Dubs Or Subs?

So I watch a lot of anime, and most of the time I realize I actually enjoy the English dub. I tend to approach it by a series by series basis. For instance Panty & Stocking an anime I just finished I far enjoyed the Dub more, because most of the sub is already spoken in English.

Fairy Tail was another one where I really enjoyed the English cast over the Japanese dub.


So I just wonder which way most others approach it? I know that this is something that splits the Fandom a little, but which is more important to people? and why?

I tend to watch them in Japanese more often than not. However, I'm not a purist or anything and thus not opposed to watching in English. It just happens that I tend to watch them the other way most. XD I do like some English voice actors quite a lot and just as much as I do the Japanese ones. Crispin Freeman being one of the best examples. Or maybe that's just because I simply adore Alucard. <.<

I favour dub over sub. I find a lot of the subs, that while they get the message across of what people are saying, it's still very clunky. Dubs actually have a better flow to the words, making it feel much more natural.

I also find that having to split my attention between the subs and the actual action going on makes me miss smaller details that I can more readily catch when I just get to watch the show.

More often than not, I follow DA and listen to an anime in Japanese. It hugely depends on the series though and whether I even want to try to hear the English version or not. Some ... I seriously just can't stand. Like most of the cast of Yu-gi-oh GX ... oh hell no. They tried way too hard to 'be hip' with teens. So me and Vein never listen to the dubs for that reason; plus the Japanese voice actors just do better justice. But ... my love for sub's probably hinted in my thread as I tend to use Japanese names for people [if they were altered in a series] over the English ones.

To me, it varies. More often than not I'll be watching subs out of necessity due to there being no good dubs of many series.

Though sometimes dubs just do it plain better. Like, take Dragon Ball for instance. I just cannot for the life of me sit through five minutes of the sub because Goku's Japanese VA is a little old lady, and hearing some hot-blooded Shonen hero speaking with the high-pitched voice of Masako Nozawa makes it impossible to get into.

If the English dub has good voice acting, then I'll watch it. If the English dub is horrible, then I'll watch the subbed version. If both are terrible, then I just pick the one I can tolerate more. I actually find a lot of Japanese, high-pitched female voices to be intolerable. They're whiny, screeching, and in no way "moe". If I wanted to listen to cats having sex, I'd open my window at night. That being said, it's hard to deny that sometimes the Japanese performance is much better than the English performance; some English dubs are just horrific in quality.

Depends sometimes you can find the right person to click like Lord Death from Soul Eater. His English dub is great because I find his voice so funny like a little old man but then when he is fighting Asura and it deepens he sounds so awesome like a real reaper should

I usually prefer to watch an English dub than I do have a subtitled series. I don't mind subtitles but I prefer dubs. When it comes to subtitles sometimes I have a hard time reading what's being said and trying to watch what's going on at the same time, especially if I'm also doing something else (like eating lunch or something). And sometimes, especially late at night, I get too tired to want to read the text. So yeah, I prefer dubs.

I have heard some terrible dubs but, honestly, I've seen more good dubs than bad. I've also heard some really bad original Japanese voices, like Himwari... Ugh, I just can't stand the Japanese voices of most of the girls in that series.

My father once said after going to watch a foreign film "If I'd wanted to read it I'd have just bought the sodding book" and while finesse with the English language may not be his strong point there I'm in agreement with him. To me part of the reason I love anime is that it has all been drawn by someone, so to then spend my time with eyes glued to the bottom of the screen so I don't miss the words which because of sentence lengths and timings rarely matching up, (Japanese has a LOT of contractions English doesn't) and end up missing the pretty pictures... pointless.

But yeah bad dubs are bad... I remember watching full metal alchemist with both subtitles and dub for a while and it was appalling how little they matched up... Character's shouting "No!" and the subtitles reading "Yes!" being the worst example I remember.

Both.
I don't speak japanese so unless the english voices are GAWDAWFUL, or just have stupid lines. (looking at you Those Who Hunt Elves) and If i haven't already watched half the series in english already, anyway my point.

Anyway my rambling aside I like English AND English subtitles. Why? Because I like to see the difference between the worded translation and the spoken translation.
I hear a lot of people say it's about lip syncing but sometimes there's drastic dialogue change even when you see NO mouth movement. That is one reason but another reason is difference between english and japanese culture and possible they decided to take the anime in a slight different direction when translating it, ie one version the character yells at the monster to shut up, and in another he's yelling at his friends not to give up. (yu yu hakasho, when they're trying to keep the ceiling from crushing them.)

Then, and i'll need to rewatch it to double check. in Vexille one of the guys says "everyone at the part wishes they were here" and in another he says pretty much the opposite like "i wish I was at the party" I dont understand that one.

But I love to see the difference between the spoken and the written translations. There is also the that someone told me the written stuff was translated once and then alter down the road they retranslated the spoken.
So it makes me think that what if both spoken and written english translation are not exact to what the original japanese spoken is! AAARG, I must KNOW!!!

Also, 4kids may have censored the hell out of One Piece but the voice acting matched the character so well.
then funimation took it over and replaced it all with BLAAAAAAND voice actors!!!
(same thing happened to dragon hunters at some point, a french cartoon for kids. pretty good actually. but at some point the great voice actors for english were replaced with BLAAAND ones and. coudln't even finish the episode.)

And then later one piece got the DBZ voice acting cast and sorry, cant do that. already know the cast too well in DBZ (not that I watched it a lot but stilllll. >_<)

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Also. Cowboy Bebop is a PERFECT example of the english cast being WAAAY better. (interesting that it did WAY better in america then japan.)

Sub's all the way. Japanese voice actors just seem so much more invested in their roles, idk. I just prefer it. It does mean no clicking onto other tabs to do other stuff- but its better than weak American voice actors that keep being recast over and over on allllllll anime dubs.

I prefer the variety

Both have their ups and downs.

Like I mentioned in a previous post, anime series tend to vary from the manga series. But even then, subs and dubs can have pretty huge differences too. Some of it for censorship but in Deadman Wonderland, Shirou's song actually makes a lot more sense in the sub. There is no hope of the curse lifting. Then there are the voice actors... give me Shannon Chan-Kent over Hirano Aya for Misa Amane any damn day.

I prefer subs if I have the time to actually watch and pay attention to what is being said. Watch enough subs and reading while paying attention to the scene and enjoying the visuals almost becomes second nature. That and like a few others, if I am watching an anime, it is usually one that hasn't been dubbed yet unless it is a bad fan dub.

Subs all the way. Sometimes when I'm exposed to the dubs first I'll stick with them because I've already associated a voice with a character. Or if all you can find is clearly incorrect fan subs... but if that's the case then I doubt you'll be able to find a dub version anyway.

I hate having to read subtitles. For the most part, I can't folow the action and the text without getting very confused. And there are a lot of Japanese actors whose high-pitched, screechy voices hurt my ears. So, unless I absolutely have to, I'm gonna watch a dub, not a sub.

Nine times out of ten, I prefer dubs.

I'm an amateur VA myself. I've primarily contributed voice acting to mods and voiced a couple very small roles for indie games, but from my understanding of -- and very limited participation in -- voice dubbing, it's a tough gig to nail from a performative perspective.

Localized dubbing requires that the VA syncs up their performances in real-time with 'lip flaps' that have already been animated and synced to the original Japanese. Of course, aptly translated dialogue should take this into consideration so that the VA isn't overwhelmed and doesn't have to work too hard to match their dialogue to animation, but there's still a number of variables that pose a challenge to providing good performances when you take the added pressure into account. There's a whole spectrum of difficulty at work within the dubbing process that simply doesn't exist in the original, and as such, I have a lot of respect for the voice actors who work tirelessly to bring their characters to life.

Furthermore, I get a better sense of the performance when I actually understand the language being spoken.

Truthfully, I find that nearly all Japanese dubs sound the same. To an extent, this is true of localized Anime, as the pool of consistently working voice actors is a rather limited one. That's just the way of the industry. When it comes to the Japanese dub, however...the vast majority of the time, I have no idea if I've heard this or that VA here or there before, simply because I don't speak the language and I have more difficulty in differentiating one voice from another. For the same reason, I feel like I'm losing something by not being able to pick up on the nuances of an actor's delivery the same way I can when I'm listening to an English dub.

I don't mind subs, by any means, and there are actually a couple of titles where I do prefer the sub to the dub. I just largely prefer dubs.

I prefer to have subs, I find the Japanese voices and expressions often work better in my mind than having dubs. Part of this is when I was learning Japanese I used a lot of anime to catch an ear for the language. That and music, but that's another thing entirely. So while I do read, and I can read quick so I don't miss much, I often hear enough that it doesn't bother me that much.

I find it amusing that there is a similar pool of VA's in Japan as in the US, often I hear a voice for a character and think, I know that voice from X anime and I hate/love that character. Which sometimes messes me up. But I get that here too.

I do not mind dubs if I am sharing the anime with someone who does not understand Japanese, but that tends to be a minority of animes with me.

Subs, since they don't butcher the original storyline (Voltron is a prime example of this)

I'm a sub person. Doesn't mean I hate dubs, I can actually point out more voice actors I like in a dub. But I just prefer watching anime in subs. Pretty much I tend to watch everything in its original language. Also it's a lot more difficult to find good english dubs. That said, one series where I prefer dubs over subs is Persona.

Subs, please, oh please subs, it would be great to know enough Japanese to not need them, but untill then...

SweetKissHardBite said:

Subs, please, oh please subs, it would be great to know enough Japanese to not need them, but untill then...

Click to expand...

When that day comes, we can all be a day ahead in watching ongoing anime.

I normally go both ways. I watch a lot of subs in order to keep up with the current ongoing anime. However, I will watch dubs if they are pretty good. And there's the little things in dubs they do that you don't see in subs, like accents. It helps make it a little more believable when you've got people of different nationalities all speaking with different accents instead of all sounding the same. While I'm not too big a fan of it, Hetalia did a good job of doing that. Then some shows like Psycho-Pass and Fullmetal Alchemist did a pretty good job with their dubs, finding voices that fit the characters. However, if the voices don't fit the character, I'm not going to bother watching the dubs.

As for subs, I tend to watch that a lot more just because I like to keep up with the shows currently airing in Japan. Plus, there are some shows that will probably never get dubbed, so I have no choice, sort of like Seitokai Yakuindomo. However, I can agree with some people in saying that sometimes I simply can't stand the shows because the over abundance of high-pitched voices. If I wanted a headache that badly, I would simply just turn on the radio and listen to some of the shit that passes for music these days. Although, some of these subs did give us some great moments that the dubs will never be able to recreate, sort of like this.

Unless it is painfully horrible, I watch Dub. That way I can multitask. I like crocheting while I do so.

I have nothing against Dubs, but like some of the other members have pointed out... For me to actually develop some sort of interest in a Dub version, the voice acting has to be G-R-E-A-T.

I for one like subs better, mainly because my ears go into great pleasure when listening to my favorite seiyuus! >.>

This might come off a bit weird, but I get tingles from great voice acting. Hence, why I love subs so much. Sometimes I read the subtitles and sometimes I just listen. XD

I find the Japanese language lovely so I prefer watching subtitles as opposed to dubbed whether in English or Tagalog.