Very rarely do dubbed animes ever turn out nice (from my experience, never). It completely ruins the movie, show, or what-have-you when you’ve got great artwork and soundtrack, but have hemorrhage-worthy English audio dubs done by C-grade voice actors. Japanese and English vary greatly in how they say things, the length of sentences, and the speed at which things are said. Thus, dubs either have speeches running on and on long after the character’s lips have stopped moving (what I call the “China-Port” effect) or have speeches at blitzkrieg speeds in English to cram in the dialog that is supposed to be there. The latter most definitely ruins the mood and tone of what is actually being said while the former is just outright distracting.
I much prefer subbed anime over dubbed anime simply because the original Japanese voice actors or actresses (like my beloved Aya-sama) manage to capture the mood and feel of the characters much better than anyone else. English actors and actresses, for the most part, just don’t get it (and don’t even get me started with fan dubs). It’s somewhat like getting an Englishman to act inside a Cantonese sit-com and having them speak a language they don’t know. He will put unnecessary emphasis on some words and not others. Though it might still make sense, there’s definitely something lacking in the feel of it. Similarly, English spoken translations of Japanese dialog lacks the intensity and flavor of the original Japanese.
I don’t understand Japanese (not fluently anyway). I can pick up the odd swear and insult, and frequently used colloquialisms such as “kawaii-desu” or “moe”. Those I’ll even use to describe a very small and specific collection of topics. Just again, reading subtitles and listening to the Japanese gives a much better sense of what’s going on than actually hearing what normally written in subtitles verbalized. I wish I understood Japanese because then I’d understand some of the more subtle, cultural jokes.
There’s something about written text as a medium for transmitting information. Yes, I’m whoring myself and the rest of the blogging community out by openly promoting my opinion about written information exchange. It’s awesome. Liquid awesome, even. The Bible is also written in text. Books, in competition with television, movies, and maybe even audio/radio, are still my personally preferred medium of storytelling. There are things that can be done and actually savored through reading books that you just can’t get from watching a screen or hearing a voice. Thus, I conclude that words are awesome and so is blogging.
Anyway, I don’t really know where this post is going anymore. I just felt like writing about dubs versus subs because I just watched a dubbed version of “Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust” and it would have been awesome if it weren’t for the English voice acting (I couldn’t find a subbed version), and wanted to complain a bit. That will be all today, except for the following quote (from Kyon) taken from the last episode of Haruhi:
Kyon: “That ponytail you had back whenever… looked so good it was criminal!”
Haruhi: “Are you retarded?!”
Kyon then proceeds with smooching Haruhi and the world stops its self-destruction and is at peace again (literally). Criminal indeed, dear woman! Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately) you will probably never read this bit, so I can postpone feeling stupid for another… week or so.