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Disney's dubs are anything but unlistenable. Yes they do have their imperfections at places, but they're hardly bad or "emotionless". There are many actors in the dubs who actually rival their Japanese counterparts and even Miyazaki himself says he has no problems with them.

Not that I haven't enjoyed any other dub, but these are always my favorites to listen to.

Was he/she referring to the Disney conversation or the thread title?

Heh, profile says she. I have no idea what she was referring to. It's a sentence fragment with no subject...

Disney is a large company. If the anime didn't fit with their more children oriented subsidiaries, they could chose different one. Like Princess Mononke is owned by Miramax Films, but Miramax Films is own by Disney. So, yeah, content isn't a issue. Just whether they want to distribute such niche medium.

Anyway, I guess if Disney dubbed more anime then we'll get a lot of characters played by age appropriated voice actors which could be interesting if they got actually 12 year old to play 12 year old characters and such. It could just be Miyazaki movies but the character deliver their lines in such a way I'm not use to. Hmm...but Disney having a hand in anime could be a good thing. Getting anime more exposer that the industry needs a bit more of, but its hard to say.

I think it would feel a bit odd to hear Disney voice actors on a lower-budget series, even if they were age-appropriate, personally. Like Hunter x Hunter or Shaman King. The animation and the speech would kind of contradict one-another to me. Unless they didn't put in as much effort as they would a Miyazaki movie, in which case I suppose the only major difference would be the lack of recognizable anime voice actors.

Well disney has done animated series as well as feature films. They've done Saturday morning cartoons that are lower-buget-ish compared to its feature films. So I wouldn't think it would be that odd.


True, but Disney reuses VAs that mostly do voices for American animation. So if it ever was a trend for them to dub anime it wouldn't take long to start recognizing them. I can recognize a few regulars now, once you get names to voices its not hard.

Ya know, I've been thinking about purists of an anime show and how they express being iffy wth most dubs lately. From my observation, some of them argue how none of the dub actor's and their performances as a character doesn't "hold-up" to the Japanese. Some argue how they can't stand additional lines or overall change in dialogue. Others argue how they don't bring out as much emotion or subtlety or whatever as their Japanese counterpart. Now sometimes depending on what those purists argue, I will agree with them because some of their points are pretty valid. But usually whenever I hear anyone criticize a dub about how it's not as good as the Japanese, I'm thinking to myself "but so freaking what?! It's good enough, which is necessary."

Sometimes I really wonder if fans even understand what dubs are designed for, why companies go out of harm's way to even make them. It's certainly not to compete or challngethe Japanese in any way, even though fans make it seem to be the case. Dubs exist so they can help serve as a way to expose anime shows to those with fresh eyes and ears, to people who never seen the show, to people who aren't even hardcore anime fans! So when hardcaore fans who have already seen a show in Japanese and have fallen in love with the show that way, when they argue how the performances ina dub aren't what they like... I think they just overlook the fact the dub is not primarily meant for them. I mean if they do like a show dubbed, then that's great. But they don't have to like a show dubbed.

And sometimes, dubs depending on tehsituation tend to serve different purposes that aren't necessarily about catering to the fans or even just any person with fresh eyes. Like with 4Kids and Nelvana dubs, they're meant to target kids from ages 6-12 to watch an anime show and the anime show is meant as one giant advertisement for video games card games, toys, whatever merchandise that goes with it. And if they succeed at gettings kids who watch Yu-gi-oh to buy the card game decks/booster packs, then the dub actually served its purpose.

That's not to say us fans who liked a show in Japanese or something have to like it in english, all edited-down and altered for childrens viewing. It's fine nif you don't like it at all. I just wish people would also bear in mind that the dub isn't meant for purists at all.

I disagree with that logic. I think the English audience should be granted the exact same experience the Japanese audience is given - televised editing is one thing, but there is no excuse whatsoever for an edited DVD release. There's a difference between acknowledging who the target demographic is, and just plain not caring about anyone outside of it.

I don't think my opinion has really changed - subs are, as a generalization, twice the work for half the experience. I just don't understand their logic - I try, but I can't come up with any conceivable benefit of subtitles other than, one, the Japanese acting being overwhelmingly better than the English, which in my experience has ONLY been the case with a handful of hentais, or two - impatience. No one wants to wait for the dub. Hysteria ensues. Subbed fanbase. Rinse and repeat.

People who complain about dub's performances are usually just upset because they have a pre-established context of what they think the character is "supposed" to sound like. There are almost never any additional lines or dialogue to a significant degree - and even if there are, they're ADDING information, not subtracting it. Why not get more bang for your buck? The third argument is basically the same as the first, and even if you differentiate the two I'm going to call B.S. on it. I don't think it has anything to do with subtlety - the Japanese acting style tends to be more exaggerated, overacted, theatrical, whatever you want to call it. People get used to this style and then think the dub has bad acting because, again, it's not what they're used to.

Another thought has crossed my mind before, that being that people just lack the vocabulary for some dubbed dialogue - subbed lines are more simplistic and down-to-earth. But I don't like thinking like that because it feels like I'm having too little faith in people, even for me. =/

If only that, then the Anime fandom would be a better place, period.

But it IS true that there are some dubs that are not particularly good, and I have been guilty of disliking dubs that have their share of rapid fans who flamed me for not liking them, but that doesn't mean I'm a dub hater. Nor do I think the actors involved in said inferior dubs are bad. On the contrary. It's just that when they give a performance that is below their standard according to me, then that's just how I feel. Does that mean I have no right to be called a fan? Of course not. I like what I like.

I really, really hope this isn't the case, because that's a down right depressing thought. 8(


Anyway this has probably been mentioned, but onne thing that has recently been seriously winding me up is people bitching about how dubbed scripts are less 'accurate' than subs. Even if you don't know Japanese, a quick look at ji-hi's fansub comparisons should show you how horribly annoying Japanese->English can get (i.e, these two fansubs (one two)are accurate from what I can tell, but have slightly different contexts - one implies, to me, her giving up faith before and saying you'll never to do so again, whereas the other is just a solid 'I will never give up' quote). Japanese->English will probably never be perfect (some literal translations can sound horribly unnatural and stilted, but taking the general context of a difficult to translate bit of dialogue ends up with people whining about how "it's not the same as the Japanese!!"), and I'm fairly sure that the majority of sub purists couldn't do a better job than most script localisers are currently doing. /:

Basically I slap my forehead and go WTF when people who don't know Japanese whine about the context of English dubs being different. I mean, how the hell do you know if you don't know the language?! Subs aren't always accurate, in context, or even right!

Let me just respond to this by simply saying that companies like 4Kids and Nelvana don't have it in for hardcore anime fans like us, especially since most of us aren't even kids. They just don't. Yeah, it sucks and I get why it frustrates most people. Just because they'll license a show doesn't mean they suddenly have to cater to us. Again, I'm not saying fans have to support or even like the idea. But when a company buys the rights to distribute a show, depending on that company's objective, they technically have the right to do whatever they want with it, whether we like it or not.

It's not that I don't understand why fans bitch at 4Kids or Nelvana the way they do. I just think all the bitching of what they do and how it's "inexcusable" or "an act of betreyal" is wearing itself a little thin. I just don't understand why people assume they betrayed hardcore fans if they hardly gave a reason to serve to hardcare fans at all.

That IS a legitimate question. Even Disney, despite doing an excellent job with all the Miyazaki/Ghibli films, have been castigated by a vocal minority of people on IMDB who declare that they have "sabotaged his works" by "screwing up the voices, dialogue, music, etc." and that just drives me insane. From what I have heard, Miyazaki was NOT in fact offended by any of the dubs Disney did. In fact, he likes them. Then again, some Ghibli fans tend to be uber-Disney haters, maybe even Macek supporters, hence why they shout how "better" his dubs for TOTORO, KIKI, LAPUTA, and PORCO are than the current versions dismissing any values of the current versions they have (since the first two dubs were pretty good I can partially understand that, but I still liked the Disney ones more, but with LAPUTA and PORCO, that claim is very dubious because neither dub was done particularly well the first time around--Disney HAD to redub them because even Macek didn't think they turned out so well). When fans are that vicious in their views and call anyone who feels otherwise wrong, you know you're in trouble.

It's not about "hardcore" fans - it's about viewers in general. When they decide to pioneer a series with an English dub, they have a responsibility to give both audiences the same experience - they have the legal right to ignore that responsibility and throw all their cards into a toyetic demographic, but that doesn't mean that they're justified in doing so.

Let me put it this way. As long as they have the right to the series, do you know what that means? It means that nobody else does or can. No other company can come in and say, "It's cool if you want to edit and censor your dub for kids and whatnot, but we'd like to make a more accurate dub if it's all right with you." No. It's just 4Kids, or whatever company has their hands on it. The fans who want an uncut dub, who want to see a series they enjoy (or are just interested in watching) as it was originally intended, have to rely on these people to give them a fair and unaltered dub. Their response: "Haha fuck you, you're not in our demographic. Your money's no good here."

It's not that adult viewers aren't their target demographic. I have no problem with that. It's that they have the option to make something available to that audience in addition to their target, and they CHOOSE not to because it's not something that would be as profitable to them.

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Let me put it this way. As long as they have the right to the series, do you know what that means? It means that nobody else does or can. No other company can come in and say, "It's cool if you want to edit and censor your dub for kids and whatnot, but we'd like to make a more accurate dub if it's all right with you." No. It's just 4Kids, or whatever company has their hands on it. The fans who want an uncut dub, who want to see a series they enjoy (or are just interested in watching) as it was originally intended, have to rely on these people to give them a fair and unaltered dub. Their response: "Haha fuck you, you're not in our demographic. Your money's no good here.""

So I'm curious, how come Animax and FUNi can both dub the same anime? It's the same language... Is it because it's a different country?

In a word, yes. Animax dubs are made-for-Asia dubs. They're rarely, if ever (to my knowledge), given a North American release.

Of all the criticisms I've heard directed at dubs over the years, by far the worst and most insubstantial is the all-too-common complaint that an English voice actor does not sound EXACTLY like their Japanese counterpart. This is just so stupid on so many levels, first and foremost being that voice actors are ACTORS, not mimics.

Exactly. Where on earth does it say that the VAs should be replicas of their Japanese counterparts? Why can't they just be allowed to capture the essence of the character without sounding the same? A dub is supposed to convey the essence of the characters, not the vocal tone of the actors from the original.

Another criticism that grates on me is when people try to claim that a dub they consider terrible has scared away many people from trying it out and only made the film/series worse, and being told that YOU MUST WATCH THE SUB.

Personally, I hate being told how I should watch something I like. I'd rather see it the way I like seeing it instead of being castigated by people who disagree with me.

Part of me agrees with you, in that I'm incredibly irked by people who makes those sort of "SUBS OR DON'T WATCH" claims, but part of me thinks that there are cases where one can make a strong recommendation without being out of line. You just have to be tasteful about it and, more importantly, reserve it for only those special few series - not every other one you see just to get more people watching your version.

For example, I think Yu Yu Hakusho is an example of a series that just simply isn't the same experience subbed. The dub is just so spectacular that half of the series's charm is derived from it, to me. I would stress the dub for that particular series to anyone who I was recommending it to. I can't think of any other series I feel quite that strongly about, though.

That sort of thing also really irritates me when it comes to hentai. So many people make completely over-the-top exaggerated reviews about how traumatizing a hentai supposedly is that they forcibly drive people away from watching it - which REALLY gets to me because most of these series are not that bad. Night Shift Nurses is an old wound of mine because of how obscenely people overreact to it. It's my personal favorite hentai series because I think it actually has a great story and is worth watching for the plot rather than the sex - but for every person I could recommend it to, there are 12 more that these stupid renegade reviews have traumatized from even giving the series a damn chance. >_>

I agree. There are two shows in particular that I think are simply better in English, not necessarily because of an outstanding cast (though they are very good) but because of where they take place.

First is Chrno Crusade. It takes place in New York (most of the time) in the... 40's I think. Because it was in English they were able to use terminology that was common in that time period. It just worked better.

The other is Kaliedo Star. It takes place in California. Just makes sense for it to be in English.

I don't think the Japanese version of Hellsing has accents. Since it takes place in England, I think it's much more fitting in English, though. I'm still not as adamant about that one as I am YYH, but it's probably my #2 dubbed recommendation.

I know Coolcat has a soft spot for the accents in Baccano!, too.