis Climber Mospeada. Originally, all they had in common was mecha).

 

[Phoenixlight]

I prefer dubs if they're done properly so I can watch what's actaully happening on screen rather than reading the text.

 

[the_tramp]

In my time I've watched Fullmetal Alchemist, Death Note, Ghost in the Shell (films and tv), Zombie Loan, pokemon and several anime movies. All of these except pokemon and Fullmetal Alchemist I watched in Japanese with subtitles and felt that I *got* the story better, but then again I tend to watch English language films with subtitles anyway so that I don't miss anything.

Pokemon I watched back in the day on kids tv so knew no alternative so can't comment here.

Fullmetal Alchemist I don't feel as though I missed out on the story and when I eventually bought Fullmetal Alchemist the Movie: Conqueror of Shamballa I switched to Japanese and subs to tell the difference and couldn't differentiate the characters' voices (which can't quickly be expected I guess whereas I knew the English voices due to having watched 51 episodes of it). Also the little differences in translation annoyed me, if I remember correctly the subtitles had Führer Bradley as King Bradley. I looked it up and his name is "Kingu Buraddorei" so it *should* be King but Führer just sounds better and more fitting.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Dubs are shit. They're produced cheaply, with poor voice direction and worse actors. There's a reason that you don't get the big talents of english language voice acting like Tara Strong and Phil LaMarr in dubs. Because they can't afford them.

Sentence structure and emphasis is also different in different languages, that means that things take a different amount of time to say in different languages, which means that a scene written to contain a particular set of dialogue in one language (and to match visuals to dialog and emphasis for dramatic effect) will not match up in another language. This leads to dub scripts being awkward mangled versions of the English language, containing phrases that no-one would ever use if speaking normally.

So, dubs contain badly written dialogue performed by bottom of the barrel "actors", why would you voluntarily listen to them?

 

[Casual Shinji]

Japanese and English are very different languages. That's why Japanese stories with English voices just don't mix very well and vice versa.

It does depend however on what kind of show you're watching; if it's a show for 5 to 10 year olds, then dubbing is the way to go since children can't read that fast while still focussing on what's onscreen. But if it's a show that deals a lot with Japanese culture and characteristics, then dubbing seriously ruines it.

There are a lot of really old cartoons, both American and Japanese, that I would prefer to watch dubbed, but only for the sake of nostalgia.
Other than that I want to see movies and shows in their original language. Thankfully I live in Holland where the large majority of foreign media is untouched.

 

[Sgt. Dante]

I don't really have a problem with dubs, just the stupid voices that they give some of the characters. If it's done well I think it's better than subs.

 

[Talendra]

Dubs are improving for the most part, it used to be incredibly rare that a dub would not be absolutely horrendous. Now there are some pretty good dubs too, but still alot of them just sound cheesy, or just plain wrong.

 

[Zannah]

Firstly, If you really like anime, learn japanese. (It's not that hard, or so I have been told)
Secondly, a lot of the dubs out there are (just like the subs anyway) made by fans. And while those fans more often than not have the ability to type subtitles in proper english, not so many of them are professional voice actors, which leads to a lot of fandubs just being god-awful.

 

[AlphaOmega]

Because the few series I watch (Gundam mostly) are mostly done by the same group so every series has a lot of same sounding actors, breaks immersion.

 

[Jonluw]

I won't speak for other people, but personally I prefer to get the anime in it's purest form, and the closest thing I can get to that without teaching myself japanese and watching it raw is to find anime subbed. It allows me to get the purest, original experience and watch the anime how it's originally intended on being watched. That's why whenever I watch my anime, I look for subs first and foremost.

This, I also read most books in English, for the same reason. Also I think Japanese is a more interesting language than English.

And while those squeaky girl voices can be cute in Japanese (maybe just because I can't understand it) They are ridiculously annoying in English.

 

[h3lblad3]

If I recall correctly, I once read someone's complaint that subbed anime had a fatal flaw.

And that flaw was that the subbers had troubles themselves.
His/Her example was the high level of cursing in subbed anime.

They noted that while the character may speak relatively upset words, some of those words are the equivalent of an English speaker saying "darn".

Firstly, If you really like anime, learn japanese. (It's not that hard, or so I have been told)

That depends completely on several factors. For one, it would be much easier for someone who speaks a more similar language. For another, your ability to pick up languages.

There is a lot more to the language than most western anime lovers seem to realize especially if they only speak one language.

 

[thePyro_13]

I won't speak for other people, but personally I prefer to get the anime in it's purest form, and the closest thing I can get to that without teaching myself japanese and watching it raw is to find anime subbed. It allows me to get the purest, original experience and watch the anime how it's originally intended on being watched. That's why whenever I watch my anime, I look for subs first and foremost.

This, I also read most books in English, for the same reason. Also I think Japanese is a more interesting language than English.

And while those squeaky girl voices can be cute in Japanese (maybe just because I can't understand it) They are ridiculously annoying in English.

Gotta agree with ya. I prefer subs because they maintain the culture better than dubs(which often replace words to make them more western, defeating the point of watching Japanese media).

Another reason I avoid dubs is because every single guy sounds like goku. and every single girl sounds like nails on a chalkboard. The voice actors they get for dubs have no range. Its the same voice for every character. I've seen a few episodes of bleach in dub and in Japanese. the characters have so much more depth in Japanese. They sounds like they have emotions, even if I cannot understand most of what they're saying.

I've had people tell me that watching the screen and reading the subs is too difficult. But once you get used to it, you don't even notice the subs. Your mind makes it seamless.

 

[Tiswas]

Personally I prefer Subbed over dubbed. Especially when you look at what happened with One Piece (even Funi's version.) so so terrible.

I was so glad when they kept the Japanese VA for Unlimited Cruise and had them subbed.

 

[bluechujelly]

I prefer subbed over dubbed because most of the time the english localization's dub picks the wrong voices for the characters, eg. Sunohara in the new Clannad english dub. Stupid whingy english voice that sounds as though his balls haven't even dropped yet.
Another problem is the stressing of certain syllables, which is largely ignored (or often not possible) when translated to english.

I also prefer fansubs over any official subs simply because the fans have taken the time to translate into more natural sounding sentences, and aren't afraid to use some basic Japanese words and honorifics which are actually voiced by the people speaking. That definitely helps tie the text to the speech.
Mind you, I watched death note dubbed, and really enjoyed that.

Oh, and they all sound like americans, and I have a strong dislike for any american accent.

 

[Seneschal]

If I recall correctly, I once read someone's complaint that subbed anime had a fatal flaw.

And that flaw was that the subbers had troubles themselves.
His/Her example was the high level of cursing in subbed anime.

They noted that while the character may speak relatively upset words, some of those words are the equivalent of an English speaker saying "darn".

Firstly, If you really like anime, learn japanese. (It's not that hard, or so I have been told)

That depends completely on several factors. For one, it would be much easier for someone who speaks a more similar language. For another, your ability to pick up languages.

There is a lot more to the language than most western anime lovers seem to realize especially if they only speak one language.

Actually, that a western viewer speaks a language similar to Japanese is very unlikely. Japanese is part of the Altaic language family (well, it may be. Linguists are still discussing it), which roughly encompasses languages like Korean, Mongolian, Turkish and Manchu. It has next to no similarity with English and other indo-european languages in terms of grammar, though I found its grammar extremely simple.

However, it's not just about learning how to put together a sentence; it has some pretty crazy-sounding idiomatic phrases that are almost impossible to translate correctly without adding footnotes (a translator's equivalent of saying: "I give up!").

Actually, I really like the notes that come with some fansubs - though the translation may not be simplified and streamlined like the dub, it usually adds some nice cultural info that you wouldn't understand from a literal translation and that would be flat-out removed from a dub, like explaining an expression, a joke or a reference to local culture/geography/beliefs. I know many people that watch dubs think it's easier, but they're basically getting half-baked remakes, or even biased interpretations (I've seen a lot of dubs that changed the entire plot line just to make it more kid-friendly or whatever).

And I generally oppose to dubs of any kind. Where I come from, people regularly speak two or three languages, usually with decent accents, and all our media is subbed (except cartoons). In the neighboring Italy, they've been dubbing everything since the fifties, and although almost everyone knows English, they're notoriously bad at pronouncing it.

EDIT:

Vampire hunter D: bloodlines is an anime-movie which was originally in english, and you can notice how much the intonation and volume differs from the japanese-voiced animes (like hellsing).

OOoh, I didn't know that, but it makes perfect sense now. Though I think you meant Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust. The anime-movie works EXTREMELY well in English, I was surprised that they managed to sync the actions of the characters with the voice acting, but I guess they actually made it with English in mind. It takes a whole different approach, and the results are enough to convince anyone that thinks dubbing makes no difference.

 

[ParkourMcGhee]

For the simple reason that dubbers generally aren't voice artists that have put their lives towards anime and/or the fact that most dubs sound... half-arsed. Sometimes even whole concepts can be changed... ie: 4kids hate rice balls.

I just like the original better. Subs only means I can understand what's going on.

 

[Pyotr Romanov]

I just got used to subs because most of the animes I watch won't be dubbed / haven't been dubbed yet.
Now I find most VO to be annoying andreally do prefer subs, even though some of those voices are starting to annoy me too.
Also, I'm hoping to learn Japanese just like I learned English. By watching stuff with subtitles and playing games in their original language.
Though I haven't made that last step yet with Japanese...