I prefer subs but as a person who has to be doing something I tend to watch dubs so I can multitask. My husband thinks I’m a monster but that scarf didn’t knit itself ya know?
Oh yeah. We had an exchange student many years ago from Germany and it took her a while to adjust to the actual voices of the actors on Star Trek Voyager, of which she was a fan, because she had only ever heard it with German dubs.
I have watched anime for quite some time now and started watching subbed, when I realized that the animes I liked were way ahead in the original version. Like a couple of hundred episodes for One Piece as an example. I got used to reading the subs in my peripheral vision. There may be some instances where I have to do a double take if there is an unusual word, but that’s very rare. English isn’t my first language, but english subs are more easily available. Outside of anime, I always choose the original version with subs as well because it feels more natural to me and I’m used to reading subs anyway. One good example is Sopranos, where the dub in my language doesn’t have any Italian accent whatsoever. The great mafia atmosphere of the original gets totally lost that way.
That aside I totally get watching the dubbed version. Today in times of simul-dubs you don’t have to wait for years at a time. You can watch dubs as background noise. The voice actors are usually great, even if not as consistently incredible as the originals. I always watch dubs with my family and friends, often shows or movies I already watched subbed. Watching something together for me isn’t about the show alone but more about experiencing it together. Watching subbed would defeat that experience as you couldn’t talk to each other as easily as with the dubbed version in your native language.
TLDR: alone I watch subs for the original experience, with others I watch dubs for the experience of watching together.
To each their own. I understand that dubs obviously miss things in translation and it is a valid argument. Sometimes the voice acting is trash. But at the same time I’m not gonna be a dick to someone for enjoying the same thing I do but different. A friend of mine that has never watched anime before we met has recently gotten into it and he watches dubs. We still have a lot of fun talking about the shows and he asks for recommendations all the time. The barrier for anime is pretty high for people that have never seen it before and the biggest way to turn people off of it is to tell them what they enjoy is wrong.
There’s a reason why Japanese voice actors are treated like A-tier celebrities and 'murican anime voice actors are a bunch of nobodies. The chasm between their skill levels is too big.
How exactly tf do you know how good a voice actor is if you can’t understand their language, accent, or inflections? Do you reckon maybe American voice actors aren’t treated well has more to do with the elitist attitude weebs have regarding them than their skill levels?
if you can’t understand their language, accent, or inflections?
I understand all of those things, and I’m a second language speaker for both English and Japanese, so there’s no favoritism there.
Do you reckon maybe American voice actors aren’t treated well has more to do with the elitist attitude weebs have regarding them than their skill levels?
No, I don’t. That’s a fairly senseless hypothesis.
American voice actors definitely get treated like stars and have fans. Source: Ive been to plenty of conventions. Also, another reason Japanese seiyuu are treated with such high praise is because many of them do other media, particularly music.
But seriously, American voice actors have fan groups. Anime and American animation voice actors, and video games actors. There’s a lot of overlap there. There are very passionate fandoms.
Many of the most celebrated seiyuu do nothing but voice acting.
Absolutely not true. There may be some, but seiyuu work is extremely hard. They work their asses off in a cutthroat competitive world doing many things on the side and making money from many more angles that just their voice acting.
I speak English, and like using my ears and my eyes, which is why I watch dubs. If you don’t speak Japanese, what are you doing listening to Japanese speaking voices?
Because not everything worth watching was created in my country? Why would I need to disrespect the intention/effort of everyone involved, when I can just read?
I can’t fathom how having your eyes free to watch the show and using your ears to listen is more distracting than having to read subtitles while listening to what amounts to incomprehensible noise
I have friends that do the same thing. It’s terrible. We were watching a movie I had already seen last night, and someone wanted the subs on. I couldn’t focus on the movie and I ended up playing on my phone. The subs kill me.
Well, I’m one of the people who went through a period watching the anime raw, so I see your argument there. But if you read fast enough, it’s just, I don’t know, you stop consciously reading, and just watch the thing. Also, especially with modern American movies, the sound mixing is ass for the home speaker specifically because they’ve designed it that way. It’s easier to have the subtitles on, because they designed the soundscape for the theater (Christopher Nolan does it on purpose, for example) and stereo be damned, especially with dialogue.
That said, I’ve gotten out of pooh-poohing whatever way you want to enjoy your show; there’s not enough time on earth to worry about whether Tara Strong or Megumi Hayashibara is the better VA (my vote’s on Hayashibara, but Strong is my childhood, and besides, it doesn’t matter).
That’s my feelings, it just gets annoying when people feel a need to spout out that you’re an illiterate moron and say you have trash taste unprovoked all the time. That’s the kind of thing that can drive an otherwise live-and-let-live guy to start an argument
what are you doing listening to Japanese speaking voices?
I think some anime legitimately sounds better with the Japanese voice acting, but some people take it too far and extrapolate that to mean all anime is better with Japanese voices and any dub is immediately shit. It becomes these weird gate-keeping elitism among losers where you literally can’t enjoy ‘anime’ a certain way or else these people won’t think you’re ‘cool.’
One Punch Man sounds better with the Japanese voices imo. Saitama sounds downright iconic in Japanese, but like a generic wimpy boy in English.
The vast majority of other shows I prefer watching in English. Either the dub is identical in quality to the sub, or the difference is small enough that I don’t care since I prefer watching things in my language.
If you are used to reading subtitles you can read them almost subconsciously. And you don’t need to understand the language to get things like emotion out of it. I would even go as far as saying that getting used to reading the emotions of someone that doesn’t speak the same language as you is essential to fully develop a sense of empathy.
I generally prefer watching in whatever the original language was (usually subs for me). But if I happen to see a show dubbed first, that becomes my new personal canon haha.
During my early teenage weeb days, I used to be a sub purist, disavowing anyone who preferred dub. I’d refuse to watch an anime with someone if they chose dub. However, I’ve changed a lot since then and now go with whatever sounds better to me. While some dubs are admittedly bad, others put a lot of time and effort into replicating the original Japanese feel, and they do a great job.
I’ve also noticed that certain anime set in specific countries feel odd in Japanese. For instance, when I watched Steamboy, it was bizarre hearing Japanese voices in the cities of Manchester and London. The Japanese voice actors struggling to pronounce English names and words fluently added to the peculiarity.
I don’t buy into sub purists claiming all English dubs sound the same. Truth be told, a lot of Japanese voices also sound similar. There are cliché voices that almost allow you to predict how a character will sound in Japanese just by looking at their design.
These days I’m firmly of the opinion; whatever sounds right to you. I don’t see the point of giving someone shit for choosing to watch a series in whatever language they prefer, as long as they’re enjoying it.
I can’t stand dubs, I think that japanese VA are a lot better. Anyway, I have been reading subs since I was 8 years old so I read them so fast that it doesn’t bother me.
That’s irrelevant, 'murican dubs lack soul. All of the good voice actors are working on videogames, so they’re left with people they can get off the streets to voice anime in 'murica (sometimes literally).
I ain’t gonna take this blasphemy sitting down. Jad Saxton, Chris Rager, Yuri Lowenthal, Brina Palencia, Crispin Freeman, Johnny Yong Bosch, I’ll fight a mf that says Cherami Leigh lacks soul
English dub VAs don’t get enough credit, it’s damn hard matching mouth movements that were made for a different language
Yeah I can’t watch subs. I don’t want to have to read for a movie. I want to see the faces and expressions of people or characters as scenes play out. If I’m reading subtitles, I’m not immersed and the story doesn’t slap as much for me.
I used to be hardcore anti-subs but then I started to realize that a large amount of English movies are mixed in a way where you can’t understand anything that’s going on anyway (thanks Christopher Nolan) so I have subs on for everything now because I can more consistently experience the entirety of the movie/show instead of my understanding of lines being up to if the director was upset that day.
I listen to podcasts all the time, ones by American, British, and Australia speakers, and I think my aural comprehension has actually improved from that. I have a friend just like you though. Has to turn on subtitles for everything.
I can do audiobooks and such just fine, for some reason movies and shows recently have made a lot of the audio really hard to hear/understand sometimes. I watched Oppenheimer in the theater and I feel like I miss.half the dialogue in some of the louder scenes.
I watch everything in English with subs for this reason. But I can’t usually do that for anime because the subs don’t always match the dub and that’s distracting
Same. I watch everything with subtitles. Helps with the mild audio processing disorders that tend to go hand in hand with ADHD, Autism, or somewhere along the spectrum.
I do try and make them small and unobtrusive though. Especially when I can put them on the bottom where there are black bars due to aspect ratio differences.
Speaking of Nolan, I was able to watch Oppenheimer on 30mm at an independent theater and subtitles were actually turned on. It was much appreciated.
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