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What do you prefer in anime: Subs or Dubs?

Last posted Sep 21, 2016 at 08:30PM EDT. Added Sep 18, 2016 at 12:45AM EDT
33 posts from 30 users

For me, it really doesn't matter what I choose. Your thoughts?

Last edited Sep 18, 2016 at 12:56AM EDT

I have a very firm opinion on this, subs are almost always superior.


Subbing:

Consider that with subs, voice actors and actresses are working with the director face to face. The director, who is the person that's steering the whole project, should, in theory, be the person that understands each character best, thus they know how the character should "sound" given the situation. The director can give the necessary feedback and review for the voice actor/actresses and change the tones and style.

The people behind the project go through numerous interviews and recording sessions to choose the best voice for a character, it's a process that requires quite some work and effort.


Dubbing:

Now with dubbing, the team that's working on the dub really only have the script to work off of. Chances are they haven't communicated with the original writers and directors enough to "fully understand" the project and its original intentions. Not saying the original is always best, but perhaps it's worth viewing the experience as it was first meant to be by the creators.

Without the first-hand experience and knowledge, dubbers have to work from listening to already voiced characters, as well as facing the dialogue exchanges a second time in a different language.

Which causes another problem, language and culture differences. Not everything translates perfectly, it's something subtitles face as well, but with dubs hearing native speakers is different than listening to Japanese speakers while reading the subs.

And hey, sometimes it hurts the experience to watch a show and read subtitles, some people prefer to just listen and watch. That's fine too.


Other thoughts:

At the end of the day, while I thoroughly believe dubs are the preferred method, one should watch however they think is most enjoyable. A lot of people were introduced to anime through dubs.

The only case in which I would say dubs are a good option is with an anime that has a setting in which the characters speak a language the dubbed language has. For example, Baccano, an anime about the mafia in America, has an excellent dub and I really enjoyed hearing the different English accents. But I think if a show is set in Japan, as many anime are, hearing Japanese speakers is more authentic than English ones.

If anyone has interest in the behind-the-scenes of anime, Shirobako is a wonderful anime about the anime industry. Hell one of the charaters has this huge arc just about the struggles of voice acting. Spoilers here:


TL;DR: Subs are preferred because it's based on the original team and what they think is best, dubs lack the resources of the creators.

Last edited Sep 18, 2016 at 02:39AM EDT

Subs. With dubs, sometimes the team tries to localize it, resulting in them referring to something else entirely or saying something that seems really out of place.

The Prison School debacle with them referring to gamergate in the dub should be an apt reason as to why I avoid dubs.

Depends really
there are some factors for me on this.

settings- i usually like to listen to English voice actors when it takes place in an English setting such as in Baccano (hopefully 91 days). while in a more Japanese setting i like to hear the original dub. when the setting is ambiguous such as in space, or Gurren Lagann world, I choose the one that sounds better to me.

Cast- if i see people that i have heard before in the cast, and have enjoyed them than i wouldn't mind giving it a try even if it breaks the rule above

i'm forgetting other reasons but this sounds enough

Subs for me overall, although dubs is fine and are useful as entry-level or a gateway into the medium.

There are certain problems with dubs though:

1) Cultural imperiousness means that Americans tend to (often unwittingly) force their own culture over the top. This locks out and can alienate non-American English speakers like the British or Australian viewers. It's not really their fault; it is endemic to such a highly patriotic country to do this, and a lot of the time I doubt translators realise what they're doing or why it's bad.

2) All American. There are no "English" English dubs. Again this causes culture issues. The tendency to translate "Mama" (literally the general European term, also sometimes used by the Japanese) as the explicitly North American "Mom" is one of the most immediately noticeable examples of this.

3) Shallow pool of voice talent. You only hear the same 30 or so people, over and over again, ad nauseum. There's no diversity. And there's very little opportunity for people outside of America to be involved unless you up and move to one of the two or three places where dubbing is done. There are some highly overused perfomers, and this leads to stagnation, unoriginality, lots of characters sounding the same, and locks other struggling actors out of work. As an actual actor who is not America-based, this is hugely frustrating to me and other perfomers I am acquainted with.

4) There have been (rare) occasions when dubbers have imposed their own views on an irrelevant show or added unnecessary out-of-context stuff. I have heard a story about one highly-conservative performer who is alleged to have refused to play a character as homosexual, despite the fact that they were so in the original Japanese. This flouts "Translator's Integrity" i.e. the responsibility to translate the original intent regardless of whether or not you agree with it.

5) Cultural appropriation through assuming their own viewers' idiocy. There's the whole rice balls = jelly doughnuts thing in Pokémon. Some people will try and claim "ah but kids won't understand what rice balls are" even though a) it's self-explanatory; b) people Google what they don't understand these days. Trying to pretend that the product is American (Looking at you, Yokai Watch) is inherently wrong and nationalistic.

6) Bad attempts at accents or no accents at all. Again this stems from a lack of voice talent diversity. Because almost all the performers are American, there are very poor attempts at regional accents occasionally. Sometimes cariacaturish performances work for a comedy series, where this is acceptable, but in a serious context it's not. There are then other shows where accents don't get used at all. I appreciate not wanting to do an accent badly, but if there is an English character, then you need to use an English actor rather than just an American using an American accent.

I believe, however, that all of these issues can be overcome using good translation (not localisation), good directing, and originality/variation in casting.

Last edited Sep 18, 2016 at 05:09AM EDT

Whatever is easier to find. When it comes to dubs my preference list is the following:
Catalan > Spanish > American Spanish > English
If all those dubs are bad or not good enough, or if there's no dub available, then I watch the sub.

I usually prefer subs but there are a few cases where you have a lot of characters from different parts of the world who would be speaking different languages (such as in fate/zero) where I prefer dubs.

I also prefer dubs pretty much whenever Crispin Freeman has a role because let's be honest that man has a voice of gold.

I usually watch it dubbed as it is a bit more convenient in my opinion. I'm open to watching an anime subbed if that is the only one available.

I prefer dubs (check 'em) if they're good, otherwise I'm fine with subs. And if it's some hit new anime that all the cool kids are watching with no dub I'll just watch it subbed.

I'm fine with either but I usually go and watch something with subs first and then watch the dubbed. I do like it when the dubs are accurate to the actual Japanese raw version however.

I can get behind dubs if the anime is NOT the Shounin genre.

It's like this. When you're listening and reading the lines in a language you don't understand, it's cool, exciting, and your blood is pumping. It helps that the Sub actors generally have a better grasp of acting than the Dub actors. When you're in a Shounin anime dub and the actor screams "FIRE STYLE: GREAT DRAGON DICK JUTSU" in a pompous, matter-of-fact tone of voice, it sounds cringeworthy.

Dubbing has the problem of sticking to lip flaps and having to say things that sound really unnatural to fit the space of the sentence and the lip flaps, and the fact that the localization team doesn't get to work with the original creators a lot of the time, plus the fact that things get changed for dumb reasons like censorship or the idea that kids can't handle the fact that Rice Balls are not Donuts.

However, it depends on the show really, some dubs are done extremely well, Death Note for instance, is done so well that I prefer it to the original Japanese.

One Piece however, is extremely hit and miss. Due to the fact that a lot of humor in One Piece is done through unusual voices, speech-ticks and unique laughs, it makes it hard to dub. Some voices are fine, like most of the Straw Hats, Moria etc, but some like Whitebeard and Blackbeard is a fucking tragedy. Also, Kizaru is one of those characters that just can't be dubbed on the same level as the original VA, Kizaru's Japanese voice is just too perfect, and while I feel the English VA did the best job he could have, it still pales in comparison. I can't have my Kizaru with out his "OooOOooo"

In short, making a dub as good or better than the sub id difficult, but possible.

In short: At least check the Dub before I condemn it.

I prefer not having to read when watching any show really. If I wanted to read, I'd pick up the manga (Which I oftentimes do). But if the Dub-Job is awful, I'll watch Subbed.

What a lot of anime watchers don't seem to notice nowadays is that English Dubbing has gotten really good these past few years and should probably give Dub another shot.

I like reading the manga better because it's faster than watching the anime and I like reading. It also typically more detailed story-wise and (often) lacks filler, unlike some anime (at least from my experience).

Last edited Sep 19, 2016 at 04:16AM EDT

You got answered in the first post and answered better in the second. Now I'll give the historical and economic explanation for why "subs vs. dubs" is a thing.

Back in the '90s importers worked under the assumption that Americans would never buy foreign language films, so they dubbed the films in English. (Even earlier in the '80s they rewrote scripts, chopped up episodes, and merged different series together.) These importers were small companies selling to a niche market so they could not afford to do a good job on the dubbing. As a result, most dubs were crap. This was noticed by fans who went to Japan and saw the originals, and fans started subtitling videos as soon as they came out and posting the subs to Usenet.

On the other hand, watching TV can be a different experience when you're trying to concentrate on text at the bottom of the screen. Personal preferences are different, YMMV, so dubs had their supporters even when the quality gap was huge.

Subtitles:

Sometimes, you simply can't beat the voices of the original cast. This can easily apply anime such as JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Fist of the North Star, GNG, etc. etc. As stated earlier by Xin: The original voice actors are working alongside the director, who should know the characters best. When you hear the original voices, you will almost always attribute that voice actor to that specific character. (For example; I, ironically, could not imagine a fully-English Joseph Joestar.)

Dubbing:

Dubbing can be a troublesome process. In a typical scenario, a team working on the dub will either have to attempt to translate the script, or be given one prematurely. While the advantage of not having to constantly read the dialogue is attractive, dubbing can result in the loss of context or meaning in the way the actors speak/perform the lines as an unintentional by-product. Another issue is that the lip-synching animation is usually only edited enough to where it kinda meets up with the English actor. Still, despite these flaws, there are some anime I can't really watch without the dub, which include Dragon Ball, Sonic X, and Cowboy Bebop. Whether that's the nostalgia talking, or if the dub is legitimately better in the aforementioned anime is in the air.

Conclusion:

All-in-all, those who want the original Japanese voice talents will most likely drift towards the subtitles. For convenience, I can see many individuals go for the dub. As for me, it really depends on the anime in particular. I have a more-or-less than equal amount of Subtitled and Dubbed anime I enjoy.

Dubs and I'm kinda picky about it too. I like English like a lot I feel uncomfortable when I'm away from it for extended periods of time. Language is like a home and it applies for me a lot stronger than most people. I like hearing people talk like I do it's comforting. It's the primary reason. And Japanese is honestly kind of grating and to me 90% of the male VAs sound exactly the same and so do 90% of the female Japanes VAs since the language is so foreign to me.

And with dubs I feel more emotion because obviously you understand emotion in your tongue easier. I don't have to keep my eyes slightly on the bottom of the screen at all time. Whenever I've seen dubs they're always good and it wouldn't matter if they weren't because like I said all Japanese voice acting sounds terrible to me as a foreigner I'm very sensitive and picky.

But also keep in mind I've seen like 4-5 anime in my entire life most of my experience comes from Japanese games which are the same concept. Also my experience with subs and dubs in other languages not involving japan or anime. In fact usually anime seems better with dubs because they're very good at mouth syncing in games that's not really an option.

People who say subs are "objectively better" are complete garbage because there is no objectivity to it at all. Like what you like.

Last edited Sep 19, 2016 at 11:01PM EDT

Dubs. I don't want to be distracted from what the characters are doing visually by having to read what they're saying. The way the original VAs speak is useless to me as I don't know what words are being emphasized or inflected, since Japanese is SOV and the subtitles are SVO. Proper "context" over Japanese cultural phrases/idioms can never accurately be given in one or two parenthetical sentences, so I'd much rather have an English equivalent that fits the scene.

TL;DR: I'm a casual anime watcher, so I'm too lazy to bother with subs.

dubs primarily because i feel more comfortable with them, or subs if the dubs are really bad or if there's no dub released for the show
some shows do rely heavily on japanese-orientated humor though so i'll watch the sub if a dub can't get the sense of humor portrayed by subs

Dubs, don't know why, but I feel it's more understandable then subs. I mean I there's some animes I like listening in both dubs and subs, but I feel more dubs make more sense for me. And subs(especially fansubs) mess up which makes the situation of understanding a episode/movie worse.

Just to add something to my previous post. If it's an anime I watched on TV as a child I'll always try to find the dub just for the nostalgia factor, even if it has some flaws it feels weird to hear different voices for the characters you've grown with.

Last edited Sep 20, 2016 at 12:00PM EDT

Natsuru Springfield wrote:

In short: At least check the Dub before I condemn it.

I prefer not having to read when watching any show really. If I wanted to read, I'd pick up the manga (Which I oftentimes do). But if the Dub-Job is awful, I'll watch Subbed.

What a lot of anime watchers don't seem to notice nowadays is that English Dubbing has gotten really good these past few years and should probably give Dub another shot.

I pretty much agree with Natsu about dubs getting better over these past few years. Sure, they can still have their hiccups, and they may not always be what fans want (JoJo dub, for example, is somewhat of a mixed bag for people because of the accents, name changes, etc.), but generally, the voice acting is pretty dang good and the dialogue seems accurate enough. Then again, this is all coming from a guy who follows certain English VAs and also doesn't really care for "accuracy" (I'll explain what I mean in a bit).

Anyways, getting to the topic, I'm more of a dub guy. I have no problem watching anime subbed, and it's never really been a problem reading the subs. I guess I'm more inclined to dubs than subs tbh. Hypothetically, if I was choosing a certain anime, and it happened to be dubbed, unless the dub is really THAT bad, I'm more inclined to watch the dub over subs. Plus, at this point, I kinda watch dubs more for the voice actors themselves than the actual anime; basically I choose anime the same way someone would choose movies that their favorite actor has been in (which results in me watching mostly older anime from the early-mid 2000s). In addition, I only really watch subs if there is no dub, and I'm more likely to just find a different anime with a dub.

Getting back to what I said earlier about "accuracy," because I tend not to read manga or watch subbed anime a lot, it really doesn't make much of a difference to me if the dub dialogue has inaccuracies and such, or if original intent doesn't match or there was no involvement from the original directors and such (that would certainly be preferable though, and definitely a bonus). The only time such mattered to me was when I saw the JoJo dub, and that was after watching the series subbed and basically engrossing myself into the series (and that honestly the first time I'd ever done that with an anime/manga series).


tl;dr I prefer dubs: think they've improved in recent years, and I don't care too much about author intent and faithfulness.

Last edited Sep 20, 2016 at 11:05PM EDT

Subs. Watching anime in any other language just doesn't sit right with me, except if a dub is so great it blows any criticism out of the water, and I know those certainly exist. But IMO, most of the times, and I don't know why that is, the dubbing company just doesn't pick very good voice actors (not even the popular ones are any good to me). This is especially noticeable during sad/tragic scenes. You can hear a clear difference between a Japanese voice actor being told to scream and cry their lungs out and any other foreign voice actor doing the same. The former just sound like they're being "in" their role much more and the latter tend to either overact or underact a lot.
Also a problem if an anime is too "Japanese" for a bigger public, any translation or adaptation of it will almost certainly be awkward in places. Fortunately, there aren't as many instances of crappy localization nowadays than back in the 90's, that's a plus for dubs.
My best friend wanted me to watch Fullmetal Alchemist in English, but to this day I couldn't bring myself to do it. Seeing as how the Kill la Kill English and German dubs exist (they're horrible in any perceivable way! God, they're bad!), I know why I'm a skeptic about these things.

Skeletor-sm

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