Sub vs Dub

[lordofvt]

Tonight was our first actual Anime Club night of anime in our movie watching place. We are watching Elfenlied...dubbed.  Part of the voice acting makes me think of other stuff shown on Adult Swim too much, which got me to thinking what people here actually perfer to watch.

Personally I would rather be watching this subbed.  This and everything else I would rather watch subbed.  Too many people at my school watch dubbed in my opinion.

How do you watch anime subbed or dubbed?

[Venus, Queen of Faeries]

More often than not, I'll watch a subbed, if only for the non-omissions. But sometimes, I'm feeling lazy, or I'm tired and can't be bothered to read while watching, so I'll watch dubbed. Sometimes.

[ShikamaCHU]

Subbed.

There's only like 12 People that do English Dubs, and I'm sick of them. They try to hard, and none of them have cute voices.
Dub people also tend to have bad/off reactions to things, because they characters reactions are well....odd....And Japanese
Like Japanese people.
They really do overreact for everything, and squeak like ow. They ARE aliens.
Dubbers are bad at playing things they don't understand.
They also,　almost ALWAYS, suck at pronouncing. Even the ones that are ‘Technically right’ sound wrong.

Also, a lot of things will be 'Whitified'' (like jokes and crap) for the Dub, for no particular reason (even when they won't air on T.V.). This makes me sad. You learn less this way
Scripts are obviously changed so they're in time, or at least more seriously shorter/longer than the translation, and that can get annoying too.
Sure there’s a couple things people might not get, (Like…’Hirorshi DESU or the Guitar Samurai （If those ever Show up anywhere but Crayon Shin-Chan） But like,　That’s what liner notes were invented for, and wish　Licensing companies used them more often instead of just omitting them entirely.

Subs do take more concentration, but it builds character and you'll be a better person for it.

[Wyvern]

Subbed. Mostly.

There's a lot of shows that I get used to from fansubs, so when the dub comes out I'm just too accostumed to the Japanese voices. Plus, the subs are just usually better and more accurate. To be fair, dub actors do have a bit of a handicap, in that Japanese actors don't have to worry about matching their dialouge with lip flaps that weren't even animated for their native language. Because of that little problem, dubs often end up sounding unnatural even with the most talented actors, just because there's so many times when the ONLY way to deliver a line to match the animation is to eithertalkreallyfast or....talk....really....slooooooow. So it's not their fault, but still. Original Japanese is usually better.

But not always. Some shows I just can't watch in Japanese. If it's a show that takes place in an english-speaking country, then if the dub is decent I'll watch in english just because it's weird to see Americans or Brits or whatever speaking Japanese among themselves. Likewise, if it's a samurai show or a show where everything seems really Japanese, then I won't watch the dub no matter how good it is, because a former hitokiri living in the 19th century would simply NOT speak english.

SHOWS WHERE I LIKE THE DUB BETTER THAN THE SUB:

-Hellsing
-L/R
-Dai-Guard
-Lupin the 3rd
-Master Keaton
-Tenchi Muyo!
-Cowboy Bebop
-Vandread
-El Hazard
-Yugo: The Negociator

SHOWS WHERE I LIKE THE SUB BETTER THAN THE DUB:

Pretty much everything else.

[ShikamaCHU]

If you can’t decide, or have a Split vote, maybe try this:
My dad has a rule of playing the first few minutes of every new series in Dub, and then switching to the Japanese for a few minutes and have everyone Vote on which they liked better.

The only Cases Dub won are:

Best dub in the world ever that they actually made the Japanese voice-actors watch later on so they could 'get the Feel of it': 'You're Under Arrest'.

L/R, Lupin the Third, Excel Saga and..Uh.....Rune Soldier Louie and Azumanga Daioh (I objected to the last two though, thought I'd mention that. Especially AMD: Osaka and Chiyo pain like OW. )
'I My Me, SE' was half and half. I didn't really care either way.

If I remember correctly, the Cowboy Bebop dub was Well done.


Cases where the Dub was SO painful, it made our Ears bleed rivers:

Painfulest pain involving VERY FAKE French accents from 12 year olds: 'Nadia, Secret of the blue Water'
Nightwalker
One Piece
Magic Knight Rayearth (Actually, the Official translation and release were VERy badly translated. They got things like, blatantly wrong. Important thing: Like Celf's age. It was horrible.)
Inuyasha physically pains me.

[MavHedgehog]

I'll have to say varies... some dubs are actually pretty decent (for example Chobits, and Scryed was decent as well).  But then along came Sonic Anime, and if you've seen it in english, you'll wish you hadn't... --;

[Nervecandy]

I like subbed a lot better.

However. I cant download that well so...never get it.

I voted for subbed but on the other hand

childhood classics like DBZ...would be very weird in Japanese...

overall Ill watch anything unless its terribly censored and botched or cliche
like Fox stuff...

[CoCo]

AAAAHHHHH! I'm the only one who voted dubbed!? Hey! I don't get any work if there isn't and dubbing going on! That's my job! You guys are gonna make me broke!....

[ShikamaCHU]

It can still go on. We just won't watch most of it.

Even if you're in it, I don't wanna suffer through everyone else.

Like Crispy...And all those girls that think they're cute. If the voice isn't really that high DON'T FORCE IT.
Get someone else or speak normally for god's sake. If we WANT squeaky, we'll go and watch the sub. Squeaking doesn't make you sound Japanese…JAPANESE makes you sound Japanese.

Die bad dubs, DIE.

If dubs had a tendency to not suck, I might watch them and vote for them, but until they get better writers, translators, actors, and not be them, I'll still say Sub.

[lordofvt]

imo Dubs do tend to suck, not just the voice acting, sometimes they horibly edit it too >.< which makes it worse.  Take Initial D for example, it had awesome music before they dubbed it.

[Zsinj]

Generally, I watch subs.

That's because generally subs are better than dubs, and if I haven't seen something, I have no idea how good the dubs are.  Thus, I go with the best chance and watch the sub

[StellarFury]

In almost all cases I'll watch subs. Mostly because I don't mind reading at the same time as watching a movie or show or something. For some reason, everyone I knew was all up-in-arms about Hero - "I don't want to have to READ a movie!" - and I just didn't get it.

However, I first watched Evangelion dubbed. And when I watched it again, with subs, I realized that I liked the dubbing a whole lot better.

I think, unless the dubbing is really, really crappy, most people will stick with whatever they see first and get used to for any given show.

[ochibikumako]

subs

There are some good dubs,that's true. but they are even better still in japanese. I have anime on demand (or had) and everytime a new anime would come on to it i would get diana over and we watch the first few minutes because the are all dubbed and we were interested. um none of them were good. gravitation was enough to cry over. and genji from get backers was like butch.

[ShikamaCHU]

We DID cry over Gravitation didn't we? Like, actual tears flowing like waterfalls.
How sad.

But that's because I REALLY LOVED Shu-ichi's voice ( Tomokazu Seki). Same dude as Haru From Ravemaster, CCS’s Touya Kinomoto, Kyo Souma (Furuba), Chichiri (FY), Sousuke Sagara (FMP), X’s Kamui, Maze, Vandread, EVA, (Official love for this man is NOW established)  Pierrot in Yakitate ^_^,and EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD (This man has a zillion voices 0_0, I didn’t know most of these).
I always thought he had a cool voice. Not really cute but REALLY interesting. It was fun to listen to. Yeah, so I voice stalk. Sue me. Japanese people have WAY different voices from Westerners. It’s pretty cool to study.
(I AM a people watchy type. Why do you ask ? >_>;; )

So Dubbed Gravitation, and that most very uncute-like voice Rich McNanna (WTF kinda name is that? Then again…Most Seiyuu have weird names…Like Paku Romi ^^) made us sad.
It’s not like most Western Seiyuu would wanna do a Shounen Ai show, they probably had problems finding someone young/cute sounding to take the job ^^;.

Voice actors should be people with interesting voices and good acting skills. Not people who 'Sound like the original' but people that 'sound like the character'

This is why the Lupin dubs are so good. The Japanese Lupin guy, and the Dub Lupin guy, don't sound much alike, but they both fit the character well.

I don't get why people 'Don't want to read their T.V.' either. I mean, if it's better that way...

I guess I’ve just been doing it too long. Some people swear up down and inside out that they miss the characters and stuff on screen for it.
Well...read faster?  You should read MUCH faster than they talk.
 Most anime, when not reading something, is pretty boring, because in order to fit the budget most of the time, when there's a lot of taking NO ONE MOVES. Just their mouths. That's REALLY boring.

Also, I never noticed until I thought about it, but the usual pattern for my screen watching is to read, glance, read, glance, and I don’t miss ANYTHING. I don't even remember I was reading most of the time. Don't think of it as reading

[Wyvern]

Exactly. After a while, you get used to reading subs and it's kind of unconcious. It doesn't feel like reading at all-it feels natural. Maybe some people's objection to it comes from not being good readers? Like, for some people, reading really seems like a great effort. For me it's automatic.

Gravitation's dub was doomed from the start. I don't pay much attention to bishies, admittadily, but it seems to me that non-Japanese simply can't play bishies right. They either come off sounding comically gay (dub Kenshin) or flat and boring (dub Seshomaru.)

I make an exception for Scott McNeil's excellent portrayal of your friend and mine, Duo Maxwell. Although I'm not sure if he counts as a bishie. I'll let the girls decide. ^^;;