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#1
12-25-2009
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Awesome Anime Dubs...
...Because they really do exist. And their rarity makes them far more precious to me, a lover of the English language, than one of those decent but awkwardly translated fan subs that are always floating around. So here's the place to offset the usual negativity surrounding dubs (because let's face it, the vast majority of them will make your ears bleed) and time to admit that yeah, that joke the dubbers slipped in there was kinda funny. Or yeah, that part where whatsisface made me cry a LITTLE harder than I did in the original.
They don't have to be objectively good: A lot of the dubs that come to my mind have a soft spot in my heart for a variety of reasons, the least of which is quality. I'm no purist, though the pinnacle of the craft will always lie in the hands of those who make accurate and relevant localization an art form (like the recent fan-translation of Mother 3). However, an amusing cultural re-appropriation will always be my second preference. Anything is better than mediocrity. Anyway, in no particular order, here's a list of the top of my head of dubs that I have a fondness for, for WHATEVER reason: THE BIG O: There's nothing really amazing about the dub itself, but it's very solid. Maybe it's because the anime itself was inspired by gothic American cartoons like the Batman animated series, but the English voices work a lot better for me than the Japanese ones. I get cognitive dissonance when the characters are so obviously modeled after hardboiled "American" templates (and I LOVE James Bond and film noir, two of the show's major influences), yet the words that come out of their mouth are distinctly... Not hard-boiled. Hearing the protagonist's name pronounced "Ra-ja Su-missu!!" makes my ears buzz. There's even an episode filled with JAPANESE stereotypes, complete with excessive bowing, buckteeth and multiple "douzo"s after every untranslated sentence. I have no idea how that would have played out in the original Japanese. At any rate... Good show, good dub. Plus, a giant robot pilot who isn't a whiny teenager with relationship issues! TRIGUN: My absolute favorite anime of all time. One of the first "mature" anime I watched after getting into Pokemon as a kid, and to this day, nothing has been able to top it. I rented the series on VHS and it happened to be in English, so I was foolishly tricked into believing that the dub was typical standard for anime. Unfortunately I've never been able to find another show with voice acting of this caliber (and even Vash's VA, Johnny Yong Bosch, has never topped this role for me). Again, the American themes and Western setting happen to fit the English voices superbly, even if the tagline "Deep Space Planet Future Gun Action" stuck out like a sore thumb. To this day, there are parts of this show that just about break my heart. Wolfwood's introduction in particular gets me every time: "Well praise the Lord, HELLO!" (Now, this was about the same time most people were digging Cowboy Bebop, although I haven't heard quite as many positive comments about the dubbing on that show as Trigun's. Any thoughts?) POKEMON (SEASON 1): I stopped watching fairly early on, but this was the very first anime I had ever seen (not counting Speed Racer, which I didn't know was Japanese). I remember sitting on my grandma's couch, mesmerized, wondering what it was about the animation that seemed so different from American cartoons. I had NO IDEA what was going on with the red and white balls, or why everyone was screaming so much, or why the background would sometimes drop out and be replaced with colorful lines. And to this day, hearing Ash, Misty and Brock's voices from those first episodes is like sinking into a bubbly bath of fond memories- Even if Ash sounded like he'd been smoking since before he was born. A lot of the jokes were hilariously obvious attempts to translate the Japanese puns for English kids, but that was okay: Ash dressed up in a cow suit pretending to be a "Cow-derpie" was probably just as cheesy in either language. SAMURAI PIZZA CATS: I never actually watched this as a kid, but from what I hear of it, I would have thought it was awesome. SPECIAL DUTY COMBAT UNIT SHINESMAN: The initial concept was pretty goofy to begin with, but the translators went the extra mile and added all sorts of bizarre jokes and inflections that weren't present in the original Japanese. Normally that would upset a lot of people, but this two-episode series has kind of a cult following for putting a humorous spin on what was already a ridiculous story: A Power Rangers parody of office workers who transform into superheroes and fight rival interstellar corporations with weapons like "Tie Clip Bomb" and business card shuriken. In the original Japanese, the dialogue took itself a little more seriously, whereas the dub had lines like "I can't die now... I have a date with the Turkish twins!" and "Giant fish. Right in my face." And if this sounds like blasphemy to you, you're probably right. Luckily for us all. (I managed to catch this on DVD, but something tells me it's a bit of a hard find. Maybe Youtube?) 
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#2
12-26-2009
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Dragonball Z-the funimation dub
the Japanese just can't scream like the yanks can Slayers-I donno, I just like the voices, Lina's voice really suits her Ogenki Clinic-its a hentei so its just pure awful/awesome (one line was, and I shit you not "I've had more then 10 000 penises in my ---" you know...) thats over NINE THOUSAND!!!!! thats...a lot...
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#4
12-26-2009
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Cowboy Bebop
Death Note Dragonball Z (better than the original, and if you disagree you are an elitist nerd) Naruto (in some cases it's actually better than the original for two reasons: Gaara's VA and the filler arcs are made actually tolerable since the VA's obviously barely take them seriously unlike the deathlike morbidity in which the seiyus deliver them.)
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#5
12-26-2009
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Death Note, Rozen Maiden, Shaman King, Digimon, Haruhi... There's too much for me to remember, but those ones I listed I feel were amazing. Perfectly fitting voices and whatnot.
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#6
12-26-2009
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I prefer dubs in general.
If there is a dub of a show I'm going to most likely watch it. I don't let the quality of a show itself cloud my judgment of a dub. There can be real shitty shows but the effort the voice actors put into the dub can be really good. I like dubs amongst shows equally. Saying which dub is like "totally awesome" is personal preference.
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#7
12-26-2009
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On the other hand, I'd rather READ an awkwardly translated line than hear it spoken aloud. The voices aren't the only thing that need to be good in a quality dub; the writing needs to fit as well. I have ridiculously high standards when it comes to the actual semantics of the lines that come out of the characters' mouths, but a lot of translations sound just slightly off; you can tell that English wasn't the original language. And there are so many verbal tics unique to the Japanese language that begin to make themselves apparent in the dub, like beginning every sentence with some variation of "Because of this...", "As a result of..." or "At any rate...". I'd prefer if they stripped out the verbal padding and wrote more natural-sounding dialogue (don't go trying to look for these tics, or eventually you'll hear them everywhere!). Now, something like Afro Samurai is interesting, because it was English to begin with and it was never even dubbed into Japanese. I mean, the actual dialogue is pretty irritating, but at least it's different. (On a side note: The Yanks may have the edge for screaming, but nobody can beat the Japanese for grunts. Seriously, they can express so much with just a little back-of-the-throat noise.)
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#8
12-27-2009
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Echoing that the Dragon Ball Z Dub > Original, though I tend to think of those super long shonen series as better in manga form.
Lucky Star's dub is great I think, the only misfortune being in Konata's voice actress being unable to do a good Haruhi impression (but this can't be helped since those two have the same voice actress in Japanese, and Hirano-san's a freakin' genius). @Naruto-Dub: lol at Sasuke pronouncing Japanese words well while everyone else fails at it. ;p It's weird with just one character pronouncing everything better and rolling his r's. Last edited by ChouToshio; 12-27-2009 at 06:35 PM.
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#9
12-28-2009
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#10
12-28-2009
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#12
12-28-2009
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#14
12-28-2009
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#15
12-28-2009
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#16
12-28-2009
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=I mean only other day, several of my flatmates missed seeing one of the greatest films I know (Lives of Others) because I only owned the original German version. though I have nothing against my native tongue, English is not a beautiful language, and so like ironically enough LK said, I can stand dub's but I still think something is lost when translate it from tongue it was made in! (-Don't believe me, read the poem, "My Mother Tongue" in its native language and then read it in English, and tell me which one sounds more beautiful.) =And so to me no dub can be “more” awesome than its original, as these where made for their native language and changing it to English will lose some of its internal intensity and emotional impact AKA Anime=Generally=Japanese, and so when a direct translation will lack the beauty of its original -And this is why I quote Sajeevi and him noting Deathnote, there isn't much wrong with the dub of Deathnote (And is generally good dub,) as I believe generally it follow's the first one faithfully and doesn't change much outside things which simply don't make sense in english, there is odd bit, but nothing major, however things such Lights name, just feel less in English. Light is called Light for symbolic reasons and when it is done in japanese (AKA Raito,) there is real emotion and feeling to it, however when it is then changed directly to Light, it loses this feeling and almost feels crude and forced, especially in context with the lines where its meaning is most prominent and poetic. And so, the only other way to do it, is to change what was in original, but I don't want this ether, as then it is changing the intigery of the first writers ideas and this destroys the whole point in my opinion And this why Quoted his use of Dragon Z, now depends which dubs you are on about, as there are about 4 altogether, but if you are on about the first 2, their just horrifying, they cut out whole blocks of the show, they remove and censored millions of scenes =IE when Nappa blows up a ship full of people and then the dub changed it to merely a cargo ship, that changes the whole character of Nappa from evil blood-letting warrior to a pain moron who likes to make big bangs =Half the male voice actors sound like still waiting to hit puberty, the other half sound like bad stereotype jocks from teen-flicks =And why do they feel that Alien's are going to make bloody jokes about American Base Ball or Football, I mean seriously.... =But worse bit is, the removal of the word dead, I mean do they think we can't handle that word or something?????? (It was more upsetting, hearing them beat around bush, trying to say this person's dead without actually using the word than if just put he is dead) Last edited by Fat1Fared; 12-28-2009 at 10:43 AM.
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#18
12-28-2009
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Light sounds way cooler than Raito.
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#19
12-28-2009
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Hmm, I watched Elfen Lied subtitled, but maybe I'll go and check out the dub since it seems to be getting some good press.
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There are some cases where both the dub and subs are fighting an uphill battle. FLCL has a scene where the dad and Haruko trade off spitfire snatches of dialogue that had no real meaning, but simply sound alike. The English version goes something like: Kamon : Ooh... Cooly Cooly... Like that? Haruko : Cooly? Kamon : Not like curry powder aphrodisiac licked off my desk... Haruko : Death?! Kamon : It's this kind of cooly cooly... New modality. Haruko : Noodle? Kamon : I mean like mtv! Haruko : Empty? The Japanese version is similar, but I find the subtitles distracting since the words themselves have no importance except for the fact that they kind of rhyme. You could tell by listening to the Japanese that the words were meant to be a kind of poetic mishmash, but the subtitles would be saying things like "Ramen bowl! Jeweller's loupe! A type of racehorse!" which was necessary but distracting. I thought I was supposed to be paying attention to the fact that they mentioned a racehorse, when really I was only supposed to be concentrating on how the words sounded. It was a valiant effort nonetheless, but as much as one can claim that foreign films are meant to be listened to in their original language, they are also not intended to be read. You can't tell me anyone makes an anime with the idea that the dialogue would be ideally presented in the form of text at the bottom of the screen, with additional notes at the top explaining the metaphorical significance of the character's name in the original language. In the end, it all comes down to preference, and all things being equal, I will always gravitate towards a good dub over a decent sub and then read up on all the juicy cultural stuff I'm apparently missing out on afterwards. Hooray for the Internet! Quote:
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#20
12-28-2009
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*Imagines Yami shouting 'It's time to Duel!' in a JYB voice*
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#22
12-28-2009
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I'm reading "Ender's Game" in Japanese right now, wondering how my favorite novel from highschool got translated. It's very well done, but they have opted to translate all the lines directly, and I'll just say American Sarcasm sounds really forced and awkward in Japanese. Also lines like "kissing ass" are set phrases in English, so even if you directly translate them into Japanese, it just doesn't have the same impact. At least for Japanese, seeing the issue on both sides, I appreciate that it's impossible to get right. I'll often read manga and such in both Japanese and English just to see how the translations are working and think, "The translation is not quite right-- but there's no f'ing way I could do it better." Sometimes faithfulness to the original actually makes things worse. It's like how if you try to explain a joke it's not funny anymore. You can write awkward English sentences that do a better job of carrying the Japanese nuances, or you can write a whole bunch of "cultural anecdotes" in the borders, but those just ruin the mood half the time. My favorite series of all time, Lovely Complex, I've read in Japanese, watched the anime and drama in Japanese, and now I'm reading Viz' translation, because it's just that funny all over again. Viz is doing a great job with it, and where they can't accurately translate the jokes, they write their own jokes that are similar. Japanese: (Lisa is crying because she's touched by Ootani coming to her on Christmas but is trying to pretend her tears are from her knee injury) Koizumi: "Ko . . . ko koke koke . . ." Ootani: "Nanya, Niwatori ka!?" (What!? A chicken??) Ok, there's nothing you can do to make this joke work in English. The word "bump" (as in I bumped my knee) sound nothing like "Cockadoodle", despite them sounding the same in Japanese. Viz English: Koizumi: "I . . . Ifel, I f-f-fell," Ootani: "What!? The tower!? In Paris??" . . . and then I started laughing so hard the whole bookstore was staring at me. >______> I'm like, OMG I can read Lovely Complex all over again! Sometimes, oddly, the English actually works out better than the Japanese. One example I can remember clearly is Itachi's death seen in Naruto: In conclusion, there's definitely something to be said about originals, and often they are beautiful. Certainly, when something is translated, it changes. That is true without dispute. The question is, does it always change for the worse? The answer is no. All languages carry a unique flavor. After many moments of anguish from futilely trying to express the awesomeness of YGOTAS to Japanese, I have come to appreciate having grown up with English even more. The people who translate are people, just like the original writer, and therefore have the same potential for creativity, and the same potential to give birth to something great. Not something exactly the same, but sometimes even more beautiful (funny, awesome, etc.). Last edited by ChouToshio; 12-28-2009 at 07:34 PM.
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#23
12-28-2009
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 =Pernicious untruth, would imply that I was making a vindictive lie, well seeing as I believe it is truth without being fact (is a difference between two) means cannot be a factual untruth, as you have said and the vindictive intent, seems to only be there for sake of being there, a better way of putting this would have been to say, that opinionated interpretation with only subjective precedence ^_^ (I'm just messing with you) =Anyway, the thing with english is, that it is very much like the english poeple, very formal and structured thing, with rules to cover very possible outcome which could ever happen and then make several rules exceptions to the rules they just made, so as to allow it to have get out clause, when rules don't work in its favour and also allows it to steal the best parts of other cultures while hiding the incompatibility between the two and most of all it is completely eccentric and loves to have words with superfluous pretension to it (yer, I like using pointless superciliousness words as well ^_-) -Don’t get me wrong, there is lot of good points to English language (as well as english people believe or not ^_^) and because of way it works, let of scope to its use, but this doesn’t make it a beautiful language to hear, aspecially when compared with things like Hindi and Braj. But This is sort of off point anyway, (though that could be my fault for not fully explaining it at first) that is basically when your translating something, your taking it out of the context it was made in, which lessens it, and the reason they don’t use English language to its fullest is because that would take it even further away from its original meaning. (Ironically, a really good example of this, is the Quruan) Quote:
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=but I have learnt to ether find ones who don't do this or merely ignore them, but will give it to you, they are pain, however this cannot be used against all subbes Quote:
=On an actually serious note the good and decent make unfair test, that is like saying I would rather eat a fresh apple over dirty cake, (only less prominent in its use) however you are right, this is all subjective and base on your personal opinion. But I personally will always love to hear other languages, even if don't understand them, then again, i love other cultures and things I don't understand, as allows me to remember more to world than what I know and we all know I know 2 times as much as should know, which half as much as I think I know, equalling lot more than most know, without knowing much of anything! Quote:
=Also their doing it in order of importance, instead of fully chorological order <runs away before Titan lynches him> Last edited by Fat1Fared; 12-28-2009 at 08:24 PM.
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#25
12-29-2009
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Never had a major interest to be honest. Even if LK is in it. Last edited by ThePRPD; 12-29-2009 at 12:34 PM.
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#26
12-29-2009
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Nothing wrong with shameless imo. :)
Still Titan, you can't blame fans for not lining up when there are only 2 episodes out after how many months (years?) on the project.
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#27
12-29-2009
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ProjectYGO is good from what I've seen, though I can't say it's better than the original dub. Apart from LK's, none of the mics are great and the resulting sound after the Noise Reduction gets annoying after a while.
Last edited by Ohara; 12-30-2009 at 07:03 PM.
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#28
12-30-2009
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Wow for a no-budget production, you guys are harsh. Maybe if we had a studio and thousand dollar mics, we'd make better progress but we don't so we're forced to rely on email and additional overhauling of audio just to PICK UP THE SLACK so it significantly slows down production time. Basically, we already lose time waiting for our actor's lines to come in and even more time having to fine tune them to be acceptable in our dub.
@Ohara: Noise Reduction exists for a reason and it's much less noticable than HAVING the noise. As I mentioned before, we don't have high end audio equipment since we're forced to rely on what our actor have and LK's lines had to have noise reduction just as much as our other actors so shut up. Just because LK is in our fandub, it should not automatically be assumed that everything that is NOT him is somehow inferior even going so far as to be deluded into thinking that his very existence makes his physical audio equipment vastly superior to that of modern man.
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#29
12-30-2009
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