I’m a big anime fan. There’s no way around that. If you walk into my living room you’ll see a decent anime dvd collection and anime cels covering the wall behind my couch. I love the stuff though I’m very picky about what anime I call my favorites. Over the years I’ve gotten into many debates about my “snobbish†attitudes when it comes to anime being subtitled or dubbed. Time to let the whole world know my opinion and reasons on the subject.
The easy winner is subtitles, hands down.
If you think I’m biased because the first anime I watched was subtitled you’d be wrong. The first anime I remember watching happened to be “The Magical Adventures of Unico†and “Unico and the Magical Islandâ€. Both of those I watched dubbed and as a kid I totally enjoyed them, even though I had nightmares about evil puppets turning me into a giant puzzle piece. There was a large gap in my anime watching for many years. The next anime I watched was the subbed version of Fushigi Yuugi.
Since then I watch all my anime subbed and enjoy it that way. I have tried to watch various ones dubbed and while I can live with a couple of English voice actors in certain roles (the English voice of Vash the Stampede isn’t terrible….) I much prefer to listen to the original Japanese seiyuu (voice actors). I’d like to point out that the seiyuu were chosen carefully to fit those particular roles. In certain cases, such as in Fushigi Yuugi, the seiyuu even have several character songs that play as background music and are on the soundtracks that they actually sing. If you only ever listen to the dubbed version of Fushigi Yuugi you’ll miss that wonderful little bit that adds to the experience. I realize it’s easier to focus on the images if you don’t have to read the subtitles but I think you can master the ability of reading fast and seeing the picture at the same time.
I’ve tried and tried to get used to dubbed anime but every time I ended up running from the room, hands over my ears and singing loudly to block out the sound. While I love the sound of Japanese seiyuu, even in high pitched high school girl mode, I cannot stand to hear an English voice actor trying to pull off the same tone (and usually failing miserably). The pacing, the tone, the emphasis never sounds quite right in dubbed anime. Perhaps the actors try too hard. Perhaps they don’t try hard enough. In either case, it’s enough to make my ears hurt.
There’s a local anime convention here in Nashville called MTAC and each year I try to convince the con chair that he would have a huge surge in attendance and fangirls by the truckload if he would just get one relatively well-known seiyuu here as a guest. Or even an actor from a live-action move like Death Note. Heck, if Matsuyama Ken’ichi was at the next con, I’d be one of those drooling fangirls in line.
I’m open to debate about the whole subject of subbed vs. dubbed. If you prefer your anime dubbed and want to give me some great reasons why, drop a comment!
I watch a lot of my anime dubbed in English, but I do watch the subbed ones only because they are uncut most of the time. Stupid America has to censor or cut a lot of good stuff from anime. Anyways great article.
Gotta ask, do you have a favorite english voice actor in a particular role? I know I lot of folks like Crispin Freeman (i think that’s his name) in the role of Alucard on Hellsing. I’m of the mind his voice isn’t deep enough but still, he’s a popular one…
It really depends on the anime for me. I have absolutely no problem watching dubbed Cowboy Bebop, but there’s plenty of others where the dialogue/voice acting just gets on my nerves. Those are the times I go for subs.
If I’m just starting a new anime, I go for dubs first, and then after an episode or two I make a decision on whether I want to switch to subs or not.
Maybe if I heard the anime dubbed first I might be more kind to it…
But I’m the type that gets excited when I buy anime and find out that it has no option for dubbing.
I’ll have to give Cowboy Bebop’s dubbing a try just to see what happens.
I would have to say my favorite anime voice actor would probably be Justin Cook who did Yusuke Urameshi from Yu Yu hakusho or Jeff Nimoy who did Wolfwood from Trigun
Out of all the anime that I watch I prefer the dudded and here’s why. I can most the time ignore bad voice unless it’s really bad. Johnny Yong Bosch is probably my favorite voice actor. Ichigo, Vash the Stampede, Michael Garret, and come on Adam Park the black Power Ranger.
My real problem is that I miss what’s going on on screen because my head in buried in the subtitles and my other big problem that most of the time with having it subbed is I don’t know whose talking.
Side Note: the Death Note living action movies where freaking amazing. It was so close the anime it was scary. L was perfect.
One of the few English voice actors that I think did a decent job is the one who did the english dub for Vash the Stampede. He had a similar tone and emphasis to the Japanese seiyuu. The English Wolfwood was okay but I prefer the Osaka-accented Japanese seiyuu voice.
The good thing is that anime tends to put more emphasis on still shots so you can catch the subtitles without missing too much action (unlike American cartoons) for the most part.
Side note: Yes, the Death Note movies were brilliant! I plan to write about those sometime this week or the next. 🙂 Cause they just have to be written about.