| For every good dub, there are several bad ones and almost none of them are better than the oriiginal |
| I don’t watch dubs that much anymore, but I do think they’re getting at least a little better in quality as technology progresses. A lot of really bad dubs are old ones. |
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| I think most dubs are getting better nowadays. Hero Academia and Overlord have great dubs. |
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| Haven’t really seen the upstep. I don’t think dubbing companies have made the stride to get these actors classes, it’s mostly self taught on the job and the vesatality of these actors is either limited or their voices aren’t very prominent (aside from one role they’re famous for) or iconic (I can notice Steve Blum or Christopher Sabat in many productions but their voice works so well the quality of the performance is natural). This is all opinion but until the dubbing industry and I do mean that even outside of Funimation too, takes it seriously as a seiyuu and possibly grabs their practices (especially with many of the new gen actually wanting to be va out of the gate and not just working in theater incidentally) the dub quality will never improve and have more misses than hits. |
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| When you hear so many bad dubs, you have to start separating the bad from the really bad, to the point the regular bad becomes your average or expected quality of dub. |
| If you watch dubbed anime then you're not a TRUE fan |
| Well sorta, like MP100 has a nice dub, but bad dubs have their own charm to em which sorta makes them better. Don't listen to dubs much though, so can't really say. |
  Don't worry about being lame now, you were always lame anyway!  |
| No. Dubs are and will always be haram for a good reason |
 Nico- said: Conversations with people pinging/quoting me to argue about some old post I wrote years ago will not be entertained@Comic_Sans oh no y arnt ppl dieing i need more ppl dieing rly gud plot avansement jus liek tokyo ghoul if erbudy dies amirite |
Stevewonder07 said: justcaolan said: that's not true. Some people just perfer to watch it in there own languageIf you watch dubbed anime then you're not a TRUE fan The people who prefer that aren't TRUE fans if they think the cringy English voice actors are acceptable |
| yes, i always enjoy listening to that one monotonous voice-over guy dubs. he makes it so much better than hearing those screaming high-pitched japanese women |
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justcaolan said: Stevewonder07 said: that's not true. Some people just perfer to watch it in there own language The people who prefer that aren't TRUE fans if they think the cringy English voice actors are acceptable A lot of people probably feel the same way about subs. I do sometimes. |
justcaolan said: If you watch dubbed anime then you're not a TRUE fan I want to argue with that, but I realised that I only watch dubbed anime when I don't have much expectations from it. If I feel like I might like the anime, I switch to the subbed version. |
ocrybabyo said: justcaolan said: The people who prefer that aren't TRUE fans if they think the cringy English voice actors are acceptable A lot of people probably feel the same way about subs. I do sometimes. the people who feel that way about subs need to get better standards |
| well there are more dubs per season now so overall there would have t be better subs even at a rate of 2 per season |
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Admittedly I do have a soft spot for the fmab dub because it's the first version I watched but even though I have nostalgia for the dub I still think the sub is a million times better |
| I think they've been pretty solid since the 00's. Though I'm actually sad we won't get any more craptastic dubs from the likes of Manga Entertainment and Central Park Media, or Streamline... the studios that launched the finest of memes. |
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| Dubs have certainly increased in verbal accuracy compared to the 90s when you had dubs made (1) explicitly just to sell stuff rather than trying to stick close to the original script, and (2) including changes that were meant to make things more familiar to western audiences (jelly donuts are the most famous example). These days, (1) the original studios generally have much more creative control, (2) dubs of the anime people talk about tends to be made for the young adult audience that makes up much of western anime fandom and probably already knows some anime stuff, so there's far more demand for script accuracy and far less need for trying hard to make stuff appeal to non-niche audiences or toning down stuff to make stuff okay for children, and (3) everyone finds out everything about everything on the internet anyway. Has this made them better? Well, I guess that's up to you to decide if you like that. I mean, I can understand someone finding a certain kitschy charm in older dubs like that. |
| Avatar character is Gabriel from Gabriel DropOut. |
BackstageMage said: Well sorta, like MP100 has a nice dub, but bad dubs have their own charm to em which sorta makes them better. Don't listen to dubs much though, so can't really say. The MP100 dub is actually amazing. I was shocked by the cast cause they have experience outside of just anime and don't sound like every other character they voice and obviously take inspiration from the original seiyuu. Kind of the golden boy of the Funimation dubs in recent memory. |
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| Honestly I believe so. I like to watch both sub and dub, and there will be times where I will only watch a certain anime in dub. There are some really good dubs out there, but not every dub is the greatest. |
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| Probably. But I just watched Maison Ikkoku dubbed and it's hard to imagine dubs can have gotten much better since then, so it always depends on what dub you're talking about. Dubs have always been good if they cast people who are actually professional actors. A lot of older dubs just didn't and a lot of newer dubs still don't. That's what I like about Ghibli dubs and the Maison Ikkoku dub. They're just not done only by people who only ever got hired for dubbing random anime, but by people who have proven that they have talent beyond that. That's also why I appreciate german dubs more than english ones in terms of their voice acting quality. There is a huge dubbing industry in germany, dubbing all the hollywood movies and series etc... And anime, instead of having to start from scratch like in the US where foreign media dubbing is barely existing, could just tap into that existing pool of talent and experience. Idk, it just feels like a lot of anime voice actors in english just have a specific 'anime style' of how they act and it just doesn't sound that convincing or natural to me. They try to imitate the japanese over-acting, but without much success because we're not used to it in english from other media. It's a japanese thing. So they just kinda stick to a few techniques, a few tones that seem to try to imitate that, without trying out anything else. So even most of the good/decent voice actors just don't leave much an impression beyond 'this was okay, I guess'. Which is just kinda weak, voice actors are supposed to shape the impressions of the characters. In the best cases, they shape the impression of the whole show. So yeah, I prefer it when they have experience outside of just dubbing anime. Maybe even most of their experience. Not because it's always gonna be better, but because it's rarely gonna be anything less than 'good'. Heck, even in terms of japanese VAs, one of my absolute favorite performances (Peco in Ping Pong) was done by someone outside of the animation industry. Someone who didn't grow up with the overacting in the anime industry. It just has a different sound or tone than anime-specific voice actors, no matter which language. And I like it more, because it treats anime just like any other work to be dubbed, not like some 'special case' that needs it's own, more OTT kind of voice-acting. In Japan the anime industry is just so big that it became it's own microverse, seldom mixing with other areas of acting or voice acting, which is kind of a shame. In America the same happens but more because the dubbing industry itself is barely existing. At least for foreign media. Most of the dubbing that is done is for their own animated series and games, which seem to kinda suck up most of the most talented voice actors and not share them very much with the people who dub anime, at least to my knowledge. Possibly because anime licensing companies can't compare in terms of how much they can pay. Or can I hear an anime dub with Justin Roiland or H. Jon Benjamin somewhere? I doubt it, but it would be cool. That kind of 'isolation' led to them cultivating their own, anime-specific voice actors and I just don't like that a lot, on average. Why make anime sound so specific, so different? Imo it works best when an anime dub is approached the same as any other dub, or even any other acting job. The funny thing is that the professional anime voice actors still often seem to manage to pronounce the japanese terms worse than the people who only occasionally dabble in dubbing anime. It's just one of those things that make me think there are much lower standards for professionalism in the anime-specific voice acting circles when they are doing a worse job at what they've been doing all their life, compared to some actor who probably only took the job for the money, possibly marking a lower end of his career. Of course that's all talking on average. I know there are plenty of talented voice actors who have most or all of their presence in anime dubs. Brad Swaile, Steven Blum, Crispin Freeman, among others are english voice actors I like a lot. But that doesn't really change my impression that it's very much hit or miss, not just in terms of the whole dub, but every single character, even in the better dubs. It's very rare to find really consistently good dubs. Most are just passable, with maybe some individual great performances, but almost never on the level of every single cast member. Even Bebop has plenty of side characters that only show up in one episode that have kinda questionable voice acting, even though the main chars are still dubbed very masterfully imo. On the other hand Ghibli dubs with stacked cast or the Maison Ikkoku dub are just really solid all the way through, for the whole cast. It feels almost effortless when done right, but the vast majority of english dubs still struggle reaching those levels of consistency. But don't get me wrong. The anime-specific dubbing industry in america has also come a long way since its beginnings. There are so many dubs from old stuff that just feel like the licensing company did it themselves, without any education in acting, nevermind voice acting. Maybe even call in some random friend or family memebers. Everything to save a buck. At least those times are largely over and the dubbing industry has become more professional. It's just kind of a uniform, slightly incestuous kind of professionalism. Not much creativity or people taking risks or trying new things. Just safe casting choices, safe acting, never really terrible anymore like in the olden days, but also rarely impressive. Well, that's my take. On average they probably have gotten better, but I still find them kinda lacking. But on the individual level, you can find fantastic dubs in every decade. Just mostly for high-profile, mainstream kind of titles that could afford it. |
| I probably regret this post by now. |
| Whether or not they're getting "better" I can't say, but I always enjoyed dubs, even many older ones which some people don't like. I just finished watching "Yami no Matsuei" dubbed, and I thought that it sounded fine. |
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Drobie said: I think there have been plenty of good to decent dubs for decades. I think the popularity of simulcast dubs are a strain on voice actors and the crews behind dubs and can lead to mediocre results. Still plenty of good dubs coming out, and one of the few benefits of simulcast dubs in this era is seeing a lot more behind the scenes stuff. Pullman's answer above is good here, props for the Crispin Freeman shoutout, that man is a beast (gives a great lecture too). Thanks for the nice words. He convinced me back in the day as Kyon which was one of the first anime I watched on the internet (and not german TV) and even tho I haven't seen that many dubs, he has yet to disappoint in the ones I've seen. Togusa, Zelgadis, Tsume. He knows what he's doing. |
| I probably regret this post by now. |
ProfessionalNEET said: Agree with this.I watched the Evangelion (TV series) dub a few weeks ago and the voices were all over the place. The quality of the voice acting varied a lot, with some characters being fairly expressive, like Asuka, while a lot of the others were fairly monotone. Additionally, a lot of the characters, such as Misato and a bunch of minor characters had weird regional accents. I watched one of the movies (the ones that retell the whole Evangelion story) and the voices and voice acting were generally better. Overall, most recent dubs are much more grounded and consistent in quality compared to Evangelion and (I'm assuming) most older dubs. Also IIRC Asuka's English voice actress actually knows German so she did that one line exceptionally well. Aside from that though I haven't found much reason to rewatch Evangelion dubbed. (And I'm someone who tends to like dubs!) |
| Avatar character is Gabriel from Gabriel DropOut. |
| dubs are shit..always will be subbed before dubbed |
| Signature removed. Please follow the signature rules, as defined in the Site & Forum Guidelines. |
| "It's getting better all the time It can't get no worse." Just to quote someone. Yes, op is right, just look at danganronpa funimation. |
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