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Every time I see people praising/slagging off dubbing in anime I feel completely out of place 'cause I don't get how you could watch it dubbed in the 1st place tbh. A huge part of anime charm for me personally is work of Japanese seiyuu, and without them chances are I won't watch it at all. Even if chosen dubbing actors are professionals with lovely-sounding voices, they always sound... somehow wrong. Let alone miscasts.
P.S. Just watched 5 min of anime with American dub and I honestly want this time back. Also dubbing over Shou Hayami... should be some sort of crime in itself
#anime #seiyuu
@ivaliya hear hear (as it were).
@ivaliya I know a couple people who need the audio, whether for auditory processing disorder or for dyslexia, both or nausea from trying to read when the audio is different, etc
@MxVerda My toot obviously wasn't aimed at people who choose dubbing for any sort of health or perception-related reasons. It's not my place to talk if that's the case and I perfectly understand that. Mine was a personal preference in a situation when there's a choice
@ivaliya most dubs are terrible and cringey. some are good or okay but I usually like to watch with the original voices
@lalah I can't even objectively say they are terrible (professional VAs who do their honest work), but they just don't seem to fit. They disrupt the flow and almost always seem out of pace to me. So yeah, I also enjoy original voices
@ivaliya I won’t diss someone’s preferences. They get to enjoy in their way, so the following is just me, and not meant to reflect the value of it all.
I enjoy English VAs. There’s some who have made some of my favorite roles. Some examples would be Mel Blanc (ok cheating, he might be the best of all time all categories), John DiMaggio, Billy West, Phil LaMarr, and a long long list to follow.
I love the VA work in a lot of games. Daisuke Tsuji was amazing as Jin for instance. A lot of the Sony games are amazing.
But anime dubs don’t work for me. If you play a clip there’s a very good chance I can pick out a dub or an English original. I just simply do not like the style. I can’t get through a trailer. I haven’t yet heard any I didn’t dislike. But I grew up with subtitles (dubs were only Disney and anything for kids that couldn’t read. And the Eastern European cartoons they for some reason imported didn’t always have spoken words.).
The funny thing is that dubbed games are hit and miss instead. When they sound natural I’m all for it. When it sounds like an anime dub, I’m out. (Sometimes British dialects can save a dub for me. Skye Bennett and Catrin-Mai Huw are amazing!)
Kicker, sometimes the same person in different roles can fall into the love and don’t like buckets for me. My guess is that the amateur ultra cheap anime dubs created a style, and the directors maintain it.
I generally prefer subtitles anyways, as I prefer as little changed as possible (I don’t watch things dubbed into Japanese for instance, so it’s not about Japanese per se. I will watch Das Boot in German, even if the original actors dubbed it into English.).
My fear is that we’ll get more auto translated subs, and they are absolutely awful. :(
Sorry for the wall of text, don’t often get to talk about it:) Curious if you’ve had similar experiences with VA work other than anime dubs.
@yon Oh, don't be sorry for a wordy response, I enjoy reading people talk :)
Interestingly enough, I actually grew up with dubbing so to say. Everything that was imported, especially from the US (I grew up in Europe), from Hollywood movies to Disney cartoons, was always dubbed. I actually came to know what it's like to watch something with subtitles relatively late since this option simply wasn't around when I grew up. So it may seem that I should naturally lean towards dubbing given the choice. But no...
Even though there're VA voices I enjoy that are kind of ingrained in my head and even bear some nostalgic value for me (especially from childhood memories). It's hard to dismiss voices you've grown up with.
But with anime dubbing my perception is similar to yours, I can't bear it. I don't even know what it is exactly... but somehow it's ALWAYS a miss for me. And it's not even a dab at English, since I tried different languages that I more or less understand. They all sound somehow misplaced when in comes to anime in specific. Even when I enjoy VA's voices in general. I also don't watch stuff dubbed into Japanese (I tried Doctor Who and almost started laughing... sorry) so it's not just the language issue for me either.
Fewer barries the better, but automatic sub translation is certainly not a viable option I agree. Recently I watched a Chinese drama episode with AI generated sub translation (I didn't know beforehand, otherwise I wouldn't touch it with a stick) and it was awful. So I hope it's not the future...
So I guess in the end, it's good to find what works for you. Preferences and personal perception will always vary. Hopefully, there're options
@ivaliya Hello fellow European :) Luckily the swapped to subs for anything the audience are old enough to read in Sweden.
They also have a really good set of rules for subtitles that I miss. Things like a minimum time it has to be on screen etc. It’s not just about the words, it’s also about user friendliness and timing. It’s more art than science for sure.
I think for me it’s because it doesn’t sound natural, and many US dialects tend to be either grating or downright awful (southern). Then add artificial squeaky voices (I’ve got nothing against high pitched individuals, quite the opposite. But it just sounds strained when trying to pull it off if you can’t. Like a contralto trying to sing coloratura soprano.
It’s very overacted and it just feels off to me. Should be said that I’m sure the Japanese ones are exaggerated too, and I’m probably being a massive hypocrite here. I can clearly hear that anime Japanese doesn’t sound like normal speech. C’Est la vie:) I wonder if that description resonated or if you perceive it differently. I tend to be very curious of how people perceive things, and people can mistake had for talking down on things.
Also there’s a reason why actors adopt kind of generic midwestern like bland dialects, and why British actors tend to both know a lot of dialects (as you can’t play a person from town A sounding like you are from town B) and use BBC or Posh ones for more international things.
I mean I love weird Scottish and Welsh accents and such. But most audiences don’t:) And ironically I have a fairly neutral accent in both Swedish and English. People often notice I do have an accent, but they almost always guess a different *English* accent or maybe a Scandinavian one if I’m tired.
But that a good VA doesn’t make. I’d probably be pretty bad:)
@yon My perception of most dubbing in anime specifically is that they seem to try too hard and exaggerate a lot like they overcompensate for something, which results in balatant overacting. So much so that occasionally it may even change the whole mood or feeling of the scene. I don't know why that happens, maybe it has something to do with the way VAs are taught in various countries. Especially when it comes to animation. I guess certain countries perceive cartoons as purely kid's media where everything has to be a little bit more highlighted. And some of this technique seem to leak into more serious projects as well. Or maybe I'm way off here.
Obviously, anime Japanese follows a specific flow which is different from basic conversational speech patterns, but the combination of original JP audio + on-screen action never left me personally annnoyed or confused. While so much foreign dubbing did :(
Oh yeah, the issue of accents/dialects is also a broad field to discuss. Sad to say it, but very distinct regional pecularities may so easily disctract from the narrative. Especially when there's a clear mismatch with what your hear and what you see. Like I absolutely adore the Scottish accent, but I'd never want to hear a frail Japanese aristocrat with it, for example :)
@ivaliya A certain Welsh accent for vaguely catgirl like characters in Xeno games on the other hand fits:) Using different dialects and accents can also be used as an advantage. There’s characters that are perfectly suited for it.
Bad casting is always bad casting after all:)
And overacting is only very very seldom a good thing. It takes me out of the story.
But live action is a lot worse, it just doesn’t work at all. Happy I didn’t get that. But the subtitles did make it harder to get good at hearing English and understanding it. Luckily tech had gone far enough around college that I could either get it without or turn it off.
Always suggest turning off the subtitles when trying to learn a language. At least it helped me :)