Hard agree. Most of the hatred of dubs comes from back in the day when they were terrible but nowadays a bad dub is the exception
Bad dubs or reading were all we had, and now I guess it's muscle memory
Dubs have gotten better, and the decline of fansubs means no translation notes that really helped some oddities.
My rule of thumb is that I'll watch dubs of anime that aren't purely Japanese.
Fullmetal metal alchemist, ranking is kings, attack on titan, jojo, gurren lagann, Gundam, most isekai, I'd be happy to watch in dub.
Demon slayer, jujutsu kaisen, kaiju #8, hajime no Ippo, all blatantly Japanese settings that would throw me off watching the dub so I stuck to the subs.
I think even without speaking Japanese you can understand some of the choices the actors make with their tone of voice. It's admittedly less that you get out of your native language, but sometimes the English actors make different choices.
For example, I don't like the dub of Cowboy Bebop because the Jet actor made him sound more like a meat head than I think the character actually is.
Is that a common criticism of Jet? I never thought he was much of a meathead, more like the oft suffering father figure of the crew.
I dunno, I just didn't really like the English voice. Seemed too disjointed from his true character
If we press play and it auto picks English audio the entire room starts searching for the remote.
Maybe it's what we watch, but English dubs are jank. Compared to the original audio they sound flat and amateur.
Because it's an afterthought. Imagine going to see a painting, but then the venue owner coming up and being like "my favorite color is blue, so all the red is going to get repainted over as blue.
The production wanted and worked and casted and directed and mixed and timed and animated all of the audio and people and visual together., and some asshole comes along and is just like "fuck all of this, people don't want that, replace it with my buddies on staff that are cheap. We've been doing it for years, the dummies won't notice".
And to address the subject of why subtitling is different from that, it's not entirely so. Subtitling is just less destructive.
I think the trope of "Subs are better than dubs" hails from an era where dubbing was generally cheaply done. Or the dialogue is completely changed for broadcast (lots of the stuff from the 4kids era are like this).
FINALLY. SOMEONE LIKE ME!
Jesus fucking Christ, I don’t know how people prefer a perfectly reasonable dub to subs. Like, yeah, if the dub is crap, fine, I get it; but if it’s even halfway decent, why would you want to have to spend half your attention reading text when you could just be focusing on the gorgeous animation you probably selected this anime for watching in the first place? I don’t know, maybe this has to do with people who are slow readers vs fast readers. Maybe my mild dyslexia is the problem here. But I just don’t get it. Subs are work; why would you want to do work while watching an anime for enjoyment?
I'm a fast reader but still watch the dub unless it's garbage, because if I want to read an anime I'll just pick up the manga
Skill issue.
One punch man is so dependent on comedic timing and tone to get its story across that I couldn’t watch it with subs at all. But dubbed it was just great.
Just chiming in so there is someone that prefers subs in the comments....
That said, dubs have on average gotten better over the years, and the sloppy subs they put on streaming services are inferior to fansubs
This is not an unpopular opinion. Netflix and Crunchyroll have both confirmed that more viewers watch dubs than subs.
I agree. For example: URAMESHI!
I'm also a middle aged man with kids and responsibilities. Sometimes I want to watch Anime and I have to fold Laundry or cook dinner at the same time.
In an average day if I'm really lucky I can maybe find a whole hour to sit and WATCH something.
I am glad to hear this. I hate reading subtitles. I feel I cannot relax if I have to read. I want to sit back and casually enjoy anime. However if I hear about an anime plot and I cannot find a dub version for free, I will settle for subtitles. I find it annoying as well switching my attention from reading to what is happening. It kills the mood of becoming immersed in the story.
I feel I cannot relax if I have to read.
That's horrifying, ngl
If someone owns a TV that is small and is accross the room subtitles are useless. I also don't enjoy reading unless it is factual.
To me, Japanese is too fast and I can't read subtitles, don't have time to learn Japanese and for me at least is not worth time, maybe sometimes in the future. But English i actually understand.
I don’t watch anime, but I do prefer subs when watching foreign language media (which is a huge percentage as a Dutchman).
For English of course I don’t need translation, and not for German either. But for languages I don’t know, I just like hearing those other languages and the voices of the actual people talking, not some (often janky) Dutch dub. In Dutch you don’t generally have a choice anyway, though. Dubs are really only made for children who can’t read yet.
But I’d like to add that the quality of subtitles, particularly how they are timed, is very important. If the subtitles are just sentence by spoken sentence, they are essentially useless as you will have to keep reading to understand what’s being said. Proper subtitles also go somewhat ‘into the future’, so after quickly reading the subtitles, you know what will be said and can listen to the actual actors.
I just rewatched Evangelion, and the dubbed dialogue actually made more sense idiomatically than the subtitles. I know there are cases where the translation is not great and the voice actors are doing 5th grade class play level overacting, but that’s not universal.
100% with you. I think dubs get a bad rap. Just caught up on Demon Slayer and loved the english voice actors—especially for Zenitsu 💛
Honestly the sentiment I tend to see online these days is more case by case basis. Dan Da Dan has a great dub, Solo Leveling has a shitty one, the general consensus is that Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is best in English. I think you can tell if acting is good even if you don't speak the language but I can respect preferring dubs to subs
Man I really could not stand the DDD dub at all. The Japanese voice acting is just 1000x better on that one.
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