Dollieh Sanctuary

Okay, before I begin, let me please just say: I know this can be a hot-button topic, but I'm inquiring on here because I believe everyone on here is mature enough to handle a conversation without bashing or belittling other people.

When you watch anime, or indeed anything originally taped in another language first, do you prefer subtitles, dubbing, or both depending upon circumstance?

For me, dubbing gets a SLIGHT advantage. I adore some shows in Japanese (I have a hard time even imagining a Free! dub for example, because so much of their interactions sort of depends upon that softer Japanese version of male friendship you often see in slice-of-life shoujo anime), but by far my favourite show is a dubbed one. Listening to the characters I can't help but feel that the English voice actors managed to portray each and every character better. It helps that the show is dubbed by Funimation, which is arguably the best dubbing company out there right now. (Their dub of Summer Wars, I couldn't get over it! So good!)

Now, we all know that you lose a bit of the context either way if you don't know Japanese. Yes, yes you do! This is one of the biggest thing I see "sub elitists" (the ones who exclaim that dubbing is THE DEVIL'S WORK and anyone who watches it that way isn't getting any of the original intent of the show) use, that dubbers are somehow "missing something vital". Well...unless you know Japanese, you're losing a lot of subtle cultural references they make either way. Subs often have to "clip" lines to make them fit on the screen in one or two lines per frame. They have to cut out subtle language-related skits (for instance one I can remember, which was luckily spelled out by the translator (this doesn't often happen due to timing constraints with subs though, so it is a bit of an anomaly), was a pun related joke between characters using the word "koi" which can mean both "love" and of course, the fish). Dubs, depending upon the company, sometimes try to match "lip flaps" (Funimation luckily seems to ignore this most of the time) which can lead to lines being twisted around and deviating farther from the meaning of the original line in order to make something more visually appealing. Both dubs and subs have to find a happy medium somewhere.

I don't think I have to go too far into the evils of dubbing since I'm sure we're all aware of it, especially those of us who got into the anime boom early, but I will say that a lot of the most horrible dubs happen when they take shows not meant for children, and air them for children. 4Kids is by far the most horrible dubbing company out there today, making strange, often WTF kind of decisions, and editing these shows out the wazoo. Also, before dubbing became a more "acceptable" form of consuming anime we often got some really bad dubs (Yami No Matsuei springs to my mind for the horribly weepy acting and the fact that Hisoke, who looks to be around fifteen or so, is slight of build and has the classic "uke" mannerisms (the whole show is shounen ai), has a voice that calls to mind Barry White Lite Version. Sort of...Rickrolling without the music! )

So, all in all I definitely feel that neither is "superiour" to the other, I just prefer a well-done dub to a well-done sub. If I'm getting pretty much the same information either way (Funimation again, oftentimes their subs will match about 85% of the dialogue to their dubs exactly), I would prefer to listen to it in English with a well-rounded voice cast. And sometimes they throw little things in there that just make me happy, for instance one character, in the Japanese sub simply says "Let's go!", while riding on horseback and talking to his second-in-command. The English dub took that line and made it "Race you!", which fit the spirit and intent of the character better.

I would say I'm definitely a "both" sort of person. How about everyone else? What do you prefer and why?

I'm a both person. I grew up with dubs, I discovered subs online, and now it's a case of checking out both and seeing which I prefer tbh.

My local TV used to bring dub stuff like Digimon and Cardcaptor in both Chinese and English(yes that popular) O_O
I know its weird when they let Pokemon, Beyblade be in English(catering to kids of various langugage groups where English is common langugae) while Inu Yasha and D Grey men remain in Japanese with English subs(Its was call arts channel daiyo). @_@

Anyway. I kinda prefer the Chinese dubs of said animes over the English ones, since that is what came first to me and on most counts sounded more natural (okay maybe its an Asian thing for me since I'm Chinese). I'm even okay with Cantonese dubs

The English dub grates my ears when characters get cloyingly high pitch or over sweet (English Piyomon, vaguely English Sakura herself). My main beef with English dubs tend to be high pitch/grating voices. When I watch stuff like Avatar, Wild Throneberrys, Powerpuff girls and even As told by Ginger, I don't hear them speak that anime dub way, they sounded natural. I like Cree Summers' voice. I like the way Nigel Thorneberry sounds.


So yeah. Chinese or Cantonese dubs over English where possible if original Japanese is not available

When it comes to subs I tend to read the words. So on one hand I'm registering Japanese words in my head but its not perfect. English for this is prefered but I can make do with Chinese or Cantonese

I agree 100% with everything you said, MeltedCaramel-san!

Sometimes, I love the dub best and sometimes, the sub! I understand/write/speak Japanese and you are correct when you state that there are cultural puns that when subtitled exactly, lose their inner context and meaning. So when the dub or a sub that tries to put it into perspective changes it to reflect exactly the meaning, rather than the exact wording, it's so much better!

My sister and I follow about 8-10 anime series and we prefer the English dub in about 50% and the Japanese original about 50%.

Some series just require the more subtle and genuine-feeling voice acting the Japanese excel at while other types of series really need the comedy and humor that, I feel, where the English excel!

Then, there is a phenomenon loop running through our favorite shows (through several genres) that grabs our attention, too! It's really unbelievable, but here goes:


We've loved X-Men since 1993 when the original animation aired on Fox. Professor X was voiced by 'Cedric Smith' a Canadian actor/va.
Now, the first loop is that Cedric Smith is also the patriarch of our absolute favorite tv series, 'Road to Avonlea.' We love this series so much we vacationed to Prince Edward Island to try to see the filming, got to visit the sets, etc.

Okay, then in the X-Men movies, Prof X is played by Patrick Stewart.
Again, the patriarch of Star Trek: The NExt Generation, which we've followed (Even bought toys and cosplayed as) since 1987.
0-O

As if that wasn't enough, in 'X-Men: Evolution', Prof X is played by David Kaye.
HE is the voice actor who plays Treize Khushrenada, the patriarch of Gundam Wing---one of our 8 anime series that we follow fanatically.

Next, in 'Astonishing X-Men' Prof X is voiced by Dan Green.
He's the English voice of Yugi in Yu-Gi-Oh! (the main protagonist) in one of our 8 fav anime series.

THen in the Lego Movies, Prof X is voice by James Arnold Taylor.
Yup, Tidus from FFX/FFX-2's main protagonist. This is the ONLY video game we play other than Corda, Haruka, Disney and X-Men.

Crazy, right? Not done yet!

Just found out that in the 'X-Men Days of Future Past' movie, that young Prof X is voiced in the Japanese dub by Uchida Yuuya.
He's the patriarch of our all time favorite anime/game series of the 8 we follow, 'La Corda d'oro'!

:faints: He's like a thread running through all our favorite things! And we really don't like/follow many programs. Pretty much just what I've listed above and a few more anime (about 8 in total).

How is it possible?

He's X-Men, Avonlea, ST:TNG, Final Fantasy X; Gundam Wing, Yu-Gi-Oh! and now La Corda?!
:faints again: Isn't that insane?

I went off on a disparate tangent there, I think, but it was to show how we appreciate both dub and sub, particularly when our favorite actors portray the characters to help us decide.

For example, in Corda, my all-time fav seiyuu/singer Taniyama Kisho, is the hero/protagonist. He IS Tsukimori Len. So if it gets dubbed (which, thankfully, so far hasn't), I could NEVER like the dub voice more than my precious Kiyan-sama *his nickname*! That goes for all the Corda seiyuu. (We even went so far as to make 1/3 BJD dollfie of all the cast from Corda, we love them so much! They're the 'Corda Family' which they even say themselves!) So an English cast here would not be a welcome change/additional for this particular series.
I would say that would go for Harukanaru TOki no Naka De as well. Particularly since it's set in ancient Japan, the Japanese culture and words just roll off their tongues and would seem out of place if in English.

For Gundam Wing and Yu-Gi-Oh!, we actually like the Jap/Eng casts both, and give the English dub a slight edge due to the comedy injected and the :gasp: better voice acting by the English versions! I mean, Dan Green as Yugi is incredible (two totally different voices!) and can you imagine Ryou Bakura without an English accent (not to mention voiced by a girl pretending to be a guy in Japanese version?) In GW, it's better in English, not only for the superior voice acting of the English cast (They are TRULY awesome!) but that it's set in an international future, where the stars/charas are all from different countries. So it's better in English in that these people would definitely NOT be speaking in Japanese, apart from the one or two Japanese guys, right? So that makes the dub better for that reason, too.

In Amnesia, the Japanese is better, not only for the acting and being full of our fav seiyuu, but in English, the dub is so sad. THey pronounce some names incorrectly, and just sound really off. I dislike dubs where they sound like they're separate from the audio bgm track. As if they were just tacked on last second where their voices are too loud or just poorly recorded. Usually, these types of dubs are also full of not that good voice acting, too. 0_o

Anyway, to sum it up, there are times I prefer English dub and times I prefer Japanese original.

It just depends on the cast and how it was dubbed. (Dubs really need to inject some context and comedy.) Like you said, the typical 'Ikimashou' (Let's go!) in Japanese, is really far less fulfilling than a 'Race you!' the English added to give inner meaning.
That happens a lot and in good dubs, it really adds to the experience.

When I grew up your Japanamation dubs were Macekered (massacred) and you liked it that way! You had a voice crush on Cam Clarke and still watch anything you hear him coming out of.

I'm from the Battle of the Planets/Gatchaman, Robotech, Voltron generation so we got what we got dub wise. The first subs I had contact with were some Sailor Moon VHS from the Sailor Saturn era because that was all I could get and then some Gatchaman episodes came with subs and it was nice to see what they were originally about. I haven't really got in to anything new.

Personally I like an authentic dub script but I'll take what I can get some times. It took only 35+ years to get a proper dub of all the episodes of Gatchaman by people who know what they're doing but it's been worth it.

DollyKim wrote:When I grew up your Japanamation dubs were Macekered (massacred) and you liked it that way! You had a voice crush on Cam Clarke and still watch anything you hear him coming out of.
.

Hear hear!

Leonardo~~~~~ Yeah I went and google Cam Clarke. Apparently he's Lquid Snake as well. Back then in late 80s I'm still not that discerning about my voice actors until late 90s -2000s where English dubs appeared months after Chinese dubs allowing for comparisons.

Cartoons is cartoons, I get Rose of Varsallies in Chinese twice (a few years apart) so I'm not complaining. Though it felt kinda corny to watch older well loved cartoons now that I'm older and comparing it to more current animes. I can't believe I fave certain cartoons back then. Wouldn't change a thing though.

werepuppy- Same here. I grew up with the butchered dubs of the late 70's and all of the 80's anime dubbed into terribad (yup, terribad!) English, still loved them anyway, and then I discovered subs. I still enjoy both formats in modern anime though.

Iwa_Hoshi- You know, I agree with this. I completely agree that English dubs often sound horrible when they're trying to imitate the naturally higher registers of the Japanese female voice actresses. Something that sounds natural to the ear in Japanese sounds like the English VA had to suck on a helium balloon before she recorded her lines! I prefer it when the English VAs are chosen more for authentic performance than trying to "match" the voice to the Japanese VA. It hardly ever works out right. However: I don't watch that much female-lead oriented stuff, and the females I can recall tend to be adult females in dramatic roles so I can't talk with any authority on this subject!

SetsunaKou- Thank you so much! Glad to see someone who understands Japanese commenting on this. So many people claim subs are somehow superiour, but it makes me wonder why they think reading the words versus hearing them spoken is "better", rather than a simple matter of preference.

I think a lot of American dubs capture feeling and subtle emotion well too. I was really surprised to hear that the creators of Cowboy Bebop actually prefer the English dub to their original version! I think a lot of that is the extremely well-done voice acting put forth by everyone in the cast, they wove subtle nuances into their voices that matched the tense, often conflicting action put on the screen. I think the Japanese VAs have a...hmn, how do I put it....different(?) way of being subtle and emotional than English VAs do? It's something in the register and tone of their voices. I'm not a linguist so I couldn't point out exactly what the differences are, only that they are there!

As for comedy...I'm torn on that one! Some I prefer the Japanese subs and some I prefer how they tweak it into English!

I liked your tangent! Haha, it's great when stuff lines up like that for you!

It sounds like you think much of the same way I do. It really, really all comes down to preference rather than this strange "which one is BETTER?" mentality.

Perfect example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsEZPi72wi8 (MAJOR COWBOY BEBOP SPOILERS)
This comparison is perfect for me since I was just talking about Cowboy Bebop up there! I never really connected with the English VA for Vicious at all, I felt like his performance, while good, fell into a little bit of the "calm and collected" territory for me, where Vicious' face (look at that FACIAL EXPRESSION) always seemed to be emoting more, which the Japanese VA just perfected for me. However, I think the English VA for Spike just....goddamn did he nail it, everything from the extra breathing, the noises he makes which really make it feel like a real battle, to his delivery, I just have to hand it to him and say I vastly prefer this version.

Heh, it's funny that you mention the ancient Japan thing since I vastly prefer the English dub of SB (that's where the "let's go!" versus "race you!" comes from) despite the feudal Japan setting. Watching the English VAs work Masamune's gratuitous Engrish into believable lines that he delivers? Perfect. Not to mention I didn't really connect with the sub VAs, despite them being well-done. I just didn't feel they "fit" the characters as much. Vic Mignogna as Mitsuhide turned the character from kinda vaguely creepy in the sub, to the dub being this sadomasochistic freak with a hard-on for pain of any kind. It's one of the rare "ancient Japan" settings where I enjoy the dub versus the sub, but they just really nailed it on that series.

Now I'm so curious to check out the Amnesia series just to try the sub versus the dub you mentioned! I looked it up...apparently it's done by some studio called "Delirium Studios"? I have never, EVER, in all of my years of watching dubbed anime and following the stuff behind the dubs, heard of that company! Now...I hate to generalize here because it really, really depends on the actual VAs they hire, not the size of the company, but smaller companies tend to have less budget, less experienced VAs, and as a result they spit out dubs of terrible quality. No wonder it wasn't that good!

All in all, I'm so glad to see you have such a healthy outlook on it all. I really enjoy both too, it's a personal preference per series, and neither is inferior or superior to the other.

DollyKim- Heh, since I grew up in the early nineties I got all the late 70's and 80's animes with their horrible dubs, but I loved them dearly so I can understand exactly where you're coming from. I think Ronin Warriors stands out for me as one of those inferior dubs that I just can't help but love anyway. The fact that the guy from Britain has a British accent? Thank you! The silly fight scenes with monotone acting punctuated by a burst of major overacting? Thank you! I love it all!

I'm a fast reader, so I generally prefer subs. When I was more heavily into anime (2000s), I only watched subs since I hated the female voices in dubs with a fiery passion. High-pitched sounds are horrible for my headaches. Plus, a number of the shows I watch haven't been dubbed at all. >.>

I've started watching more dubs now though, since I got my boyfriend to watch some anime with me. He's a slower reader, and tends to miss the action of a scene if he has to read subtitles.

I'm very impressed with how well-done Funimation's dubs are. I undoubtedly would've watched more dubs in the past had they come into the scene earlier.

Nella wrote:I'm a fast reader, so I generally prefer subs. When I was more heavily into anime (2000s), I only watched subs since I hated the female voices in dubs with a fiery passion. High-pitched sounds are horrible for my headaches. Plus, a number of the shows I watch haven't been dubbed at all. >.>

I've started watching more dubs now though, since I got my boyfriend to watch some anime with me. He's a slower reader, and tends to miss the action of a scene if he has to read subtitles.

I'm very impressed with how well-done Funimation's dubs are. I undoubtedly would've watched more dubs in the past had they come into the scene earlier.

See. Responses like this are why I knew I could ask this question here. Thank you. I was a little worried about asking this since even the people I consider friends tend to degenerate into the dreaded "omg let's just agree to disagree (even though I totally think you're wrong and am judging you silently)" thing.

I read quite fast too, so subs being a "reading issue" has never been an problem for me, I can digest and enjoy subs in realtime as quickly as I can enjoy dubs. I also agree with the young female voices in dubs. I haven't seen much of the Shoujo stuff that Funimation has put out so I can't judge their proficiency in that area, but from what I remember they tend to choose smoother voices that sound a tad older instead of trying to reach that eardrum-rupturing decibel that a lot of English dubs try to use to mimic the naturally higher register, softer voices of Japanese female VAs. It doesn't do to much good for my migraines either!

Also, kudos to you for watching dubs so your boyfriend can enjoy the action too. That's really sweet and considerate of you. I'm also glad to see another person who enjoys Funimation's dubs! They really are quite good. I know the regular roster of VAs they have can always be counted on to give a really good performance.

MeltedCaramel wrote:Also, kudos to you for watching dubs so your boyfriend can enjoy the action too. That's really sweet and considerate of you.

When he told me awhile back that he didn't like anime and hadn't watched much, I made a point of looking up ones I thought he'd find interesting. And I sorta got him hooked. Our tastes are different, but there's enough common ground that we can enjoy some of the same shows.

So for myself, I choose subs most frequently. Which is fun when I watch shows with my older sister, who speaks Japanese and will pause to explain cultural jokes. She's actually the one who got me into anime and manga when I was little. I still remember having to constantly explain what anime/manga and cosplay were to people.