Crunchyroll ceo reveals globally countries prefer dubbed to subbed anime!?

No surprise really. Most european countries dub regular movies which I find weird and is in the same vein as dubbed anime imo

I come from a sub country, I love reading

@fbjim but what percentage of movie goers ever spend time on such sites? It's not representative, neither is MAL.

@therealnagora the obvious difference is that the vast majority of casual film watchers in English-speaking countries don't engage with films in foreign language at all.

i'm not talking about casual watchers though. i'm talking about actual, online discussion forums. i've never seen any serious arguments about whether it's better to watch a 1960s French film dubbed or not - it's just kind of understood that the original language is the best way to go for most films. for some reason this isn't true of anime discussion forums where sub/dub is like the oldest flamewar topic known to man.

@therealnagora the obvious difference is that the vast majority of casual film watchers in English-speaking countries don't engage with films in foreign language at all.

i'm not talking about casual watchers though. i'm talking about actual, online discussion forums. i've never seen any serious arguments about whether it's better to watch a 1960s French film dubbed or not - it's just kind of understood that the original language is the best way to go for most films. for some reason this isn't true of anime discussion forums where sub/dub is like the oldest flamewar topic known to man.

This shouldn't be surprising, as it's the same pattern we've seen for 30+ years. Even back in the VHS days, the dubbed versions (with much worse dubs than today's, on average) sold more than the subbed versions -- to the point where the dubbed tapes sold at a lower price point, despite costing more to produce. At US anime conventions, dub VA panels are well-attended, and they make good money selling autographs as well. Maybe there is some statistical skew arising from legal vs. illegal consumption, but English dubs are also widely available on pirate sites and via multi-audio downloaded files, so it's not as simple as assuming "pirating -> subs / paying -> dubs."

That's not what happened. Sony bought Funimation, then later bought CR, then folded Funimation's operations and (most of) their streaming catalogue into the CR site and brand name.



Those enlightened pirate site users trust CR's subtitles on a regular basis without whining about them being "inaccurate," since the translations on illegal sites are ripped from legal sites.

As for "censoring like crazy," streaming sites stream the materials they get from Japan. Anything censored on CR (or similar sites) is that way because either:

1) They're streaming the Japanese TV broadcast version, not the home-video version.
2) They're streaming a general-market TV broadcast version, where some premium channels like AT-X have a less-censored version.
3) The Japanese side prepared an edited "international version," as with some shows like Onimai, Tokyo Revengers, and that one scene from SAO III.

I'm not aware of any instances where CR actively edited the audio or video of an anime themselves. Are you?

@fbjim I understand that you're not talking about casual viewers but to a extent the original story is. The people posting here saying that "well, of course - it's Crunchyroll" are just talking crap. It's got nothing to do with Crunchyroll and everything to do with normal casual (English-speaking) viewers not wanting to watch things with subtitles whether live action, Japanese, Indian, French, animated or anything else. Netflix, HiDrive, Apple and all the rest would back up these stats I'm sure.

People who care about movies are different - we want to hear the original intonation of actors who are not straining to fit a load of dialogue into a space too small for it. But most people want to be able to eat or keep an eye out for the postman while the show is playing or whatever.

The reason there's an argument on places like MAL is simple - we're talking about cartoons. Lots of people, even here, regard cartoons to a greater or lesser degree as pap for the purposes of shallow entertainment, and they clash with people who don't see how the medium can change the value of a story. This is not an argument many people would ever have about French cinema because it doesn't have the same legacy associations of being "for kids" around its neck.