Poll: Poll: subbed or dubbed?

[evilartist]

... because watching the occasional dub has made me cringe and my insides curl with shame at the attemtep transposition of "wacky" japanese-ness into english and also because most (or at least as far as I've seen) mainstream dubs are heavily geared towards a child oriented audience.

For this reason, I also prefer subbed. Plus, English versions tend to miss some pretty important vocal cues and tones that can either enhance or break the mood. I'll only make exceptions for two anime: Cowboy Bebop and Outlaw Star. Their English voice acting is mostly top-notch.

 

[Arkhangelsk]

Also, I choose with subs, the voice acting is better.

This is something I find confusing. What is voice acting in a language you don't understand worth? (I'm presuming you don't speak Japanese.)

Well, it's not about understanding the language, but they rarely find good English voice actors. Since the original filmmakers designed the character, they are better suited to finding a voice actor. With dubs, they don't seem to put any effort into it. The same reason I didn't watch The Orphanage in anything other than Spanish, even though I suck at Spanish.

 

[Serenegoose]

Almost always subbed - but there's a few dubs that are quite good. I can't watch cowboy bebop subbed because every subtitling of it I've ever seen was incomprehensible. But the sheer ear-bleeding mass of roiling hate that is dubbed Azumanga is something I'll never forget, unfortunately.

 

[Kevonovitch]

i perfer subs myself, i can't STAND dubs! seriously, they actually cut out large cuncks of dialog, and the acting is so bland and dead-pan, and the voices don't fit the char's at all.

subs do have the risk of being dumbed down aswell, but atleast with subs, you can generally tell where the subber got lazy/made a mistake, rather than horrible, HORRIBLE, subbing.

 

[Rakkana]

Subbed. I can only stand 3 animes in dubbed.

Mainly because the voice acting for dubbed is nearly always TERRIBLE. I don't understand why it's so hard!

 

[Mr. Omega]

I'll just copy/paste what I put in another topic like this...

I prefer dubs, but when the sub is clearly better, and I mean MUCH better, I go with that.

However, most of the time I end up watching subbed simply because the subs are farther in the series than the dub, and I don't like waiting.

[rant]
Honestly, one of the things I can't stand about anime fans are "sub snobs", as I like to call them. The kind of people who think because it's dubbed, it's automatically bad. The kind of people who downright REFUSE to watch dubs, on principle alone, not because they know the dub is bad, but because it's dubbed. Yes, the subs usually are better, and sometimes dubs can be downright terrible *cough4KidsOnePiececough*, but I'd rather watch a good dub than great subs any day. I can look at the action and not the bottom of the screen. Still, even the best of dubs OR subs have a few lines that have me plugging my ears...
[/rant]

 

[goliath6711]

Whenever this comes up, I always want to ask people this question.

"Give me an example of a bad Japanese voiced anime?"


If your answer is "There aren't any", then this proves that you're not really judging the acting completely. Because there is no way in the world that it does not exist at all. Part of the judging process also should deal with understanding what is being said as well as how someone is emoting. Look at the original Resident Evil game. It was legendary in how horrible the acting was, but they never sounded bored or uninterested. If this was dubbed in Swahili in the same hammy overacting way, no one who doesn't know Swahili would know the difference.

Another popular argument is that since these were originally done in Japan, that leaving the original voices makes it authentic. That's a great, legitament point. Unfortunately, it falls apart when the anime takes place outside of Japan, but everyone still speaks Japanese. Are you really expecting me to sit there and watch a subtitled show about a Japanese doctor roaming through Germany, but no one he meets speaks German? Or how about the one about the Italian Special Forces fighting Italian terrorists in an Italy where no one speaks Italian? It doesn't make sense, does it? Until you realize that they did it to cater to the projected audience of the region that it was being shown to. So how can you not expect the ones shown in the predominantly English speaking regions of the world to do the same? I do, however, love the fact that "Blood: The Last Vampire" took the real world approach by having Japanese characters speak Japanese, American characters speak English, and the two main characters be bilingual. If you're going to hold on to authenticity as an argument, this is the only type of authenticity that I'll accept.

I look at the original Japanese dub on my anime DVDs as a passing interest after I watched the whole thing in my native language, not as a standard that any deviation will somehow taint no matter how professionally it is done. So I would rather sit through a bad anime dub than have to miss half of what's going on screen to read subtitles. Of course, I would want a great anime dub over either one.

 

[De-Moti]

I watch dubs to piss off the weeaboos.

 

[MarlaminLTarmiko]

I pretty much only watch dubs, because 1. I'm just lazy and 2. While watching anime I'm usually doing something else at the same time, so I'm unable to read the subtitles.

 

[JoJo]

Though I haven't watched that much anime, I always watch subs, I find the dub voices are often ridiculous and don't fit. Plus as I'm British the American accents the dubs often have just seem out of place.

 

[Ultress]

I don't really care either way unless the dub is really bad.

 

[Surreysmith]

if the subbing is done by the makers it's better in most cases and when its done well you forget it's subbed at all

 

[crudus]

It depends on the genre. If it is an action anime I prefer dubbed since the action can typically distract me from reading the subtitles. Detective shows like Deathnote I prefer subbed.

 

[Ampersand]

I prefer dubbed simply because you don't have to watch each episode twice.

 

[vanthebaron]

If it like Black Lagoon where the script is filled with English, then I prefer the dub. Like wise with APH "All will become one with Russia" sounds better in the dub. But of it's like elfenlied, sub please. Oh and hellsing is an obvious argument for a dub over sub.

 

[BlumiereBleck]

Dubbed, the only way anime should be watched.

 

[Durgiun]

Depends on how good the voice actors in the dubbed version are.

For instance, I prefer the English dubbed version of Hellsing because Anderson doesn't sound NEARLY as psychotic as the original voice actor.

 

[BlumiereBleck]

Dubbed so I don't have to read the damn screen and miss half the content when I stop paying attention for a second and am forced to rewind and re read it... yeah so because it's more convenient...

This fella right here has the right answer.