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

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.

@ItachiDeltaForce I'm not a noob but I also wasn't introduced to anime via the CB dub and thus have no nostalgic attachment to it. Huge numbers of American anime fans do, however, and love it. But to me it's unwatchable and embarrassing; practically the definition of cringe.

thats exactly what a noob would say......

I agree honestly. Another common criticism I don't get is "they use the same handful of VAs for every show". The Japanese voice acting industry isn't much different in that regard; according to this even the 100th-most prolific Japanese voice actor has at least 271 roles under his belt. Not saying it's a good or bad thing, just that it isn't much different from the English voice acting industry.

As far as my preferences go it really depends on the show; I prefer dubbed for maybe 40-45% of the anime I've seen (rough estimate)? Personally I don't mind if you have a general preference as long as you aren't pretentious about it.

Your argument is specious. We're talking about anime, not some esoteric mystery school shit where certain ideas are only comprehensible within a certain cultural-linguistic framework and non-communicable to foreigners. The dialogue in anime concerns pretty mundane things by contrast. Nearly all those things -- even your shounenshit heroes always yelling about "boku no seigi" -- have identical meanings in all the major languages. This relative simplicity of the subject matter allows us effectively a 1:1 translation from japanese to english, and if there happen to be any differences in the words and terms in the subtitles those are trivial at best and not enough to support the assertion that sub watchers are receiving an inferior experience. You and that other kid trying to claim there's a substantive "alteration" occurring to anime by placing subtitles over it are really grasping at straws.

Bottom line: there's a big difference here between a translation and an alteration, and you know it. So just give it up.

Your logic doesn't work for people who aren't native english speakers. I don't think english voice actors are bad at all, I mean I play video games in English such as the metal gear series, bayonetta and many more. I was a transformers fan before I was a fan of anime, and I really like the voice acting in g1, transformers prime, and the video games as well.

I just don't see the reason why they don't hire "better" voice actors like they do for video games and animated movies, for anime.

@Yuu_Kanzaki You may not be a native English speaker, but you do speak English better than Japanese, which is why it'd still be relevant.

The acting in Transformers isn't as over the top as anime is, because anime's - well - made for a different culture entirely. Which is why it's so cringy, when you really pay attention to it.

Your argument is specious. We're talking about anime, not some esoteric mystery school shit where certain ideas are only comprehensible within a certain cultural-linguistic framework and non-communicable to foreigners. The dialogue in anime concerns pretty mundane things by contrast. Nearly all those things -- even your shounenshit heroes always yelling about "boku no seigi" -- have identical meanings in all the major languages. This relative simplicity of the subject matter allows us effectively a 1:1 translation from japanese to english, and if there happen to be any differences in the words and terms in the subtitles those are trivial at best and not enough to support the assertion that sub watchers are receiving an inferior experience. You and that other kid trying to claim there's a substantive "alteration" occurring to anime by placing subtitles over it are really grasping at straws.

Bottom line: there's a big difference here between a translation and an alteration, and you know it. So just give it up.

I still like watching in eng subs though. The only exception is playing Persona games where I like the english dub more because I started with english dubs playing it back in the day.

I've never seen a sub job where cultural references are skipped over or westernized. I did see a couple episodes of last month's new shows talking about mochi, on top of countless other cultural mentions. Understanding them may be cool but if not well...your ignorance is not causing changes to the anime, the experience is still the same, like eating at japanese restaurant without knowing the history of their food.

So anime dubs aren't cringe. We are!