Hot Discussion: Subtitles or Dubbed?

In any live action foreign film, I will refuse to watch it if it is dubbed. It robs the actors from their acting.

But anime...I've been watching miyazaki and takahata... I can't justify. There is no outside acting save for the voice, so it's the same in either language, if you get my jist.

I hear a lot of purists telling me it's 'simply not the same' when dubbed, but I've noticed little to no difference in my reaction to the movie.

HOWEVER, grave of the fireflies, i rewatched dubbed, and felt the dialogue awkward in english..

what do you guys prefer?

I always prefer the subtitled versions, no exceptions, even for the good dubs like Cowboy Bebop (it's a great dub, I just prefer hearing Koichi Yamadera and Megumi Hayashibara).

I've been watching anime subtitled since 1994 and see no reason to stop, especially since DVD resolved the sub vs. dub dispute by carrying both (with only a tiny number of exceptions).

It depends upon the particuliar anime I watch, usually I won't watch the original japanese version with subtitles but there were two cases which it actually happened.

Remember Geneon? Well they took up The Law of Ueki and Elemental Gelade. Both of them I watched in Japanese on Youtube (Before they took the episodes down).

I was so excited when I found they were now on DVD and could watch...except the english voice dub was terrible, for both of them. They botched up the subtitles as well which made me mad.

Yes people can watch both sub and Dub on the DVD's, but is it really the original wording on the subtitles or did whichever studio who took them first go through and replace the contents.

For me, the case differs with every different anime. Different ADR studios, different approaches to localization especially play a role in deciding whether the dub is worth my time.

I definitely prefer subtitles because of the more literal interpretation. Dubs worry too much about lip syncing and can really screw up the details.

Theres this funny disease in almost every english dub of an anime. For sometimes the characters speak 2 sentences like they were only one sentence I know its crazy isnt it?

So general consensus says.... "Yeah".

Thanks for your help fellers, I guess it really does just vary on the anime. Ive been watching Cowboy Bebop and think the voices almost more attractive dubbed.... but movies, unless Christian Bale is voicing (like he did w/ Spirited Away, amirite?), I'll stick to subtitles.

Thanks again,

I'd definitely say subtitles are best if they're done so that they can be easily seen from across an average-sized room. White subtitles over bright scenes are a no-no. Black subtitles with yellow borders around the letters are best, in my (shall we say) view.

From the standpoint of appreciating the subtleties of what's being spoken, subtitles are far superior. Oftentimes, though not so much in anime, English-language voice actors just don't cut the mustard.

However, now that cataracts are setting in I'm having to back to dubbed language tracks. One reason is that, over the past several years, subtitles seem to have gotten smaller. That could be me, or it could be the producers; but either way, I'm finding them harder to read.



=^..^=


Not to be rude, but if you prefer your anime dubbed, you suck.

That is all.

The "new" controversy is subtitled-only anime DVD sets, though subtitled-only anime releases aren't exactly new, like with AnimEigo's releases of 1980's shows like Urusei Yatsura, Kimagure Orange Road, and, now, Yawara, or Pioneer/Geneon's release of the "intact" version of Cardcaptor Sakura.

A lot of newly-licensed series, like Clannad or Maria-sama ga Miteru, that might have gotten a dub a few years ago at the height of the anime boom aren't getting a dub now. Partially it's because the audience that buys anime DVDs has shrunk to the point that the costs incurred in doing a dub would likely not be made back in increased sales, but there are also a couple of other less-obvious factors.

Firstly, Cartoon Network/Adult Swim has scaled back drastically on the number of anime series they show, and some channels that used to show a few hours of anime a week have dumped anime entirely, so there's not that extra little bit of an incentive to do a dub, but it could also be because of the changing format of DVD releases: where some companies might have done a dub for individual disk releases with around 4 episodes a piece a few years ago, now anime consumers generally prefer getting chunks of 13 episodes (or more) at a time at a price point only $10 or $15 higher than the older individual releases, meaning the amount of money made on a per episode basis has gone down significantly, and also meaning that the dubs can no longer be spread out more economically.

Some 13-episode sets, like Ouran High School Host Club, are still getting dubs, but they're increasingly in the minority.

I always preferred subs anyway, so I don't have any problem with sub-only releases, but I hope the lack of dubs for many shows won't drive away enough anime fans to affect sales enough to limit the quantity of niche anime that might get licensed in the future. Especially for those of us thirtysomething old-timers who only ever want to buy anime in a physical format rather than in the form of digital downloads.

Hehehe. Spot-on.

I think subbed anime is better than dubbed because almost all the dubbed shows I've watched
1) Are Horrendous
2) took away the essence of um, being... "anime"
3) took away the essence of being Japanese made
4) Are Horrendous
5) became lifeless and foreign
6) Are Horrendous.

Except of course, FMA.

I really can't stand dubbed anime for the simple reason that the English voice actors suck. Although, I do find that if I were to watch DBZ that dubbed is the only way to go. Possibly because I first watched it dubbed and that is how I know it.

Subtitles, for all the reasons mentioned above.

Dubs are icky.

The weird thing about dubbed anime is that no matter how good the actors are, they try to sound like the original Japanese voices. They try to imitate the sharp clipped diction and the extremely enthusuastic delivery of lines.

I understand the desire to stay tru to the original, but it doesn't translate. It sounds weird and unnatural and it seems like they do it on purpose.

Gotta go with the subtitled versions until they stop making the actors read their lines in such a bizarre fashion.

I usually watch the dubbed versions. Meh. I've never experienced any really bad dubs that made we want to switch over to subs. Live action movies I always do subtitles, though.

Try looking at it the other way around.

Do you think hugely successful movies in the US were as good dubbed in other countries? I have seen dubbed films in Korea and China, and they were downright awful.

Now we're talking about anime. We can list maybe a few actually good dubbed anime, but how many more can we list that are atrocious? Is Kenshin as funny in English if you replace all the Japanese nuances and the infamous "oro?" Will you get the same feudal Japan feel of Inuyasha if everything is Westernized? These are just a few examples, but I can go on and on about how much I prefer anything kept as original as possible.

For the records, I would hate to watch any Pixar or old school Disney movies dubbed in any other language besides English.

I do generally prefer subtitled films, but it's different with animated films.
Mostly I would watch a film with subtitles, but with films like Howl's Moving Castle where the English dub has some really good voice actors I would prefer to watch the dubbbed version.

I can't even watch dubbed, it drives me nuts!

It really depends for me. Most of the time I prefer my anime subbed but some classic animes like Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo I don't mind watching dubbed cause the english dubbing in them is convincing and not cheesy.

subtitles man. but it has to be GOOD subtitles...not broken english kind of ****s.

You get new anime here and there on American cable, but the general idea amongst cable broadcasters is that anime is a fad that peaked early in the decade and putting it on in primetime would be total ratings poison.

The cheapness of acquiring anime for primetime broadcast compared to the cost of co-producing new, mostly Canadian-made, syndicated sci-fi content would be more than offset in the loss in advertising revenue (as well as the very important secondary revenue stream they get from DVD/BluRay/Itunes).

Spike TV's experiment with financing the production of Afro Samurai seems to have been at least successful enough for a sequel and some merchandising, but it doesn't seem to be so overwhelmingly successful that other channels are financing their own anime co-productions.

As a reply to the topic, my stand on the subs vs dubs issue has always been and will always be subs > dubs. There are some dubs that are acceptable, like, Howl's Moving Castle for example but that does not mean I'll choose dubs over subs.

I haven't encountered a series that made me like the dubbed version more than the original voice actors. Maybe if I have, my opinion will change.

I agree with the post at the top of this page saying that the dubbed version robs the actor of his acting. These are voice actors and the context in which the dialogue is placed deepens the ability of the voice actor to properly express what needs to be expressed.

The only argument I've seen against subs is that you can't concentrate on watching, if you're reading. Well it has not bothered me yet. I've been able to watch and read and listen all at the same time so my preference still goes over to subbed versions.

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