Harsh Truths People Can't Accept - English Dub Aren't Cringe becau...

@Piromysl Precisely! Which is what I said - anime is pretty cringy. It's overacted and has child protagonists. Which is why those anime-themed games share the same problem that anime does.

@therealnagora It absolutely is a dub - it's dubbed over the animation. That's what the term means, originally, before people started to only associate it with the sub vs dub dichotomy.

They really, really don't sound like anime. I've lived in Japan most of my life, and the closest you'll get are girls trying to sound like kids to appeal to weirdos. I do see that fairly often in and around the red light district, but that's about it.

Why would Americans be out of place in space?

The sentence structure differences are why transliteration is bad, and localisation is good - because you can express the same concepts in different ways, so it generally isn't a problem in localised dubbing.

what can I say but :
Whenever I manage to force someone new into watching anime one of their comments is how loud people are. Shounen anime is constant screaming, girls constantly do some girly sounds etc. And I agree. It took some time for me to adjust.

And I try to watch dubs if available. But many modern dubbed anime kinda have monotonous delivery. And anything in school setting is unbearably cringe in English for some reason

I'd add to this that if one checks the Japanese dubs of American shows like say, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, The Boys etc. none of the women sound like very high-pitched voices we are familiar with in anime. So it's not like an issue of they don't have the supply for this talent, but that simply anime watchers prefer it that way. A lot of anime girls tend to be super young, and also have a specific archetype that lends itself to that kind of voice acting, and therefore those voices get cast for them. It's kind of unfortunate I guess, but it is the industry working as intended in terms of giving paying customers what they want.

Steve Blum - Cowboy bebop.............

@ItachiDeltaForce My go-to example of a cringe performance. He makes Spike sound like a teenager pretending to be The Fonz or something. Awful.

This is just an expression of hate for femininity given auditory form, because that's essentially what that is: The sound of femininity. Better for girls to sound like what they are than masquerading as what they are not. Taking sex out of it, it's like being upset over humans sounding like humans and not like giraffes or jaguars.

regardless of what u think that perfomance is the cornerstone and blueprint for brilliant eng dubs


u are in a very very tiny minority on this one

Mod Edit: Removed baiting.

I'm surprised that you took any of that either as insulting or as intended to be. If it's because of the use of the word "hate" (that's become something of a buzzword, I guess, in a lot of modern political discourse) in this context, then it wasn't intended as a value judgment of your hate; only recognition of it. There are a lot of things I hate. Whether someone else hates something or not isn't something I care about at all other than as a point of curiosity and passing conversation - It's not something which causes me to hold their character in contempt and I have zero interest in thought policing real or alleged misogyny, misandry, or any of the like. I'm also not a subscriber to or adherent of what some people call "woke" ideology or anything of that nature, so think you may have been reading just a bit too much into or taking the wrong idea/impression away from my comment.

The point is, concerning what is natural, the high-pitched feminine voices objectively sound like humans in the sense that they're spoken by humans. It's a series of sounds made by human vocal cords. So of course it will sound human, the female half of humanity in the girls' and young women's characters' case, and not like a bat or a lava flow. Now, you can argue about the degree of what is natural and authentic human vocal and speech patterns versus artificial electronic enhancement and that's a valid consideration to keep in mind, but I've heard enough high-pitched Japanese and other East Asian girls over the years in in-person/real life or otherwise unscripted scenarios to know that it's not just a fabricated invention. At most it's a slight exaggeration in some cases.

That's not to paint all of their sex or ethnicity with one broad brush either as there are also plenty who don't sound like that or, at least, I've never heard and witnessed their voice reach that range in any context, but it's not some reach or a unicorn phenomenon to have excited feminine Japanese girls chatter frantically about something.

Mod Edit: Modified quote of edited post.

@XMGA030 You're suggesting they should have projected their own experience onto you in order to assume your reasoning rather than you providing a simple, brief explanation to make sure they properly understood you?

Yes, it's my fault. I tend to assume that people online have at least a 95 IQ. Indeed, as they (he) pointed out, this isn't still 1995 -- we're much dumber these days.

@XMGA030 So in current year, we no longer share our personal opinions and only project our own beliefs onto others? I see why things have gone to shit.

We're sometimes guilty of assuming the creatures these days have a human level of comprehension, yes.

What's the point of watching foreign media if you refuse to listen it in the original language? Is hearing foreign language that intimidating to your ears?

Mod Edit: Removed baiting.

Authentic in anime doesn't mean 'raw', it just means the original unaltered production. Your stupid quibble about subtitles is like saying if I were eating out in japan I'm not getting the real japanese restaurant experience all because I ordered from a menu printed in english, even if I use freakin' chopsticks and go itadakimasu. We're only talking about a video overlay on the bottom of a screen to know what the characters are saying; it's an innocuous thing and not subtracting from the substance of the show, unlike a dub that totally changes the spoken language and butchers the pronunciations of names and words. Even if some shitwit corporate translator trying to be funny ad-libs the dialogue here and there the anime, behind the subtitles, is still the real thing: 100% Made in Japan.

Truly inauthentic is watching something set in japan where everyone speaks american english. Is that simple enough or does someone need to paint you a goddamn picture?

Well, if that’s a issue, just stick to English media then :)))))))

I have ADHD so that argument doesn’t work, and if it’s that bad, medication is always an option :))))). And in the case I end up with vision problems, I’ll just quit fiction altogether.

One thing I will chime in to say is that I don't really "buy" the argument - and never have (even though it's a claim trotted out very frequently) that when assessing general quality, only older, 90s and earlier pre-2000s dubs were bad compared to the much newer produced and released ones made today or in recent years. Frankly, I consider that attempt to dispel a supposed myth instead itself in fact the myth.

Because I watch everything with the original Japanese audio and English subtitled the same as I watch all other foreign media in its original native language, but due to curiosity of wanting to check out a few seconds or a minute of the dub or occasionally accidentally clicking or downloading the wrong file or having the wrong audio track set within the video player software or any number of eventualities, there have been many occasions when I've heard much more recent dubs all the way up through and including ones from the current year. And they sucked every bit as much.

I believe that if one fundamentally dislikes English dubbing (or insert whatever your native language is in lieu of English) over foreign language works, then that will carry through across the eras. I have never listened to an English dub from, say, 2019 or 2022 and thought and felt "Wow, so much better than those antiquated hackjob ones from 1995." It still sounds intolerably off and ugly to me.

Now, my disliking it doesn't make it objectively "bad" in the way that my dislike of vegetable juice or pig intestine hotpot doesn't make those things inherently objectively bad. But people baselessly universalizing their own subjective views and tastes is more of a global-humanity-throughout-the-entirety-of-recorded-history-on-every-issue-conceivable problem. Not a specific anime audio problem.