Poll: Best american dubbed anime

[PxDn Ninja]

How does Cowboy Beebop have any votes. Spike sounded terrible. One of the worst voice acting jobs I have ever heard.

For quality of VO, I would have to go with Bubblegum Crisis 2040 or Evangelion myself though.

 

[cleverlymadeup]

Of course subs are better. You hear the original voices, you don't suffer through "voice actors". And don't forget that sometimes it takes a lot, lot more time to say something in English than in Japanese or Chinese. But if you read fast, you can read 2 or 3 sentences before the character stops talking.

Also, I tried watching even Doctor House without English subtitles. I usually watch Polish ones, but someone kept screwing up with the translation (even on very basic stuff, like verbs or adjectives) and I decided to watch first without anything... God, I couldn't understand some of the medical stuff. It's just too hard for someone who hasn't spent at least 4-5 years in England or USA. With the subtitles it was a lot easier to understand all the conditions, diseases and so on.

actually most subs i know, miss a TON of stuff in the dialog. there's not even the wrong translations. one of my friends likes to turn on the subtitles while watching stuff. every single sub was horrible and missed way more than the "horrible" voice acting. by watching the subbed version, there was less character development because of missed stuff and various other things

also the whole thing about the original actors, most of the time the original voice actors aren't that great at all and sometimes do things for more comedic reaction than actually doing a good role.

i mean if you want to watch it the way they wanted, watch a dub. if you want a dumbed down coles notes version then watch the sub

 

[Ph33nix]

i would have to say slayers

 

[PureChaos]

of all the ones i've seen, Inuyasha is probably the best. it was actually bearable

 

[Adaephon]

Lets see now, I thought Desert Punk had a truly amazing dub especially when compared to how mediocre the Japanese voices were. But on the other hand, Magical Amenobashi Shopping Arcade also had a really good dub and it was pretty cool that they sorta translated the accents over so they all sounded like they were from the south. But FMA wins just because it had the American voice for Major Armstrong....that alone makes it win.

And if your one of those people who hates dubs just for the sake of hating everything not Japanese, go watch Dragon Ball Kai, just try to defend Goku's voice in that, it's higher pitched than Gohans and his grunting sounds sound like radio static.

Oh and Yugioh Abridged would be my fave, but Littlekuriboh is British isn't he? and it does say best American dub

 

[darktheif28]

Desert Punk is funny as hell. And, it has a good story, plus many top voices in anime dubs voice characters.

 

[Tucker154]

Death Note.

 

[joshthor]

anime, and i mean all anime, sucks.

 

[Julianking93]

Death Note wasn't bad.

The guy who did L's voice was actually pretty good.

 

[cobra_ky]

America has a rather impressive ability to take an amazing show from Japan and make it absolutely terrible. I almost always watch the subtitled versions of anime, because it's simple better.

But there are two that I have found with flat-out amazing dubs: Cowboy Bebop and Fooly Cooly. I haven't seen the Japanese dubs of either to compare, but I do know that the English dubs worked out perfectly. I don't know if anything was lost in translation in Fooly Cooly, but it wouldn't matter anyway since that show made no sense. Amazing show, but completely ridiculous.

A lot of wordplay and cultural references did get lost in translation. The localization is so good though, that it's hard to notice. For example, there's one part in FLCL where they reference an obscure Japanese soda that's no longer made. In the dub they change the reference to Crystal Pepsi.

the best translations aren't a literal word-for-word transcript, but rather preserve the intended effect of the original line. Of the options in the poll I'd say Bebop did the best job, but Samurai Champloo and GITS weren't bad either.