It worries me how this even needs to be clarified in the first place. Having your entire perspective of a culture based on works of fiction and trying to apply those ideas in reality is a recipe for disaster. The amount of times I've heard stories about people whose dream is to live in Japan only to move back within a year is very telling. It doesn't help that places like Tokyo cater to this ideology considering how heavily tourism has influenced it.
Especially considering how most of Japan viewed anime and Otaku for the longest time. There's a big, BIG difference between something like a Miyazaki flick, or even something like Stein's Gate, and shows like is Is it Wrong to Pick Up Girls In a Dungeon or half of the other bottom of the barrel isekai slop that's made almost exclusively to sell silicon figures, Blu-Rays, and other merch to a very small demographic of turbo-Otaku.
I think the biggest issue with a lot of dubs is that they try to find someone with the same voice as the Japanese VA in other languages. If they just tried to match the voice actor to the character based on how we perceive a common stereotype in said language it would be fine. For example, it’s bad when the character in Japanese has a nasally voice and we try to imitate that in English. It sounds horrible because the character doesn’t match the stereotype in a different language.
I fully agree, it all comes down to feel. A Japanese chill guy and an American chill guy sound very different but so long as they both emphasize the chill aspect it’s possible for either one to fit better. A good example would be Spike, no disrespect to the Japanese va but the English performance is just next level despite it not being the original.
random but once my high school English teacher asked us to read a book for 20 minutes every day as homework for the semester and some kid in my class asked if watching anime subbed and reading the subtitles counted in which my teacher said that it counts so they watched anime the entire semester instead of reading some book
It reminds me of Dragon Ball Z's Frieza in the Latin American dub. He has a much deeper voice, since villains weren't usually portrayed with high pitched voices. Funnily enough, the VA for the Latin American wanted to do the voice a little bit closer to the original japanese VA, but was told not to, because they thought it sounded very affeminate. However, when the actor was re-cast for Dragon Ball Super, he acted the voiceover much closer to the original japanese VA, even though he still has a deeper voice
I prefer anime subbed, but Trigun is an absolute must to watch dubbed. Not only is the canon language English, Vash literally says "I can't read that" when shown Japanese.
Same for JJBA. At least, the Part I & II. Why? Dummy simple. They are taking place in England (Part I) and United States. (Part II) I yet have to begin Part II, but decided to start Part I English Dubbed. And honestly, the dub and accents of VAs are great.
The biggest problem in my opinion with dubbing is the script. Every country has its own culture and way of speaking and as a result the product of a scriptwriter is by default, better sounding in the language they were thinking of in their heads while writing it. For example, you mentioned that if a game took place in ancient Greece, the voice acting should be done in Greek. Let's just say that as a Greek dude, I've never seen anything sound even remotely good in Greek. Whether that be AC Odyssey or God of War or anything else really. I played GoW a few months ago and I was really happy to try the Greek dub of the game. Thankfully Sony is one of the few publishers that actually cares to provide them since Playstations sell a lot in Greece. While I do believe that great voice actors exist in Greece, what I heard in the game was pure mediocrity. And I believe that has nothing to do with the voice actors themselves. See, an American dude that sat down in his office to write the script of the game about a god slaying Greek, doesn't really care about the way Greeks speak. I firmly believe that unless the script was written by a Greek person or someone who has lived in Greece for years, the Greek dub would never sound good. Honestly after many years of coming across various bad dubs (mainly in anime) I was led to believe that Greek was just not a very cool language. And then a month ago I went to the theater to watch an ancient greek tragedy for the very first time. It will be an understatement to say that my mind was blown away by how amazing the acting and the script was. Especially considering that it was written 2000+ years ago. It sounded so poetic and conveyed so much feeling in every word spoken by the actors. Anyways, I've gotten a bit off topic but from my understanding people will write scripts that fit their language and their peoples' way of speaking. Great video as always man, really enjoyed this one!
Yes. The subtitles will use the biggest words at times and make sentence look way more sophisticated than it really is, often ruining jokes because Japanese tones either sound goofy to convey a joke or not when being serious. So when they're telling a joke but using the monotone voice, you're so used to the goody exaggerated reactions being the jokes that the monotone jokes are serious. The fact that they use OBVIOUS silly faces as well makes you think those are the only kind of jokes in the show
Agreed on this. As an Indian the Hindi dubbing of Japanese shows (whether anime or LA) is always changed to fit the cultural aspects of here & the voice actors do great work at this.
The Saiki K dub is legendary, it just comes to choosing good voice actors. It is so good I was actually upset that the newer seasons werent dubbed in english.
Saiki K is just so good it works in everything. I watched the VO, the English dub and the French dub and they’re all so good. The comedy of that anime is unmatched !
18:00 this is actually done in some anime, or similar stuff: Great Pretender has people speaking in different languages constantly. They even do a clever thing in the sub vs dub, where in the sub the language is stated to be english even though the characters are speaking japanese. Then they use english with a british accent when they want the characters to be speaking another language. But in the dub, since everyone's already speaking english, they use french instead. Mushoku Tensei also has several entire episodes where the VAs speak using only a made up languages. So yeah. Some companies are going above and beyond to sell that immersion, and its awesome!
Great Pretender is the only anime that I switched dub to sub or sub to dub constantly. For the most part I watched it on Dub but on the last arc , it set on Japan so I switched to Sub.
@@alexraniszeski6856 Just a reminder that the Japanese producers hired *Reba Burh,* a U.S. voice actress, to do Cynthia Moore's foreign dialogue. Smart move, because Cynthia speaking Engrish would be totally out of place.
It’s funny because this is my exact situation, I’ve always loved anime, and have started learning Japanese, but I don’t like watching sub lol. I only watch a bit of anime in Japanese to help me learn.
@@brrrt1-1 I am going to learn japanese (hopefully), i say going to bc i am too lazy to do it, ive done hiragana and can read basically most of it, now to just learn to write the second half bc ive started that too. But another thing is im also too lazy to go turn on the anime bc I get distracted with something else like drawing or playing games :/ but one day i shall learn all the languages I want to learn and watch all the anime i told myself i would watch
Nasu I believe you have gotten your philosophers mixed up, it was actually Socrates' student Playdoe who advocated for acceptance of dubs. Socrates was the one who traveled to Japan and convinced them that hardcore porn is actually totally fine as long as you blur out a very close outline of whatever you censor, and that tentacles weren't dicks so actually hentai is both an artistic and narrative form of the highest virtue.
Aristotle is actually the one who would say it doesn't matter how you translate it as long as you get the point across. And probably the dick thing too.
I think reason Why Dubs usually sound much different than Subs is usually due to cultural differences in both the way they speak and the characters that are written which is why Dubs used to have many mistranslations like in the Ocean Dub of Dragon Ball where Goku's father was labeled as a brilliant scientist
I love playing dubbed games and watching dubbed movies in my original language, one of the advantages is that, for example, I can play a Batman game, watch a cartoon and watch the movie and Batman always sounds the same, I was protected from Tom Hardy's voice as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, and unless it's comedy, where jokes can't really be translated, dubbed is just better, because the voice actors are competent. That being said, some anime is insufferable to watch dubbed, even if the voice actors are the same from movies and games, the script is simply bad, anime people don't talk and act like normal people.
Dubs are getting better but it still not consistently good. I'm fine with voicing done by Disney or DreamWorks on animated movies. They got the budget/time to pull in talent. With anime dub it is only occasionally good. With subs it consistently good and very rare to hear bad voicing.
It's not just the translations, it's the voices themselves. Because while you're using the Ocean Dub as an example of a poor dub, it's actually got amazing voice acting from Brian Drummond, Peter Kelamis, etc.
I personally believe it's because as English speakers, we understand the tone, pitch, and phrasing of our language, which can make it sound less full or real. In sub, we just hear fury or rage and the monkey part of our brain picks up on that a whole lot more than we do looking at all of the parts of speech.
I agree, back when i was a kid and didn't understand english everything in english sounds cool. However now that i'm bilingual and fully understand english, i can feel cringe from english dialogue.
As a non-native English speaker I don't agree with this at all. Understanding English didn't lessen the effect good acting has on my emotions. In fact, i think it opened me up to a fuller experience as compared to watching stuff dubbed or subtitled. So far my experience with western cinema has only been better and more engaging since i started watching stuff with just the original audio and nothing else. So many subtle details were just lost on me before. I think i would feel the same way about watching anime in Japanese with no subtitles. So no, not understanding something doesn't enrich other parts of the experience in my opinion. You might feel that way because you don't know what subtleties you might be missing. And the dub also won't convey them in most cases because it's simply impossible to translate. Most langauges have a lot of stuff that just can't be translated.
that is exactly correct, and what all the subtards don't understand. you cannot accurately judge the performance of a person if you can't understand the language they are speaking in
I notice anime has a real issue with being overly expository, and as you explained it sticks out way more in my ear when it’s done in English than Japanese. I’m currently watching 86 which I enjoyed subbed, I’m now watching the dubbed version and it definitely does not hit the same.
I'm watching Jujutsu Kaisen right now and holy shit this. Characters will literally narate shit that just happened or is currently happening. "Ah, theyre attacking me simultaneously! Normally I'd be able to regenerate quickly, but this pressure is stopping that. I need to break free." It's CONSTANT.
@@peenerparker846, I watched both versions of chainsaw man and saw no drop off in either version subbed/dubbed, so I’m not sure your point is wholly valid.
Yes, but that's kind of the fun in Jojo. In Vento Aureo Trish managed to trigger Diavolo to NOT run away (which ended up killing him) through expositions!
@@alastor8091 Yeah, that's a constant issue with JJK. "I was only able to do this thanks to my technique. By applying X amount of energy with X amount of force I was able to deal more damage than usual." Just so much jargon.
@@peenerparker846 you need to be flamboyant and act your heart out to get away with "inner speech" lines.. something Americans aren't capable of.. and that's excluding weirdos that add sh*t about the patriachy societies in their dubs... Dubs are cringe. America is cringe. Glad I don't live there.
@@maroonringthe Metal Gear comparison is low key offensive. the Japanese audio is THE recording, it's Kojima's production, and the English dubs were done completely without his supervision. He liked hearing it in English, but he was never a fan of the actual dub. The main characters have a completely different, cartoonish tone, and Raiden is made a parody of his design completely without reference to Kojima's casting. Naruto or JoJo's are FAR superior dubs.
Watching Jojo dubbed in english gave me a newfound appreciation of the series as a whole. The absurdity of the series is already well understood, “Bizarre” in the title and all, but I had missed in the sub that EVERYONE talks strange. It’s also hilarious! Especially when it’s in english and there’s no language barrier obfuscating the wacky phrasing and word choice. It’s a blast.
@@qiang2884 I don't know, dude. You ever see the season 1 dub? That season's pretty weak as it is, and subtitles leave it kinda played straight. The English voice acting though is suuuuper hammy and definitely adds something that's missing from a vocal performance you'd otherwise not understand.
@@VSaccount yeah that's what I'm saying. I mean, I read the manga and it's a pretty derpy read, anyway. It's not like the characters are saying anything with deep subtext or anything. And let's be real here - the plot is about a guy getting an ancient mask that turns him into a vampire. As far as I'm concerned, a dialogue that lends into how hammy that is only adds to the experience.
I'm a dub fan but one complaint I agree with is how small the dubbing scene is compared to the rest of American cartoon voice acting. I notice the same voices way more often in dubs than in cartoons or animated films.
H Jon Benjamin is in practically every adult western cartoon now. The voiceover landscape is tiny in the west. The only times you hear "new" voice are when they get some celebrity to do voiceover and then that celebrity delivers a thoroughly mediocre performance.
Im not a native english speaker so most of my childhood was watching media in the original language and i still find that the correct way; if im watching an american movie, ill watch it in english. If its a russian movie, its in russian etc
This. I think this is the best way to experience media because it feels more natural in it's original language. If I watch a dubbed movie from English to my language it feels lifeless and unnatural, so I watch English media in English and anime with subs, until I learn Japanese :)
Yeah same. I'm a native Spanish speaker, but a lot of English cartoons that dub to Spanish always sounded better to me in their original language so eventually I started watching shows in English with subs and thats hiw I learned English growing up. Same thing happened with anime but that time with English and Japanese. And while I prefer sub over dub I don't really hate dub at all, yeah I can't really go back to dub when it comes to the shows I watched subbed, but I absolutely loved Space Dandy from start to finish and watched that day 1 when it was released in the west first and I didn't mind the dub. Games on the other hand (unless they're based on a preexisting anime) I play my jrpgs in English
This. Any other version than original is a wrong version. Only original acting directed and carefully crafted by original creators matters. Dub is like a cheap bootleg copy desperately trying to imitate original and always failing miserably.
@@rascal_dv dubs also naturally loses something in translation that's just the nature of it, especially languages quirk whether it's accent or dialect and I think it's a shame. I wish there was a way for videos to have a lexicon that's something manga in france had when some foreign concept were introduced in some mangas like GTO
I don't care where it was made. I like watching things in it's original language/the language they intended to use. Like DMC is japanese, but the main VAs are english speaking.
Different cultures have different tropes and methods of conveying emotion via voices in media. As anime fans we've subconsciously built a whole new library of characterisations that are typical to Japanese voices in anime, but as soon as they bleed into English it strikes us as weird because it just doesn't fit our English understanding of voice characterisation which has been cultivated from the day we started to learn English. Many people don't realise this because the skill of reading a voice is such a subconscious skill that most people only understand that it is a "feeling" of "wrongness". Japanese studios themselves would never understand this without feedback from international fans or a more language-diverse staff. To native Japanese people, the Japanese-leaning English voice direction might even sound okay. This is probably why English dubs have historically sucked and only picked up more as anime has gone more international.
Like one commenter said, "anime is japanese but it is not japan". Japanese cinema is one of the most celebrated around the world, even in the west. They do have that kabuki/theater influence but teenagers melodramatically screaming cheesy lines is something you'll never come across, among many other tropes.
@@canti7951 it's funny that you say Japanese cinema is world famous when as far as I can tell it hasn't been for like...60 years. All the known Japanese classes are old movies. Godzilla and samurai movies. In modern times it's anime people know
@@MALICEM12 I'd differentiate "celebrated" from "world famous". I'm just saying you'll rarely see a movie buff who doesn't love Ozu, Kurosawa, Mizoguchi. It is true that japanese media has been saturated and greatly influenced by anime and its tropes but it's not that hard to step away from it. Even a lot of anime can be not "anime-like" while still keeping some tropes enough to be distinctly anime. Some aren't like "anime" at all yet they're distinctly japanese (themes, style, sensibilities). And even if you watch any modern japanese (usually indie) movie, it's widely different from anime.
they also gotten better with it over time. the voice actors got better expressing the quarks of of Japanese voice actors with out being too weird. female Japanese voices actors would voice some characters with very cute voice. the early dubs like late 1980s and 1990s they just start out and just did care about what Japanese voice actors did and not that skilled. With some jrpgs they take advantage of different English accents. for example xenoblade chronicles 3 use Austrian accent for one characters. Then for xenoblade chronicles 2 use Scottish accent for one of the characters. of course Nintendo being internationally company can understand the English market better.
18:05 I think the Tekken franchise does this perfectly with every character with their own unique backgrounds and languages, being able to speak to other characters in their own languages and still understand one another. Admittedly it's goofy sometimes, but it really helps each character stand out and emphasizes the multiculturalism and the character's culture of the series.
I have big time processing issues. Like I have to read things twice to really get it and often times I find listening and reading at the same time to be more helpful, so I've never watched subs. I watch dubs with subtitles on so if I miss something audio wise, I can look at the subtitles.
me too!! that's why I dislike the argument that media should only have voiceover of the canon language in the series, bc it also comes down to an accessibility thing and not just preference.
My favorite instance of English Dubbing being funnier than the Japanese Dub is in Yakuza 7 during a substory were Ichiban encounters a guy who's trying to get to the station and Ichiban says "Oh shit, it's English" and the irony is that Ichiban turns his head towards the camera and acknowledging how he can understand him but doesn't in order to play along with the substory
Yakuza fans are fucking everywhere fr since I started playing (only Yakuza 7 it's the only one that can run on my pc 🥲) I see a Yakuza reference everywhere! But since we're talking about Yakuza 7 dub i want to say the dub is awesome
@@jettsett9354 wait is it ? I thought it would be the easiest to run on my pc (no gaming PC) since it's a turn-based game so if my pc is too slow I won't get harshly punished in game. But if it's the most demanding game in the series it means the previous brawler entries won't be hard to play on my laptop. Gotta play those then asap
I think it's funnier in Japanese because the Tutor NPC's broken Engrish is hilariously bad, but seems godlike from the perspective of the non-English speaking Ichiban. Also, Ichiban's failed attempt at saying the only English phrase he knows. "DONTO WARI!" Combined with how confident and brash the Tutor guy NPC is, his over the top advice is hilarious. It really sells the value of acquiring supplementary educational certifications at Ounabara Vocational School.
might be a hot take but the chainsaw man dub has potential to be top 5 greatest anime dubs of all time due to how realistic the characters sound, and they dont speak like traditional dubbed characters would.
An important thing to note about Japanese is that it has different forms of the language for different situations, and the history behind why anime speech is the way it is goes back very far to their theatrical traditions. This makes talking in that form in real life rather jarring to a listener, but it's also kinda the same as if and english speaker was quoting a movie or talking like batman irl.
To be fair, theatrical way of speaking is weird even if you compare it to movies. A lot of theatre actors who try acting in film usually come off as overacting, since in theatres you are expected to play in front of a large audience, where you have to exxaggerate to be heard and seen by everyone.
Oh yeah it is definitely a thing with English as well. I hated the way Geralt sounded like in the English dub of the Witcher III so much that I switched to Polish, lol
That's not just a japanese theater thing - it's a theater thing as whole because when we didn't have microphones, actors had to make sure everyone, even those who sit far away, are able to understand the situations with their tone and mannerisms
I will point out that it's not like all anime characters speak the same way. There are anime that are scripted more realistically, and their is anime where characters talk very silly. Anime is a very diverse medium with lots of different kinds of stories who speak in different stories. The way characters speak depends on tone, setting, subject matter, age of characters, and other factors.
My hot take is I prefer fan subtitles to pro subtitles. Fan Subs will try to translate as close to the original dialogue and if they struggle with certain words, puns, jokes, or local sayings they put footnotes in the corner to explain context. I learned so much about Japanese language from that. but I mainly listen to dubs because I multi task, so I try to watch once with the original when I have the time to focus
My favorite thing is when official subs also have notes on them, because they know it's impossible to translate. It was transcendent to watch Kimi no Na Wa in a theater and see "I was... (female pronoun) I mean I... (male pronoun)" on screen. Its a single short exchange, but the conversation literally does not work without that context.
This is absolutely true, fandub is just so much better. So much more effort and attention is put into not only the dialog characters are saying, but translating any words on screen as well. Official dubs are still tied to using the "closed caption" system which is so much inferior.
I like multitasking as well, but sometimes the dubs are just so fucking stupid that I can't listen to the dub. I'm watching Cautious Hero, and in one of the early episodes when Seiya is fighting greater demon Chaos Machina Ristarte says some dumb ass shit that totally broke the immersion and setting for me....I literally stopped what I was doing, looked it up and found out it was (as I suspected) Jamie Marchi. I immediately swapped to the subbed version.
So do you prefer watching anime from the 2000s and maybe early 2010s? Because after that point, pretty much everything is straight rips of official subs, or maybe edited versions of them. And some of those edited versions made the subs even more liberal and localized than the pro subtitles were.
My first language is Russian and I grew up watching american and japanese media with very different russian dub qualities. A lot of unpopular movies and animes can be voiced by one single person, recording from their room. It is actually pretty normal. Old american movies also do not always have professional russian dubs, so you would have to watch it with crappy dubs. Most of them are made by 1-2 people. Your mind actually gets used to it. Subs are also rarely an option. This is why I always thought north americans are kinda spoiled when it comes to dub discussions. I actually think a lot of them do a great job, but people still complain lol. Try watching a show voiced by one guy, its not that great lol
Американцы: Боже, какая же это ужасная озвучка!! Кто вообще подбирал актёров дубляжа!? Я не собираюсь смотреть это шоу в нашем дубляже >:( Русские: Киборг Убийца
Reminds me of Bangladesh, where I live. I recently found out that there are bangla dubs for some American or Chinese movies and it seems that many of the dubs share the same VAs.
Translation teams can make creative choices that I sometimes find even more fun than the original. Now there’s a lot of bad creative decisions 😂 but those are the cases you watch sub instead.
Yeah sometimes even the subs have casting issues too though like so many young teen boys or children sound obviously like a woman is very immersion breaking lmao. Dubs have this problem too but I'm just a bit more surprised when the sub fucks up.
@@user-lh7mt7zo7l i mean that's not a problem imo, adult males tend to not be as good at doing higher pitches or sounding younger in general so a woman is just less headache, in france gohan, young goku and goten are all voiced by the same woman Brigitte Lecordier and it sounds perfectly fine altho she makes a very good job at making them sound like young boys rather than a woman imitating a young boy but still
@@Gensolink My problem isn't with women voicing young boys my problem is when they are obviously women instead of sounding like a young boy like they're supposed to. Bart Simpson is a great western example of a woman sounding convincingly like a boy and there are good examples of women voicing young boys in anime well but I'm just saying it's really noticable when they just straight up sound like a regular woman or a deeper voiced woman rather than a young boy.
When you were talking about Sekiro, I thought about the game Ghost of Tsushima. The game is set in Japan, but it was done by a western studio and the dialogue was done in English first. But as a compromise, the voice actors use Japanese accents. I think if you’re going to set your show or game in a foreign country, yet don’t know the language or just not enough time to learn it. Just make all the characters speak in an accent that cements where they’re from (respectfully)
this is also the thought i've had. tho it's especially fuckin weird when a historical drama set in like france or greece has mfers walking around with british accents.
As someone who has been studying Japanese for ~5-6 years and heard alot of normal Japanese people speak Japanese, I think it's less about the barrier of understanding the language providing a wall of unfamiliarity between you and the weirdness but more that since these character archetypes and scripts were mostly created by Japanese people living in a Japanese society So, yes Japanese people don't talk like anime characters and alot of the archetypes and tropes are weird, but art imitates life and the life that the art is imitating is Japan. It's weird in Japan, but it's gonna be even weirder in English because English speaking countries are not Japan. (I don't hate on either side I just mostly do Japanese dubs because I like learning the language)
I think it's more just down to the voice acting scene, lack of actors, and lack of education in this particular field. Japan has colleges for voice acting, while voice acting in English speaking countries is a pretty new industry. Especially in anime dubbing. A good example of why dub's are cringe (because I just disagree with the video) is 'Classroom of the Elite' since I was just watching it a few days ago. The Japanese VA has an extremely distinct and intentionally 'boring' way of speaking because the entire point is he's trying to blend into the background and not stand out. But in the English dub he just sounds like every other male highschool protagonist who's 'cool'. No hate to the voice actor, he was just the wrong person for the role. And 'Love is War' is often brought up as a good example of an English dub which is wild to me because, while I understand that it's a good English dub, Aoi Koga is a phenomenal Japanese VA who rightfully won awards for her performance as Kaguya. The female performances were just far more distinct in Japanese than in the English dub. I thought they all kind of sounded the same in English and often mistook who was speaking. In sub, it's very clear and the way they speak conveys a lot about their character. (Chika's an airhead, Hayasaka is a professional maid, Kaguya has a kind of snobbish/educated way of speaking normally. Despite not speaking the language, you can clearly hear it in how they voice act.) I'm always confused how English dubs get praised because, it's not like English animation and games don't exist. There are plenty of examples of strong English voice acting. It's just that those roles are better filled. Take Velma from Scooby Doo. From her voice alone you can hear she's quite nerdy/intelligent. That's not really how anyone speaks in English either. But the way she speaks is relevant to her character... If it was an anime with an English dub, she'd speak the exact same was as any other anime girl, and that's kind of my problem. In English dubs, the voice rarely provides context for the character. The only real exceptions I can think of is Steve Blum's performance in Cowboy Bebop, Deathnote's Light and L's voice acting, and Michal Tatum and Ashley Burch in Steins Gate. If you can't listen to the audio in isolation and not understand anything about the character, it's not a good performance. And I have a feeling more effort is spent trying to replicate the kind of 'high pitched/cutesy' way of speaking in Japanese, but in English. Instead of trying to represent the character in how they speak.
no its not also just because you've studied jap and hear people speak jap doesn't mean you're right either about the barrier of understanding. It has more to do with social awareness and actually talking to people in the real world. Anime scripts are just garbage and the VAs are overhyped
@@yeahright3901 He is still more qualified than you to be making a judgement. And how do you know he has not talked to real people? "Anime scripts are just garbage" The fact that good sounding anime dubs exist, even for kiddy shows like pokemon or dbz, proves that this is not the case. Its all a matter of localisation. Plus most manga don't come off as cringe. Its all about the way the dialogue is delivered / localised, and if the dialogue has been altered enough to sound natural in a different medium / language. Some of these dub voice actors sound unnatural and talk in a way that you don't really see in real life. Even JRPG dubs like in persona 5 tend to be a bit better. "The VA's are overhyped" No point in commenting on japanese VA's since you don't understand the language. I can judge the english VA's, though
Nasu I swear, you are legit one of the best RUclipsrs out there and this video is proof of that, you portrayed your points perfectly allowing people who may not agree with you to at the very least see your perspective, as well as adding extra information like soft power. It's actually insane how you're able to provide all this information while still throwing jokes in the mix, brilliant video.
I think Steve Blum is a prime example of how to voice act for an anime dub. The guy is able to cover a wide range of voices and emotions. Also the quality of the dub hinges on the localization writing, take away too much of the source writing and the show looses its identity, use too much and cultural notes and idioms fall flat and some jokes make no sense.
Another thing a lot of people don't realize regarding dubs (or any sort of translation and localization, really), is that translation doesn't work by looking at individual words, translating them, and then cobbling together a sentence out of those. Translators read the source material, *understand what it says* (this is the important part), and then write that down in the language they are translating to.
This is especially true with languages that are very different like English and Japanese (languages that are closer to each other probably have to make fewer sacrifices). Subtitles arguably have *a bit* more leeway but still have to make plenty of their own substitutions and 'best fit' choices to make it understandable and sound or read naturally in the target language, and fit the timing enough that they can actually be read before the next subtitle pops up. Plus the struggle of translating things that are very specific to the original language, like idioms, culturally specific tropes, wordplay, (or specific honorific terms in languages like Japanese or Korean) you HAVE to make substitutions, otherwise the dialogue will just make no sense in the localisation.
@@SpaceCase1701The amount of subs I've seen where the sub team wanted to be "as true to the translation as they could" that end up just being a constant mess of translators notes filling the screen is just...yikes.
I'm from Germany and I love most German dubs. They're well made and usually not super over the top, they have the same "cringe" level as normal anime and I can deal with it. German K-ON! was the best thing I've watched, I even prefer it over the JP original because everyone sounds like a normal highschool girl. But I really have to say, and I don't dislike EN dubs in general; EN dubs usually tend to... overact? Genshin Impact for example. Many characters there sound like they are just reading a script. It feels like sometimes EN VAs aren't voicing the character, just reading the text without context. They either sound sterile and over the top perfect like someone talking into a microphone (English Lumine...), and therefore very unnatural with their perfect English, or they do this super high pitched loli thing that isn't even that crazy in the original. Other language dubs are usually more calm, most of the time English is way more over the top overacting. That's my personal little problem with EN Dubs, but the voice actors are still doing their best and sounds pretty cool overall.
This is why I always say Dubs should be willing to change dialogue a lot more to fit the language it's being spoken in. Yes; the translation team should always try to preserve the same sentiment and concepts as the original script; but harmless things like changing the specific synonym being used, or making a new sentence which flows more smoothly while still communicating the same message should be encouraged.
The issue is that anime dub translations must be the same length as the original lines, and never longer (nor too much shorter). This makes it impossible to optimize translations, which is one reason why English dubs tend to feel more 'cringe' in anime compared to JRPGs (e.g. Trails series, Persona series). And if the Japanese uses words or expressions that simply have no equivalent in English, the translators have no choice but to write new lines from scratch, which is always a hit-or-miss process, especially if the original writing is extremely good already. The Danganronpa 1&2 games are an excellent example of the latter. The translation was virtually doomed to fail from the start, because the dialogue was perfectly optimized in the original. Asking a translator to produce a translation of equal quality would be like asking a translator to write a best-selling novel from scratch. It was never going to happen.
@@VVayVVard That is a concern; but I think that, once again if you cannot make a line sound good with a faithful translation, or there is no good way to faithfully translate it, then you'll be fine just making a new line with the same general meaning. For example: In German there is the word: Erbsenzähler: meaning "Someone who is obsessed with details and a bit of a control freak." If you're translating a scene where someone gets called that, "Sie sind ein Erbsenzähler!" but obviously don't have the lip-flaps to write "You are obsessed with details and a control freak!" you could just change the line to "You're too Obsessive!" This doesn't carry over 100% of the original meaning but it conveys the gist of what the original script in a way which sounds normal when spoken in English.
even within the sub anime, this is an issue. back in the day of fansubs and TL notes, there was a struggle with being able to read and understand the lengthy subtitles as the jp lines were being delivered. it messes with the pacing it's kind of a balancing act between contextualization and conciseness
@@cursedryona6265 It's hit-or-miss. There are some words that sound powerful in Japanese that are simply impossible to translate to English in a way that doesn't dilute the effect, either in terms of meaning or in terms of sound. Example: 弱者 (jakusha) in Japanese. It means "weak person", and it can be used in various contexts and with various connotations. The interesting part of this word is that, while it implies weakness, the sound of the word is very strong (both the ja and the ksha) in contrast to the usual word for weakness, 弱い (yowai) which only uses soft consonants. In English, the most direct translation would be 'weakling', which not only is incompatible with an intellectual tone (since the word itself has a juvenile tone to it) but it also sounds weak in terms of articulation (the k being almost silent being the primary problem) making it very difficult to apply to lines where powerful articulation is desirable. This example in particular has long been very vexing to me, as a translator, because it has no good alternatives in English, so you're forced to choose which aspect of the word you are willing to give up. If it's used as a simple insult, you could go with something like 'insect', but if a character uses it in a meaning-specific fashion, you're probably going to have to go with 'weakling' or 'the weak', the former being suboptimal in terms of articulation, the latter being hard to work with from a grammatical point of view. This is true in general as well. A line that sounds extremely beautiful or funny or badass in Japanese will rarely be as impactful in English, and vice versa (cool or funny lines in English tend to be painfully hard to translate to Japanese). Losses in translation are inevitable. And because you're operating under the restrictions imposed by the source material, there are always going to be cases where writing a new line from scratch won't be enough to fix the problem.
I find it interesting that anime styled games tend to have better dubbing too. Persona, fire emblem, and ff7 remake all have solid dubs imo. It probably helps that they don't have to time the translated dialogue to the original Japanese because of still portraits, or the ability to more easily redo lipsyncing in 3d
@@NN-cc8uo Devil May Cry is weird as an example because the series didn't get a Japanese dub until the anime. It wasn't until DMC4 Special Edition that there was Japanese dubbing in the games. It's a strange infinite mirror on itself with DMC5 where it was written in Japanese, translated into English for the original voice cast who are English Speakers, lip synced to them, then the JP Dub uses the original Japanese script, with English Lip Sync... it's head hurty.
Huh... so that's why I've been acting weird lately, *Anime people don't speak like real people!* I've been watching too many sugoi kawaii shenanigans it seems. Ai caramba...
I love the use of accents in the One Piece dub - the Bege New York accent, Dressrosa's Spanish accents, etc. I wish there was more of it. I thought for sure Wano would be filled with Japanese accents.
I believe "infinite status" did that, the British girl had a British accent, French girl French accent and so on, the only ones without accents being the American, the Japanese, and the Chinese girls.
@@final_zoink I guess they generally avoid accents for Asian characters cause it might come across as being more offensive. I think the only English dubs I've heard with one or two characters having a Chinese/Japanese accent were Black Lagoon and Hetalia dubs.
genshin's japanese dubbing also was done with more direction and fittingness as it wasn't something done after the fact but concurrently and deliberately by the designers. The japanese creator team have no input over english dubbing for anime.
I love the emphasize on the ''original'' because the game is literally chinese not japanese, but even so, some people still think that it was made from a JP company or sum 😭
This man just explained and perfectly proved a point I've been trying to say for YEARS to my friends, and cuz I suck at arguing they never listen to me. I'm sending them all this video right now/
Nah his points are cringe. Very ignorant Why many preferred JP dubs is simple because the dubber is more experienced and had more quality, Japan invested lots of money in that sector. compared to the rest of the world. Like Genshin Impact or Arknight, JP Dubber is better because they had more experienced and easier to hire and cheaper
I usually watch subtitles, because when dialogue is cringe, it at least hits me less when I hear it in language I don't understand. And I just like the passion and over-the-top deliveries of Japanese VAs.
My threshold for cringe is so low I can't even handle the more tropey Japanese voice acting... all the baby talk for girls makes me want to claw my face off by now. I straight up don't watch certain genres because the cringe of core anime tropes is too strong within them XD
Man i was one of thoes Weeabos papa franku described in his video I used watch this crap all day i went so insane i started learning Japanese and dreaming of living there then i turned like 16 man i look back and cringe at myself so much man on discord i used to use the Japanese Keyboard to type in fuking Japanese with my fukin friends who didnt even know the langauge man Anime really does something to a MF My hate for anything Japan and Anime stems from my past Anime obsession
@@self-proclaimedanimatormy hate from japan comes from its history and from people simping over its fucking awful history which the government refuses to acknowledge or educate about
Yeah same here. I think I can just embrace the camp a lot better when it's delivered with total commitment. There are still some pretty good dubs though.
Funny enough black lagoon is a FANTASTIC example of an anime thats just way better consume dubbed than subbed. Genuinely one of the best dubs of all time, and the woman who voices revy is THE SAME PERSON WHO VOICES JOHNNY'S TWIN SISTERS IN JOHNNY TEST it's really all about the script and how well the source material itself fits in English or Japanese
Anime with western influences/settings tend to just do better in english dubs, like Panty and Stocking or Blood Blockade Battlefront. For example, characters like Revy or Panty are known for being crude, but I feel like sub doesn't capture that as well since in Japanese, using certain forms of the word "you" is seen as an insult, a non-japanese speaker won't know if the character is using formal or casual dialect, and certain slang just doesn't translate well, so just watching subbed may leave that trait lost in translation. It hits more watching dub and seeing Panty throw out a the most creative string of f-bombs that would give grandma a heart attack.
Although anime is corny enough to make the dubs cringe too, I have a soft spot for dubs and watch them regularly... And my reason might not be relatable to everyone, but the reason I do it gives me a sense of nostalgia? Like we all watched Dragon ball Z and Pokemon in dub back then. So when I watch a dub for another anime, it takes me back somehow. Even if it's corny, I still love dubs for this reason. I hope I'm not alone lol.
Your not alone. I also watch anime dubbed. It’s just easier for me. I also grew up watching Dragon Ball Z and can’t imagine it in any other language. No disrespect to the Japanese voice actors though.
I grew up in the UK watching the Canadian broadcast English dub of Dragonball Z (Ocean dub). Retrospectively, the dub itself leaves much to be desired, but it has a superbly intrinsic charm to it - like an Australian Piccolo thanks to the amazing Scott McNeil. Plus, the music done by Shuki Levy and Tom Keenlyside is kickass.
In the end, for me the most important thing is Adaptation. When you take something from one country to another, it's inevitable that a certain level of localization of the source material will be required, as things like puns, references, figures of speech and country-specific terms wouldn't work just by translating everything. That's a difficult line to cross, because if you change it too much you end up completely distancing yourself from the original, but leave too much intact and you alienate the viewer who won't understand half of the references and terms.
I think another thing that gets under-discussed in sub vs. dub debates is the idea of dubs as an accessibility feature. I remember several years ago I met a girl who was completely blind, and also completely obsessed with Naruto, which she had watched in the English dub. A lot of people with vision or reading disabilities watch things in dub because reading subtitles is sometimes just not an option, and it would be pretty dumb to insist that they all just become fluent in Japanese. There's no point in making fun of people who watch things the only way that they can.
more than that, it makes it possible to watch without it being your sole focus. You can multitask which makes it much easier to watch (react to and discuss) with friends or while working on something else which is more amenable with the little free time we have and how spread out over the world our friends are. You can watch it while tired, drunk, turned to the side, far from the screen. And without the distraction of required subtitles you can focus on the visuals when they are important.
With regards to the multiple languages thing, imo Mushoku Tensei handled it really well. Though obviously characters speak Japanese most of the time, there are MULTIPLE entire fictional languages spoken in crucial scenes (like in the latest episode), sometimes alongside Japanese to differentiate between languages/worlds. They have their own consistent rules for writing and pronunciation, and have even been translated by fans. It makes some important scenes insanely immersive
I'm so glad you mentioned Japanese games with English/Western settings. I have never heard someone say "I prefer bloodborne in Japanese." despite it being Japanese made.
Bloodborne and all Souls games were designed around English though. What I believe is important is the original language of the work, not the language of the country it was created.
@@kakizakichannelThat's true for most souls games except Bloodborne and Demon's Souls Remake. Sony provided dubs for a bunch of languages, including japanese. But overall you're right. These games were designed around English voices, even though they were fully produced in japan.
Great video on the topic. You're one of the few channels that squeeze in little memes in between their points that actually make me laugh from them instead of making the video feel dragged out. Good shit
I've noticed a lot less elitism around Japanese vs English VO in anime styled video games than with anime. Not to say there aren't people who prefer exclusively Japanese or English VO in those games, but I think it's less common in my experience. I think that's because there's an extra degree of awkwardness in trying to adapt dialogue from another language, when you also have to match the rhythm and timing, not just of mouth flaps, but of the character's movement and mannerisms. Whereas in video games, the character models aren't typically moving as dynamically, so the localization team are free to script things in a more natural way.
3d in Games is loved but the moment there an episode counter its worthless whole China is making bank with 3d series like ringing fate just came out an rules
This is mostly true. However, it does come up in the video game Rain Code. During the animated segments with the 3D models, the mouth flaps don't match. It is clear that the 3D models were done to much the Japanese script.
Framing it as elitism is fairly dishonest. Japanese voice acting is simply better for the very simple reason of it being a well supported industry in japan while in America its mostly done by 2 companies whose hiring practices pretty much amount to cronyism exclusively. The Japanese Voice actors go to school for this stuff and tons of teens in Japan aspire to be Voice actors in the future so their selection is huge. The japanese script and voice direction is also way closer to the original authors vision compared to the dub that has to get translated, "localized", interpreted by the Voice Director and then communicated to the Voice actors. English dubs for video games and anime are also mostly an afterthought and get paid accordingly which is why nobody competent stays with it long and instead moves on to titles that are regarded as more prestigious in America.
There should be tbh because JRPGS often get the most crappy low budget translations / dubbing I have ever heard. People don't take the game's seriously because of how goofy the English voices are. There are only a few rare exceptions.
That's why I love games like Punch-Out Wii where there's characters from several different countries speaking several different languages. They didn't get one or two people attempting to dub everything in a single language, they got voice actors for each person speaking in their mother tongues. It works great because it makes sense and feels natural to each of the characters.
I never understood exactly what people had problems with, but the idea that anime sounding unnatural and cringey is a great explanation. I always knew what to expect from anime because I grew up on it. Overexaggerated weirdness. So the idea that Japanese provided a language barrier helped others, but for me, it made the those cringe moments far more noticeable. I to grew up with dub anime and treated like any other cartoon before gaining access to the internet. So for me, if I turn on a corny cartoon, I am prepared for it. Truth be told, I enjoy both Dub and Sub. Generally I go for Dub, but sometimes I just prefer the Sub version. I learned, a lot of times, it's whatever I was exposed to first. The answer is more nuanced. Those One Piece and Fairy Tail customized fansubs was peak anime enjoyment even though I much prefer the English casts for both series. I wished they kept those subs exclusively for the attacks. I can't even find them these days.
I think there's also something that doesnt translate and it's the cultural aspect of a language you know "Eeeehh ?" "SUGOI" and all those interejections and those overreaction are very japanese some of them you could 100% hear in a conversation, but it doesnt work that well in other language imo because our reactions tend to be more subdue in the west
Same! I generally watch dub but sometimes it doesn't work for me so I turn sub. There's also some series like My Hero Academia where I like both versions the same
I think translating into English is just hard in general, and when you have to match the mouth shapes too? It kinda has to lose at least a little quality. I’m a bilingual Chinese and English speaker, and while I’m obviously not a Japanese native speaker, there are passages that English speakers say are “cringe” that are just normal when translated to Chinese, and I think it’s due to closer phonetic origins. For instance, a lot of the stuff with trying to impress a respected “senpai” (which is seen as the peak of anime cringe) is just…part of the Asian social structure. A senpai is not the same as an upper year highschooler in the States. But even knowing that, I *don’t* want to hear it said in English. I feel equally uncomfortable hearing the word “senpai” in English dub or “the upperyearman” or “my upper year crush” or however they try to approximate it. It’s cringe. It cannot be the same. When I hear English, I hear white Americans behaving like Asians for no particular reason, ignoring social norms, speaking pretty much like the weird kid in school. Anime may be a little cringe and exaggerated by design, but it’s upped to 3000x with a language and culture barrier Edit: also, about the unnatural squeaking and young anime voices. That’s also like, I mean it’s not “normal” in Asia, but it’s not unusual either. Girls often compress their voices at least a little to sound more soft or feminine or younger, and a young voice is seen as more attractive. People often practice alternative voices for different scenarios. You often hear very deliberate soft voices from girls who are trying to impress a crush. That is exaggerated in anime, but it’s not as completely unfounded as when you hear a dub.
@@hannahjensen3948 Have you ever watched a foreign movie dubbed to english? I feel it's the same "vibe" as watching anime dubbed but worse. I feel like the main issue with most people is that it's not english, while most of the world watches most of their stuff with subtitles and in their original languages. So I feel it's "cringe" only to natural english speakers.
This is a take I agree with, probably because you're also bilingual. But my opinion extends into an area disagreeing with the video for the most part. Cultural difference plays a large role, and even beyond aesthetics. Take an example from the video. Fullmetal Alchemist might not take place in japan, but it was created by japanese people, the script thought up in using the japanese language. Even if the intent is to have it pretend to be anything else, in the end it's a creation by a japanese person's perspective of that setting/aesthetic. There still are going to be discrepancies even if it were idealized in another language from the get-go, so long as it goes through this translation phase by starting out in japanese. If you were to consumed it dubbed in another language, it's still in the end a secondary product. That said, I believe you have to be at a certain level of acceptance for that in order to consume any foreign media. Regardless of voice overs or subtitles, you're still consuming a translation in both instances. You have to pretty much throw away the belief that you're watching/reading/playing something "how it's meant to be." And even if you know the language, the argument for how you consume it in its purist form still persists, from watch order to fucking needing to read through referential literature beforehand or whatnot (seriously, despite playing it in the original Japanese, you'll still get hounded on by Subahibi fans for not playing it right because you didn't read Wittgenstein's philosophies first and 10 other novels) Art is communication, so there are just constant varying level of understanding. In the end, the best way to handle your choice is simply which version best interests you. That's why you're consuming media in the first place isn't it.
The Hetalia Franchise is a wonderful example of what Nasu was saying. Because the series is made up of characters from many different countries the English cast uses the accents, phonetics, and slang used in and relating to that specific culture due to the widespread use of English throughout the world; and since many places already have their own dialects/varieties of the language they can be referenced and replicated with time and practice. But sadly the same cannot be said as much about the Japanese language as it isn't in much use outside its own peninsula's borders. Meaning watching the series in the original Japanese isn't as immersive comparatively for those outside Japan. But that doesn't mean the story is bad or the dialogue is any less weird either way. BTW the franchise is mostly 5 minute episodes spread throughout it's several sequel anime and a couple 1.5 hour movies. It's a historical parody about the world's nations with each character being a version of it's stereotypes personified. Mostly being about the Axis powers(Japan, Germany, and Italy) during WW2 but also lots of other nations and time periods and gives funny facts about their history, cultures, and politics. 9/10
Well to an english speaker it might be (which is fair since that is who the video is targeted at), but for me that might actually make Hetaia worse. A lot of the accents that aren't from big countries, like Uk, Germany, Japan, US does not sound like the actual accent which can be even more immersion breaking thatn them just speaking with the same accent as it becomes an element that you start to think about. I notice this in a lot of media where they try to do an accent to make it more realistic, but it's like they didn't look it up and just went "eh, probably close enough".
Over the past few years I've been getting more and more annoyed at voice acting that tries to sound more fake and "anime", from both subs and dubs, and I've gotten a few people scratching my heads as to what that means. This video explains it well. I have a much more enjoyable time watching and playing something where all the characters sound natural and believable. Also, it drives me up the wall when they make weird mouth noises for burping and sneezing too, we know nobody actually burps and sneezes like that.
Also in defense of dubs, many of the English VA's literally have to say crappy or weirdly worded dialogue to match up with a character's mouth flaps. Some Japanese words have 4 syllables while the English equivalent only has one and vise versa. This poses a challenge to English VA's and can be the reason behind some of the weird dubbing we hear. It's not that they're intentionally not saying what was said in the sub, they literally have to so that the audio matches up with the animation.
I always liked to watch things in OG language, for the full vibe of the show. Anime in japanese, Miraculous in French. kdramas in korean, The Witcher in polish, Sherlock in english, The Dark in german. Sort of forced it on my mom who watches things with me. That used to be bc my native language dubbs were kinds stiff and the jokes make less sense when they are translated. This might be really weird for some of you but in poland, before dubbing, there always comes Lektor, witch is an og film played on 70% of volume with a man reading all the lines at 100% volume. It's a very odd experience that polish people are used to. It's like, you get the translation from the dude, who doesn't put much emotions into his voice and it doesn't really get your attention, but all the emotions you get from og actors voice. And you end up processing two languages at once somehow and you get used to that chaos. So some people would rather choose that over polish dubbing witch is also odd but somehow i understand them. Hard to explain. You can search any movie and add "Lektor PL" at the end to have this bizarre experience.
A lot of movies in tv are played with lektor, there is usually info that this movie will be played on saturday with dubbing and this on sunday with lektor or something. I watched 8 seasons of House MD with lektor 😂 and the Big bang theory. All of sitcoms don't have dubb, they are just taken with OG language, some man reads the translations real time and polish people called it a day. Even on netflix 😂 no dubbs, just lektor.
@@legitkami5895 That's really interesting. I've only seen this "lektor" style of translation in English on news channels, and it can have its benefits like you mentioned. However, one time they did this where the interviewee was speaking Hindi, a language I understand. It was so frustrating! I wanted to listen to the original audio, but I couldn't make out the words with the English dub over top!
@@LeFrenchGuyGeorgesthey do. It works pretty well when you only know one language and the audio quality is OK. Too many of them sound like a guy in a phone booth with a shitty tape recorder. Like @randomgirlxrulz said it can be pretty frustrating if you know both languages. Though you can get used to that too. (I've watched a few TV shows like this with monolingual family) Imo a full dub is better but its a decent way to make something accessible in another language quickly and cheaply.
This video made me realize why some of the best dubs i've heard are seinen or anime set based on foreign culture. They don't focus on maintaining the stereotypical anime image because they have barely any limits on how ugly they can portray their worlds. Black Lagoon and Hellsing are prime examples, I can't imagine watching them in any way other than english although yes i would prefer if every character spoke their native when not speaking to other english speakers, there are descrepancies like in Black Lagoon when they go to japan and the yakuza characters speak in japanese while Rock is translating for Balalaika but then in other scenes the yakuza speak english. Instead of the dub and sub wars we should just have both when it's necessary.
It is such a weird feeling to realize that I simultaneously think this is the stupidest debate in the history of pop culture while simultaneously feeling an uncontrollable desire to defend my own thoughts on the subject. Truly, humans are created from contradictions.
Can we talk about how underrated the Goblin Slayer Eng Dub is? They added extra sounds to voices to be more immersive when spells are being casted, and for crying out loud, the English VA for Goblin Slayer himself is the same guy who did the Mocap for Doom Slayer from Doom 2016 and he sounds awesome.
You were pretty spot on when you said "People can't hate on sub because they don't understand it enough" & "People hate dub because in reality, most of the dialogue is actual CRINGE" The problem Dub has is that it's mostly translated directly from the Japanese version. And then worked to form dialogue. Instead of having a different script that captures the message from the Manga, but delivering it in a manner that sounds more natural rather than on the nose translations Personally, I prefer to watch any new show in dub first and if I feel it's not working for any reason whatsoever, I switch over to Sub. Most dubs nowadays are actually pretty good.
I'm not a dub hater (in fact, I used to be a big dub watcher before I took time to appreciate subs) but I mostly just don't like certain dubs because the voice acting sounds poor or weak. And I know it's usually not the VA's fault, because the "mouth flaps" used when the characters talk limit their acting ability. funnily enough, I have no problem with the dialogue itself
Watching an artwork in its original state, e.g. watching subbed, is not about "better or worse", it's about not censoring your experience with it and having a unified experience you can share with the rest of the world. One Example: There are two series, Sword Art Online and Rising of the Shield Hero, neither of which I would recommend. However, in the latter, where four Heroes with four signature weapons are summoned to fight for a fantasy kingdom, one of which is a swordsman cloaked in black, you can interpret the swordsman as a parody of the main character in SAO, Kazuto, another swordsman dressed in black because in the anime, those two characters are voiced by the same person. This isn't preserved in the US version. And it's things like this that show, there are just a possibly infinite amount of details and aspects and things you can interpret from a piece of art that really shouldn't be ripped out of the experience in favour of of some kind of convenience.
Absolutely not. Dubs are cringeworthy because the voice actors are amateur. In Japan the seiyuu industry is worth millions and has over 100 schools specifically for training voice actors. Most dub casts are made up of second-rate American voice actors with bad intonation. In contrast when dubs are done well with a similar amount of money behind them as the original dubbing, for example the Ghibli dubs by Disney, that use actual actors in the cast, they sound completely fine and not cringeworthy at all. Saying that all anime dialogue is cringe just betrays that you either don't like anime in the first place or you haven't seen enough.
@@resder7502 many American dubs were made by casting people from local theaters with no prior experience. Anyway, doesn't really matter since all dubs which aren't the original are equally irrelevant, regardless of quality or language.
The biggest problem across all anime dubs is timing. Every dub has lines with the most tortured delivery because they were recorded to fit lip movements for a completely different line in the original language. Obviously translators and editors do their best to minimize the problem, but sometimes you've just gotta throw in a completely out-of-place dramatic pause. Take any high-profile voice actor who sounds bad in anime and they probably sound fine in everything else. The problem is a million times worse in live action because the mouth movements are more detailed and noticeable, and it's the reason you'll never hear anyone recommend a live-action dub.
I've always viewed dubs as another option. I think it's great to have more options. I watch some anime subbed and some anime dubbed depending on which cast I prefer.
The Vinland Saga manga (at least in the English version) handles language barriers much better, by using a different font for each language. I would've found all those scenes a lot more confusing if I hadn't read the manga first. I'd had the same idea as you about every character speaking their own language, specifically for Vinland Saga, because of how awkward it is otherwise. What's funny is that it would technically be possible to do the same thing with the fonts in the subtitles, since that's how most overseas viewers probably watch it anyway. Edit: inb4 anyone says I mean typefaces, not fonts.
i watched a genshin impact scene in chinese once and it made me die (one of my native languages is chinese) i feel like it's genuinely true that my preference is "language I don't know" rather than "original language" lol
Haven't played Genshin myself, but maybe it's possible that it's designed more around its Japanese actors, or they get more budget to work with...? I mean, it's very heavily anime-styled, so it'd make sense if they also put more resources into getting the Japanese voiceover sounding right. I know Metal Gear is viewed that way- it's very much made by a Japanese studio, which can express itself in pretty funny ways, but it's primarily about Americans, so the first efforts are always put towards the English dialogue. despite being a Japanese studio... In some ways it seems silly, but it also makes sense!
I think saying that anime dialogue is inherently cringey and the only reason we don’t cringe at Japanese dubs is because we don’t understand it is a bit too simplistic and reductive. If that was true, Japanese viewers would be cringing all the time while watching anime. That said, I do think that anime dialogue and speech is very exaggerated and stylized, and that voice acting that would be considered natural in a live action film is vastly different from what would feel natural in an anime. Kind of like how the way you speak in a stageplay would be different from how you speak in your everyday life. Most japanese voice actors know this, and are coached on how to speak “like an anime character”, whereas most english voice actors try to sound natural and end up sounding out of place. Nowadays though, english vas are also picking up on how to differentiate between normal speech and anime speech. For example, I enjoyed the english dubs of All Might from MHA (Christopher Sabat) and characters in Genshin (eg. Zhongli voiced by Keith Silverstein or Venti voiced by Erika Harlacher).
@@横尾将平 Really? I’m Japanese but I don’t really see people complaining about Japanese voice acting that much. I do see people criticizing the acting of non-professional vas though. Ghibli is notorious for using actors instead of vas for example.
Speaking of foreign languages, Assassin's Creed actually does a very very very good job when it comes to how they use language in their games! Even when the characters are speaking in English they go above and beyond to make them feel like they're Greek, or Egyptian, or Italian, or Arabic. The Arabic dub for the newest Assassin's Creed game actually features lots of additional lines and bits that would make sense to an Arabic speaking player. Their secret is using accents to give the feeling like the character is speaking a foreign language but still being linguistically understood by the player. Accents can go a long way in making a foreign character still feel foreign, so long as the accent isn't racist or just bad.
no, its fucking dumb, why would italians have an accent while talking their language, its not that they are really talking english to one another, so it just doesnt make any sense. But what to expect from somebody who plays all AC titles lmao biggest piece of trash games
I follow you up until... wtf is a racist accent????? Does it spit N words between every word? Praises some funny mustache artist? It's mostly European languages that are being mimicked intentionally badly anyway, like Italian, British ect. and I've yet to see even 1 person call that racism.
@@spugelo359Well there are accents that get made fun of that are not from Europe. Indian accent gets made fun of a lot and I remember the Ugandan knuckles meme. I don’t want to judge it as racist but European accents are definitely not the only ones being made fun of
I used to have a friend that really and I mean REALLY romanticised Japan. We couldn't have a normal conversasion that wasn't about Subbed vs Dub, Anime or something related to Japan. One time, there was this Anime Convension and they were doing a QnA with I think some Japanese Musicians. I was walking around seeing the awesome Cosplayers and the art gallery with 2 other friends of mine. But this Friend decided that he wanted to enter the QnA and to be "culture apropriate" he would make a question in Japanese (even tho everyone was speaking in english like no problem and the only Japanese he knew was awfull). Needless to say when he got himself on the mic I never felt so much Cringe because he kept making those awkward anime like stuttering and like "talking" if you call it that and nobody understood what he actually meant and the people in the QnA looked very confused. It was after that convention that I stopped talking with him.
I was interested in how different animes would sound in german (my native tongue), so I rewatched some of them and compared the german dubbed versions with the english ones and the original japanese ones as well and I noticed something really important: fluctuating authenticity. Because most anime characters/shows are lip-synced to japanese, japanese originals tend to sound a bit more authentic than western dubs, especially over-the-top scripts. Imho this has two reasons: First, I don't think western voice actors aren't skilled, it's probably because most of them don't speak japanese and/or haven't seen the shows they're working on in the original dub. Thus, they tend to not have as good of a grip on how emotions in the character's voices should come across. Second and probably more important, the original japanese scripts themselves often contain over-exaggerated expressions and words that might only work in japanese and aren't really translatable 1 to 1 into english, german and other western languages. Thus, the translators have to work around stuff which will always lead to a decline in the quality and meaning of words or whole sentences, one way or another. This can ultimately lead to some animes sounding really plain and dumb in english or german while sounding way more fitting in japanese. tl/dr: don't blame the voice actors for it, blame the ones that mess up the translations :D
not really, i guess if you only ever watched my hero academia or those types of battle heavy shounen, most anime, even stuff like fantasy usually have the same pronounciation as cartoons in the west, that is to say, you can just listen to it and improve your speaking and you wont sound like a retard weeb source: I basically learned how to pronounce Japanese from anime for 6+ years and having lived and worked in Japan for the last 4 years i have not been hit with a single "NiHoNgO JoUzU" in my entire stay here.
@@Random98-ij8li no it doesnt you nimrod. Japanese culture is literally known for being polite. It's quite literally a soft spoken language. Are you dumb
@@横尾将平 i didnt mean same pronounciation as english, obviously. Also my first language also has pitch accents aswell and you can 100% learn it by watching cartoons in it
Your way of getting your point across perfectly while also keeping the videos hilarious and entertaining is really great. This is one of the best videos I’ve seen on the subject. People preferring subs is basically a residual opinion left over from some of the bad dubs of the 90s and early 2000s when the dubs were objectively terrible. Nowadays, pretty much every dub is at least competent, but mostly are pretty good and some surpass the original. But for some reason a large portion of the anime crowd has held onto this opinion for a decade way too long. It’s a bizarre form of elitism that I’ve never understood. If the dub is at least competent then I’m watching that over a sub any day, why would anyone want to watch a foreign language if the version in their native language is pretty good in itself and is currently up to date.
Because some people want their experience to be as close to that of the original and subs are the closest you can get without learning Japanese. Outside of a couple video games I watch everything in it's original language regardless of what country it's from whether it's anime, movies, or TV shows. On top of that, there are shows like Bakemonogatari where the style of dialouge only works in Japanese and literally can't be dubbed without changing a large part of the series' identity. Half the appeal of anime is that it's from a different culture and the language is an integral part of that. Wanting a piece of foreign media to retain aspects of the culture it came from so that you can experience them isn't elitism and acting like it is is ignorant asf
Maybe the elitism came from how the nerd culture works in the USA + the initial subbing culture. Not sure about Europe if they have similar level of snobs. I don't feel like SA and other parts of Asia this is really a problem.
18:00 I mean it's a Vinland Saga problem, not subbed anime. It's the exact same situation in Dub, only even dumber. They both speak english in this scene, but Thorfin says he doesn't understand english. In perfect english.
Here in Brazil we have a long history of Dubbing with varying levels of success, with the majority being very good, and much of that comes from a combination of great voice actors and good adaptation of the source material, with classics like Naruto, Bleach and Pokemon being anime that I will always opt for the dubbed version.
Sadly nowadays they tend to "Yusukerise" the dubs, making every single character say some completely out of place slang because "Yu-Yu Hakusho and One Punch Man did it and everyone loves it". Why does it sound like every dub is placed in Rio de Janeiro lol
I burst out laughing at Genshin Impact. It was not my first Chinese gacha game (Chinese people really got those down), so I just played it in English. I really don't get why so many people played the game in Japanese pretending it was the original.
I like the point you make about characters speaking the language they know. For my French class in high school I watched a show called "Les grand grand vacanens/ the long long vacation(holiday)" in French. All the people of the town speak French, the German soilders speak German, and in an episode an English pilot crash lands in France and he speaks English. Sometimes the Germans speak French but it's very broken. I think in the orginal French viewing there was no translation at all, and it was mostly the same in the version I saw. Sometime what the Germans were saying was translated, some time it wasn't. But it was refreshing to watch a show and hear something in German and know something bad will happen because you understand a word or two. Also I believe the voice actors where from their respective country, so for the English pilot it was an actual British person and not a French man speaking English
The Berserk dub is very good for the reasons you mentioned. It takes place in a western setting and is for the most part a very down to earth story so the dialogue doesn't come of as cringe. The voice actors are also amazing. Sure, there aren't a lot of them so most background characters end up having the same voice (although all of them being voiced by the same guy as Goku is hilarious). Griffith and Guts are especially great, which is important for the many dialogue heavy scenes they share
THANK YOU! I’ve shared this sentiment for YEARS and I’ve never been able to articulate it or give examples for comparison as well as you have here. Very well said and entertaining to watch. Easily earned my sub!
I used to be a sub purist but I watched that one Exclamation Point video arguing that dubs can often be a better experience, because animation is a visual-based media and therefore focusing one's attention on reading words can detract from the experience as often things are shown, not told
Really depends on how you enjoy watching them, personally I like to play lots of games with subtitles so I dont have trouble with reading and watching, if I dont understand a scene I just rewind or pause
I speak Japanese (English, French, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, German and Korean) and its true that anime is pretty cringe, not because the voices are bad but because they're overly dramatic and it sounds nothing like regular speech. Japanese people (and most east cultures) are particularly emotionally and personally reserved, even with their best friends. So stuff like "I love you" and "we're.... Friends!?" also doesn't translate well emotionally since friendship in more emotionally liberal countries is just commonplace. With that said, my main problem with anime dubs is the "loss in translation". Things are translated awkwardly and directly translating word by word doesn't give a good context. Like, "I would die for my friends" in English context probably be more akin to "I'd gratefully give my life for them" or "I'd die if it meant saving them". Similar to how I see "あなた(anata)&きみ(kimi)" translated to my love or my dear when it's more like "babe", "hun", etc. Same thing with some words like 仲間(nakama) or comrade not translating well in terms of feeling. I'd also argue there are some really good dubs, like cowboy bebop where the translation works well and the voices are fire and fits the characters personalities and dragon ball z where the voices sound more masculine in English. (I know Gokus voice is intentionally made to sound more childish but it's too much). Exceptions aside most English dubs sound stale and weirdly phrased compared to their, albeit exaggerated, Japanese dub counterparts.
ps I don't care what language people watch their media in and sometimes shows would benefit from language adaptation in a setting (AoT in German, SpyXFamily in english, Cowboy Bebop in Martian). It's just that people should be aware that something's aren't translated perfectly. My cousin (who doesn't speak Japanese) opts to watch anime with me so he can ask questions on wonky or "this doesn't sit well" translations.
As a non native English speaker Finding content I want to watch dubbed isn't always guaranteed. This made me grow up appreciating works in their native language with subtitles, like this was the closest to the original experience the creators wanted to convey. So I find it funny how English speakers have the hardest time accepting content in another language with subs
same. the video made me kind of mad because i thought this was referring to every person, but, after reading your comment, i realize its meant for native english speakers more than anything
This isn't completely true, English isn't the only language in which anime has ever been dubbed to. Great examples are the load of animes that were dubbed for tv during the 90's and early 00's in Spanish and other languages that were extraordinary.
@@Sijilos thats not what they meant. its not that other languages dont get dubs. the thing is, the language that complains the most by a landslide about things not being in their language or having to read subtitles is english
@@Gaogull bro, the point that I was making is that other languages have also demanded the content to be in their own tongue, and even some of those with great results.
"Common belief" he says... There is an abyss between creating a character and translating it with a voice. Then there is the question about the jokes with no translations, the dialects, the accents, even the "engrish" is something you can't find in the dub. Does exist a single dubber that can give life to Aisaka Taiga + Louise + Shana + Sanzenin Nagi (and more, Kugimiya Rie is so great) in such a way that during the watch you don't think "this is acting" (breaking immersion)? JP VAs are incredible talents that can create a character with their voice, if you watch the original you don't feel any discrepancy between the mood of the scene and the mood in the voices (no immersion breaking due to feeling that they are just acting), can you say the same in the dub versions? And even without the JP AVs supremacy there is the issue of the censorship, or even worse, the issue of the change of the original meaning of the scene, Onepiece firearms becoming toys, Sanji cigarette becoming a lollipop, onigiri becoming doughnuts, chopsticks becoming WTH, censor "too much" skin, censor "unacceptable" relationships, Shin'ichi becoming Jimmy and more and more... 6:45 that is not a problem about the voice, it's a problem about the translation/adaptation, the donkey that choose that translation and the other ones that gave the OK ("yes, this is good enough") are those that ruined the dialogue. 6:49 that scene needs that the actor becomes the boy, and needs that the voice is not that clearly recorded, there is the train noise, the canal noise, the nature + city noise, if you exclude all the sounds and just record the studio of the dub of a dubber that is not into the part as a JP VA, you've lost at the start. 7:45 I'm italian so for me even an en dub should make a good enough "barrier", but even I think that the en dub is cringe, so what are you saying? 10:11 This scene is really great, in the en version I couldn't get the nonsense of saying "simple boyish sporty a little girlish", in JP is an instant joke (partly thanks to the subs). 12:02 Yes, some part of the subculture are cringe if you don't accept to immerse fully in it for just the time of an experience, as a grown ass man is absolutely cringe to chant "oishiku nare" with an extremely plain girl in a too fake uniform, that is why you need to immerse and imagine the cutest maid with the best uniform, shed your shame and enjoy. Or just watch an anime with that kind of situation. 13:20 That atrocious accent! Who approved that pronunciation for the word Akira???? The accent mustn't be on the "i" ! That is another blunder about dubs, never a time an english speaker knows how to pronunce a foreign name, even after listening to the correct pronunciation: Sakura, Kirito, Asuna, Akira, Midori, Honoka, Kamina and more they are never pronounced right. 15:04 like I said up here. Localization done right? Better give some food for thought: call it onigiri (and pronounce it damn right!) so the child can get some new knowledge, instead of remaining inside the en bubble. 17:58 I see the problem, but most of the time there are original subtitles in the raws when there is a linguistic barrier between characters to emphasize where the barrier begins and where it ends, like in that Black Lagoon scene, just write JP subs until there is the shift between her talking in english and her talking in JP again.
Sub being better absolutely isn't something inherent, it's a product of the resources JP puts into its voice acting. There are shows out there where I genuinely prefer the dub - Sarazanmai comes to mind. That dub isn't even perfect, there are some weird/awkward moment, but when a dub actually tries there's no reason it can't punch in the same weight class as the japanese VAs.
I feel like I've outgrown anime and am sick of it. Most new stuff is perverted cringe and fans act weird and immature, like they have peter pan syndrome
As a dub watcher, the greatest thing that happened to humanity is english dub with english subtitles! Cause i swear even when i was young and know decent amount of English, characters in movies and heck even anime, i dont know what theyre saying sometimes. Also from the Philippines and i started to watch anime in our language which is Tagalog. Then moved on to watch some subbed anime then dubbed. Early to mid 2010s went on to watch mostly dubs and went on to know more dub VAs than JP VAs. Still subs are nice tho
finally, some nuance on this topic 😩 i enjoy watching things in both dub and sub. there are many times i find a sub awful and go to a dub that fits more. the setting of a story really does make a difference in the language you watch it in.
This is why I'm glad that english is my second language. I can understand dubbed stuff but most of the time, as long as the dub is good enough, I won't die of cringe because there's still a barrier between what they are saying and my understanding of how actually cringe is the dialog. And I have noticed the difference a lot when I try watching something dubbed in my main language. Most of the time it just makes me die of cringe. And it's not even because of the quality of the dubs, because the general opinion is that they are pretty good most of the time. Even better than english in a lot of things, mainly old anime dubs for example.
English is my third language and I can't listen to any dub, original voice acting is always better because the voice actors have direction from someone directly involved in the project, while dubbing is either not directly directed, or through a dubbing studio with their own VA director. TLDR; A good VA director is what makes voice acting good.
the chainsaw man eng dub is one of the best i've seen, along with bungou stray dogs. both have good vas that embody their characters, and i think denji's and makima's vas did really well.
This is a great take and one I tend to use myself. I wouldn't know bad Japanese VA if I heard it- I don't know the mannerisms or nuance of the language. Dubs aren't inherently bad- it's just that when you take the often crazy ass dialogue and try to match the same energy in English, well, people notice it. English speakers don't generally talk like that. We're immersed in the language daily so Anime Energy sticks out like a sore thumb. I'll still start a lot of shows in dub then switch over depending on what kind of premise & energy the show has. More down to earth shows play better in English, while wackier or intense ones tend to play better in Japanese. For me at least. I know for damn sure my favorite series probably wouldn't be if I hadn't experienced it in English first. The emotional beats landed harder since I wasn't multitasking by reading subs. I've since gone on to fall in love with the original Japanese as well.
There’s bunch of shows get ruined by wrong translation by DUB. People watched it and say this boring, but they never know that’s DUB fault lol. So stop lying, there’s so much shows should not have a DUB, it’s so cringe.
I agree! For me, I started with dubbed dbz, but mostly all of media I consumed was in its original language, because being in a small country, not many movies/tv shows were dubbed. So I keep watching everything in sub. Also doing so, it helped me with my english! I also don’t understand people that despise subtitles, because it limits them and doesn’t let them enjoy good media (e.g. Parasite Oscar win).Very entertaining video👍
"Anime is japanese, but it is not Japan."
This has gotta be the biggest truth pill that some people just refuse to swallow.
It is Japan. Completely Demonic.
It worries me how this even needs to be clarified in the first place. Having your entire perspective of a culture based on works of fiction and trying to apply those ideas in reality is a recipe for disaster.
The amount of times I've heard stories about people whose dream is to live in Japan only to move back within a year is very telling. It doesn't help that places like Tokyo cater to this ideology considering how heavily tourism has influenced it.
@@acuilnosWell, that doesn't account for family guy
Especially considering how most of Japan viewed anime and Otaku for the longest time. There's a big, BIG difference between something like a Miyazaki flick, or even something like Stein's Gate, and shows like is Is it Wrong to Pick Up Girls In a Dungeon or half of the other bottom of the barrel isekai slop that's made almost exclusively to sell silicon figures, Blu-Rays, and other merch to a very small demographic of turbo-Otaku.
Then administer it rectally
As an Athenian a Greek and also ahistory geek . I truly thank you kind sir Nasu for educating me about Sokrates thesis on dub anime
BARS
@user-ng8uy2px7q ευχαριστώ πολύ φίλε μου ..😔
Καλά τα λες μεγάλε
As a Homeric Greek major, I can say that this is completely accurate
@@gigaacademia9313 LITERALLY
I think the biggest issue with a lot of dubs is that they try to find someone with the same voice as the Japanese VA in other languages. If they just tried to match the voice actor to the character based on how we perceive a common stereotype in said language it would be fine. For example, it’s bad when the character in Japanese has a nasally voice and we try to imitate that in English. It sounds horrible because the character doesn’t match the stereotype in a different language.
I fully agree, it all comes down to feel. A Japanese chill guy and an American chill guy sound very different but so long as they both emphasize the chill aspect it’s possible for either one to fit better. A good example would be Spike, no disrespect to the Japanese va but the English performance is just next level despite it not being the original.
random but once my high school English teacher asked us to read a book for 20 minutes every day as homework for the semester and some kid in my class asked if watching anime subbed and reading the subtitles counted in which my teacher said that it counts so they watched anime the entire semester instead of reading some book
It reminds me of Dragon Ball Z's Frieza in the Latin American dub. He has a much deeper voice, since villains weren't usually portrayed with high pitched voices. Funnily enough, the VA for the Latin American wanted to do the voice a little bit closer to the original japanese VA, but was told not to, because they thought it sounded very affeminate. However, when the actor was re-cast for Dragon Ball Super, he acted the voiceover much closer to the original japanese VA, even though he still has a deeper voice
@@jeremiahjones4605 Absolute W
@@jeremiahjones4605 Legend!
If I could've written about every anime I watched in highschool, I would've had straight A's XD
I prefer anime subbed, but Trigun is an absolute must to watch dubbed. Not only is the canon language English, Vash literally says "I can't read that" when shown Japanese.
it would not be uncommon for a Japanese person to be unable to read something in Japanese. Just saying.
Same for JJBA.
At least, the Part I & II.
Why? Dummy simple. They are taking place in England (Part I) and United States. (Part II)
I yet have to begin Part II, but decided to start Part I English Dubbed. And honestly, the dub and accents of VAs are great.
@@Renopus dub dio and dub joseph are especially amazing
damn I miss Vash
Trigun is an unbelievably boring show though
The biggest problem in my opinion with dubbing is the script. Every country has its own culture and way of speaking and as a result the product of a scriptwriter is by default, better sounding in the language they were thinking of in their heads while writing it. For example, you mentioned that if a game took place in ancient Greece, the voice acting should be done in Greek. Let's just say that as a Greek dude, I've never seen anything sound even remotely good in Greek. Whether that be AC Odyssey or God of War or anything else really. I played GoW a few months ago and I was really happy to try the Greek dub of the game. Thankfully Sony is one of the few publishers that actually cares to provide them since Playstations sell a lot in Greece. While I do believe that great voice actors exist in Greece, what I heard in the game was pure mediocrity. And I believe that has nothing to do with the voice actors themselves. See, an American dude that sat down in his office to write the script of the game about a god slaying Greek, doesn't really care about the way Greeks speak. I firmly believe that unless the script was written by a Greek person or someone who has lived in Greece for years, the Greek dub would never sound good. Honestly after many years of coming across various bad dubs (mainly in anime) I was led to believe that Greek was just not a very cool language. And then a month ago I went to the theater to watch an ancient greek tragedy for the very first time. It will be an understatement to say that my mind was blown away by how amazing the acting and the script was. Especially considering that it was written 2000+ years ago. It sounded so poetic and conveyed so much feeling in every word spoken by the actors. Anyways, I've gotten a bit off topic but from my understanding people will write scripts that fit their language and their peoples' way of speaking. Great video as always man, really enjoyed this one!
I think I understand it
Yes. The subtitles will use the biggest words at times and make sentence look way more sophisticated than it really is, often ruining jokes because Japanese tones either sound goofy to convey a joke or not when being serious. So when they're telling a joke but using the monotone voice, you're so used to the goody exaggerated reactions being the jokes that the monotone jokes are serious. The fact that they use OBVIOUS silly faces as well makes you think those are the only kind of jokes in the show
I aint readin allat
You don't really see sounds my guy
Agreed on this. As an Indian the Hindi dubbing of Japanese shows (whether anime or LA) is always changed to fit the cultural aspects of here & the voice actors do great work at this.
The Saiki K dub is legendary, it just comes to choosing good voice actors. It is so good I was actually upset that the newer seasons werent dubbed in english.
Saiki K is just so good it works in everything. I watched the VO, the English dub and the French dub and they’re all so good.
The comedy of that anime is unmatched !
And berserk
Ghost stories:🤗
Ikr...
I’m usually a huge subs>dubs guy but Saiki K dub is so superior it’s no contest.
18:00 this is actually done in some anime, or similar stuff:
Great Pretender has people speaking in different languages constantly. They even do a clever thing in the sub vs dub, where in the sub the language is stated to be english even though the characters are speaking japanese. Then they use english with a british accent when they want the characters to be speaking another language. But in the dub, since everyone's already speaking english, they use french instead.
Mushoku Tensei also has several entire episodes where the VAs speak using only a made up languages.
So yeah. Some companies are going above and beyond to sell that immersion, and its awesome!
IIRC Great Pretender also starts with the Japanese audio at first, then switches to English later into the first episode.
Great Pretender is the only anime that I switched dub to sub or sub to dub constantly. For the most part I watched it on Dub but on the last arc , it set on Japan so I switched to Sub.
i watched great pretender in dub and loved all of it, loved especially that some characters had accents. underrated dub fs
@@alexraniszeski6856
Just a reminder that the Japanese producers hired *Reba Burh,* a U.S. voice actress, to do Cynthia Moore's foreign dialogue. Smart move, because Cynthia speaking Engrish would be totally out of place.
Weebs: Sub or dub?
Chads: Intensely study Japanese only to never watch anime
Probably me if I do end up learning Japanese seriously instead of learning 1 column of hiragana a day for 3 days the forgetting about it for 3 months
This is like picking choice E on a multiple choice question on a test and still getting it right.
sigma: studies other languages to make their rizz international
It’s funny because this is my exact situation, I’ve always loved anime, and have started learning Japanese, but I don’t like watching sub lol. I only watch a bit of anime in Japanese to help me learn.
@@brrrt1-1 I am going to learn japanese (hopefully), i say going to bc i am too lazy to do it, ive done hiragana and can read basically most of it, now to just learn to write the second half bc ive started that too.
But another thing is im also too lazy to go turn on the anime bc I get distracted with something else like drawing or playing games :/
but one day i shall learn all the languages I want to learn and watch all the anime i told myself i would watch
Nasu I believe you have gotten your philosophers mixed up, it was actually Socrates' student Playdoe who advocated for acceptance of dubs. Socrates was the one who traveled to Japan and convinced them that hardcore porn is actually totally fine as long as you blur out a very close outline of whatever you censor, and that tentacles weren't dicks so actually hentai is both an artistic and narrative form of the highest virtue.
Aristotle is actually the one who would say it doesn't matter how you translate it as long as you get the point across. And probably the dick thing too.
"Playdoe"? Seriously?
I think reason Why Dubs usually sound much different than Subs is usually due to cultural differences in both the way they speak and the characters that are written which is why Dubs used to have many mistranslations like in the Ocean Dub of Dragon Ball where Goku's father was labeled as a brilliant scientist
Thankfully modern dubs have refined themselves. And the past are just cringy memories.
@@a.s.raiyan2003-4 and nowadays they just censor shit and change meaning for no reason still not to the level of older ones but still
I love playing dubbed games and watching dubbed movies in my original language, one of the advantages is that, for example, I can play a Batman game, watch a cartoon and watch the movie and Batman always sounds the same, I was protected from Tom Hardy's voice as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, and unless it's comedy, where jokes can't really be translated, dubbed is just better, because the voice actors are competent.
That being said, some anime is insufferable to watch dubbed, even if the voice actors are the same from movies and games, the script is simply bad, anime people don't talk and act like normal people.
Dubs are getting better but it still not consistently good.
I'm fine with voicing done by Disney or DreamWorks on animated movies. They got the budget/time to pull in talent. With anime dub it is only occasionally good.
With subs it consistently good and very rare to hear bad voicing.
It's not just the translations, it's the voices themselves. Because while you're using the Ocean Dub as an example of a poor dub, it's actually got amazing voice acting from Brian Drummond, Peter Kelamis, etc.
I personally believe it's because as English speakers, we understand the tone, pitch, and phrasing of our language, which can make it sound less full or real. In sub, we just hear fury or rage and the monkey part of our brain picks up on that a whole lot more than we do looking at all of the parts of speech.
I agree, back when i was a kid and didn't understand english everything in english sounds cool. However now that i'm bilingual and fully understand english, i can feel cringe from english dialogue.
As a non-native English speaker I don't agree with this at all. Understanding English didn't lessen the effect good acting has on my emotions. In fact, i think it opened me up to a fuller experience as compared to watching stuff dubbed or subtitled. So far my experience with western cinema has only been better and more engaging since i started watching stuff with just the original audio and nothing else. So many subtle details were just lost on me before. I think i would feel the same way about watching anime in Japanese with no subtitles. So no, not understanding something doesn't enrich other parts of the experience in my opinion. You might feel that way because you don't know what subtleties you might be missing. And the dub also won't convey them in most cases because it's simply impossible to translate. Most langauges have a lot of stuff that just can't be translated.
that is exactly correct, and what all the subtards don't understand. you cannot accurately judge the performance of a person if you can't understand the language they are speaking in
NEURON ACTIVATION one might call it
I don't think that was the argument @@sumimasent3039
I notice anime has a real issue with being overly expository, and as you explained it sticks out way more in my ear when it’s done in English than Japanese. I’m currently watching 86 which I enjoyed subbed, I’m now watching the dubbed version and it definitely does not hit the same.
I'm watching Jujutsu Kaisen right now and holy shit this. Characters will literally narate shit that just happened or is currently happening.
"Ah, theyre attacking me simultaneously! Normally I'd be able to regenerate quickly, but this pressure is stopping that. I need to break free."
It's CONSTANT.
@@peenerparker846, I watched both versions of chainsaw man and saw no drop off in either version subbed/dubbed, so I’m not sure your point is wholly valid.
Yes, but that's kind of the fun in Jojo. In Vento Aureo Trish managed to trigger Diavolo to NOT run away (which ended up killing him) through expositions!
@@alastor8091 Yeah, that's a constant issue with JJK. "I was only able to do this thanks to my technique. By applying X amount of energy with X amount of force I was able to deal more damage than usual." Just so much jargon.
@@peenerparker846 you need to be flamboyant and act your heart out to get away with "inner speech" lines.. something Americans aren't capable of.. and that's excluding weirdos that add sh*t about the patriachy societies in their dubs... Dubs are cringe. America is cringe. Glad I don't live there.
The mo cap for the DMC games was done by the English VAs. SO technically the Japanese voice over IS the dub.
The Japanese is so much worse. Same for Metal Gear
is not just that dante is not even japanese the mf is a mega white dude from America like leon and christ lol
@@blacky8987should’ve been british
@@blacky8987
Your comment had me laughing out loud
@@maroonringthe Metal Gear comparison is low key offensive. the Japanese audio is THE recording, it's Kojima's production, and the English dubs were done completely without his supervision. He liked hearing it in English, but he was never a fan of the actual dub. The main characters have a completely different, cartoonish tone, and Raiden is made a parody of his design completely without reference to Kojima's casting. Naruto or JoJo's are FAR superior dubs.
Watching Jojo dubbed in english gave me a newfound appreciation of the series as a whole. The absurdity of the series is already well understood, “Bizarre” in the title and all, but I had missed in the sub that EVERYONE talks strange. It’s also hilarious! Especially when it’s in english and there’s no language barrier obfuscating the wacky phrasing and word choice. It’s a blast.
The subtitles should do the exact same job if you think about it, considering it should be equally strange to read than to hear.
@@qiang2884 I don't know, dude. You ever see the season 1 dub? That season's pretty weak as it is, and subtitles leave it kinda played straight. The English voice acting though is suuuuper hammy and definitely adds something that's missing from a vocal performance you'd otherwise not understand.
but the jojo dub script is terrible, its like a parody.
@@VSaccount yeah that's what I'm saying. I mean, I read the manga and it's a pretty derpy read, anyway. It's not like the characters are saying anything with deep subtext or anything. And let's be real here - the plot is about a guy getting an ancient mask that turns him into a vampire. As far as I'm concerned, a dialogue that lends into how hammy that is only adds to the experience.
@@VSaccountbut not on purpose most of the time
I'm a dub fan but one complaint I agree with is how small the dubbing scene is compared to the rest of American cartoon voice acting. I notice the same voices way more often in dubs than in cartoons or animated films.
I'm sorry, that's bullshit. They use the same few dozen voice actors in both anime and non-anime content.
@@ender7278 It depends. Some are better at doing different voices.
Sadly, they aren't all like Steve Blum (who was no only Spike, but Leeron from Gurren Lagann and Guilmon from Digimon Tamers).
H Jon Benjamin is in practically every adult western cartoon now. The voiceover landscape is tiny in the west. The only times you hear "new" voice are when they get some celebrity to do voiceover and then that celebrity delivers a thoroughly mediocre performance.
Same honestly. I get used to 1 character but when I hear same voice in completely different character it's weird
As a Greek viewer, thanks for the Socrates bit. I laughed so hard, I almost coughed up a lung 🤣
I'm Canadian and I'm still snickering at that. Such a great joke
Norwegian, and that was my favorite bit too.
Martian, thouroughly examined the human concept of humor, intriguing
Alien, zubizorp lebubip lit bogos. yip yop biblebip nib!
@@RocketWeaponsGuy bogos binted?
Im not a native english speaker so most of my childhood was watching media in the original language and i still find that the correct way; if im watching an american movie, ill watch it in english. If its a russian movie, its in russian etc
This. I think this is the best way to experience media because it feels more natural in it's original language. If I watch a dubbed movie from English to my language it feels lifeless and unnatural, so I watch English media in English and anime with subs, until I learn Japanese :)
Yeah same. I'm a native Spanish speaker, but a lot of English cartoons that dub to Spanish always sounded better to me in their original language so eventually I started watching shows in English with subs and thats hiw I learned English growing up. Same thing happened with anime but that time with English and Japanese.
And while I prefer sub over dub I don't really hate dub at all, yeah I can't really go back to dub when it comes to the shows I watched subbed, but I absolutely loved Space Dandy from start to finish and watched that day 1 when it was released in the west first and I didn't mind the dub. Games on the other hand (unless they're based on a preexisting anime) I play my jrpgs in English
This. Any other version than original is a wrong version. Only original acting directed and carefully crafted by original creators matters. Dub is like a cheap bootleg copy desperately trying to imitate original and always failing miserably.
@@rascal_dv dubs also naturally loses something in translation that's just the nature of it, especially languages quirk whether it's accent or dialect and I think it's a shame. I wish there was a way for videos to have a lexicon that's something manga in france had when some foreign concept were introduced in some mangas like GTO
I don't care where it was made. I like watching things in it's original language/the language they intended to use. Like DMC is japanese, but the main VAs are english speaking.
Different cultures have different tropes and methods of conveying emotion via voices in media. As anime fans we've subconsciously built a whole new library of characterisations that are typical to Japanese voices in anime, but as soon as they bleed into English it strikes us as weird because it just doesn't fit our English understanding of voice characterisation which has been cultivated from the day we started to learn English. Many people don't realise this because the skill of reading a voice is such a subconscious skill that most people only understand that it is a "feeling" of "wrongness".
Japanese studios themselves would never understand this without feedback from international fans or a more language-diverse staff. To native Japanese people, the Japanese-leaning English voice direction might even sound okay. This is probably why English dubs have historically sucked and only picked up more as anime has gone more international.
generally, yes. but many shitposters and vtubers have shown that some anime shit can be done well in english. but it has to be done right
Like one commenter said, "anime is japanese but it is not japan". Japanese cinema is one of the most celebrated around the world, even in the west. They do have that kabuki/theater influence but teenagers melodramatically screaming cheesy lines is something you'll never come across, among many other tropes.
@@canti7951 it's funny that you say Japanese cinema is world famous when as far as I can tell it hasn't been for like...60 years. All the known Japanese classes are old movies. Godzilla and samurai movies. In modern times it's anime people know
@@MALICEM12 I'd differentiate "celebrated" from "world famous". I'm just saying you'll rarely see a movie buff who doesn't love Ozu, Kurosawa, Mizoguchi. It is true that japanese media has been saturated and greatly influenced by anime and its tropes but it's not that hard to step away from it. Even a lot of anime can be not "anime-like" while still keeping some tropes enough to be distinctly anime. Some aren't like "anime" at all yet they're distinctly japanese (themes, style, sensibilities). And even if you watch any modern japanese (usually indie) movie, it's widely different from anime.
they also gotten better with it over time. the voice actors got better expressing the quarks of of Japanese voice actors with out being too weird. female Japanese voices actors would voice some characters with very cute voice. the early dubs like late 1980s and 1990s they just start out and just did care about what Japanese voice actors did and not that skilled. With some jrpgs they take advantage of different English accents. for example xenoblade chronicles 3 use Austrian accent for one characters. Then for xenoblade chronicles 2 use Scottish accent for one of the characters. of course Nintendo being internationally company can understand the English market better.
18:05 I think the Tekken franchise does this perfectly with every character with their own unique backgrounds and languages, being able to speak to other characters in their own languages and still understand one another. Admittedly it's goofy sometimes, but it really helps each character stand out and emphasizes the multiculturalism and the character's culture of the series.
King just standing there roaring at people and everyone just nods along.
@@weirdofia205
Jaguar is a proper language. Say yes to linguistic diversity among lifeforms on Earth < 3
I have big time processing issues. Like I have to read things twice to really get it and often times I find listening and reading at the same time to be more helpful, so I've never watched subs. I watch dubs with subtitles on so if I miss something audio wise, I can look at the subtitles.
me too!! that's why I dislike the argument that media should only have voiceover of the canon language in the series, bc it also comes down to an accessibility thing and not just preference.
im so much better at listening. Maybe due to my adhd which makes it hard for me to read while focusing on the animation and what they are saying
Where are you finding dubs with subtitles??? The only ones I find don't match the dub since it's usually written for the original japanese dub.
My favorite instance of English Dubbing being funnier than the Japanese Dub is in Yakuza 7 during a substory were Ichiban encounters a guy who's trying to get to the station and Ichiban says "Oh shit, it's English" and the irony is that Ichiban turns his head towards the camera and acknowledging how he can understand him but doesn't in order to play along with the substory
Yakuza fans are fucking everywhere fr since I started playing (only Yakuza 7 it's the only one that can run on my pc 🥲) I see a Yakuza reference everywhere!
But since we're talking about Yakuza 7 dub i want to say the dub is awesome
@@aikotitilai3820 Yakuza 7 is probably the most demanding game in the series so I fail to understand how that's the only one you can run on your PC
@@jettsett9354 wait is it ? I thought it would be the easiest to run on my pc (no gaming PC) since it's a turn-based game so if my pc is too slow I won't get harshly punished in game.
But if it's the most demanding game in the series it means the previous brawler entries won't be hard to play on my laptop. Gotta play those then asap
I think it's funnier in Japanese because the Tutor NPC's broken Engrish is hilariously bad, but seems godlike from the perspective of the non-English speaking Ichiban. Also, Ichiban's failed attempt at saying the only English phrase he knows. "DONTO WARI!" Combined with how confident and brash the Tutor guy NPC is, his over the top advice is hilarious. It really sells the value of acquiring supplementary educational certifications at Ounabara Vocational School.
I honestly dropped Yakuza 7 because the hours long dungeon crawls and 20 minute cut scenes... just couldn't take it anymore
might be a hot take but the chainsaw man dub has potential to be top 5 greatest anime dubs of all time due to how realistic the characters sound, and they dont speak like traditional dubbed characters would.
I still can't get over how the dub took out Power's Chop. They had one job, and they replaced it with something dumb
Aki's voice is a miss. He is quite young so his voice should not be so deep. He sounds his age in the sub
@@Thatdoginme_m3I like how english did his voice. Aki is a heavy smoker and his voice not sounding his age in the dub reflects that more than the sub
@rapterminator3225 I know 19 year Olds with a deeper voice than his who never smoked, so I wasn't put off by it.
@@Paperweight0 this right here lol, and i know hella teens that sound like grown ass dudes
An important thing to note about Japanese is that it has different forms of the language for different situations, and the history behind why anime speech is the way it is goes back very far to their theatrical traditions. This makes talking in that form in real life rather jarring to a listener, but it's also kinda the same as if and english speaker was quoting a movie or talking like batman irl.
To be fair, theatrical way of speaking is weird even if you compare it to movies.
A lot of theatre actors who try acting in film usually come off as overacting, since in theatres you are expected to play in front of a large audience, where you have to exxaggerate to be heard and seen by everyone.
Oh yeah it is definitely a thing with English as well. I hated the way Geralt sounded like in the English dub of the Witcher III so much that I switched to Polish, lol
That's not just a japanese theater thing - it's a theater thing as whole because when we didn't have microphones, actors had to make sure everyone, even those who sit far away, are able to understand the situations with their tone and mannerisms
@@ptlemon1101 And Japanese VAs have to act when animations are incomplete.
They supplement their overacting with the lack of visual informations.
I will point out that it's not like all anime characters speak the same way. There are anime that are scripted more realistically, and their is anime where characters talk very silly. Anime is a very diverse medium with lots of different kinds of stories who speak in different stories. The way characters speak depends on tone, setting, subject matter, age of characters, and other factors.
My hot take is I prefer fan subtitles to pro subtitles.
Fan Subs will try to translate as close to the original dialogue and if they struggle with certain words, puns, jokes, or local sayings they put footnotes in the corner to explain context. I learned so much about Japanese language from that.
but I mainly listen to dubs because I multi task, so I try to watch once with the original when I have the time to focus
My favorite thing is when official subs also have notes on them, because they know it's impossible to translate.
It was transcendent to watch Kimi no Na Wa in a theater and see "I was... (female pronoun) I mean I... (male pronoun)" on screen. Its a single short exchange, but the conversation literally does not work without that context.
This is absolutely true, fandub is just so much better. So much more effort and attention is put into not only the dialog characters are saying, but translating any words on screen as well. Official dubs are still tied to using the "closed caption" system which is so much inferior.
I like multitasking as well, but sometimes the dubs are just so fucking stupid that I can't listen to the dub. I'm watching Cautious Hero, and in one of the early episodes when Seiya is fighting greater demon Chaos Machina Ristarte says some dumb ass shit that totally broke the immersion and setting for me....I literally stopped what I was doing, looked it up and found out it was (as I suspected) Jamie Marchi. I immediately swapped to the subbed version.
How is that a hot take you wanna be? Are you not seeing all the drama in the translation (localisation) industry?
So do you prefer watching anime from the 2000s and maybe early 2010s? Because after that point, pretty much everything is straight rips of official subs, or maybe edited versions of them. And some of those edited versions made the subs even more liberal and localized than the pro subtitles were.
My first language is Russian and I grew up watching american and japanese media with very different russian dub qualities. A lot of unpopular movies and animes can be voiced by one single person, recording from their room. It is actually pretty normal. Old american movies also do not always have professional russian dubs, so you would have to watch it with crappy dubs. Most of them are made by 1-2 people. Your mind actually gets used to it. Subs are also rarely an option. This is why I always thought north americans are kinda spoiled when it comes to dub discussions. I actually think a lot of them do a great job, but people still complain lol. Try watching a show voiced by one guy, its not that great lol
Американцы: Боже, какая же это ужасная озвучка!! Кто вообще подбирал актёров дубляжа!? Я не собираюсь смотреть это шоу в нашем дубляже >:(
Русские: Киборг Убийца
@@vovasvetlov7357 от куража бамбея у них бы был инфаркт 😂
Анкорд это база
@@vovasvetlov7357 wait what is cyborg killer? what does that mean
Reminds me of Bangladesh, where I live. I recently found out that there are bangla dubs for some American or Chinese movies and it seems that many of the dubs share the same VAs.
Translation teams can make creative choices that I sometimes find even more fun than the original. Now there’s a lot of bad creative decisions 😂 but those are the cases you watch sub instead.
Yeah sometimes even the subs have casting issues too though like so many young teen boys or children sound obviously like a woman is very immersion breaking lmao. Dubs have this problem too but I'm just a bit more surprised when the sub fucks up.
@@user-lh7mt7zo7l i mean that's not a problem imo, adult males tend to not be as good at doing higher pitches or sounding younger in general so a woman is just less headache, in france gohan, young goku and goten are all voiced by the same woman Brigitte Lecordier and it sounds perfectly fine altho she makes a very good job at making them sound like young boys rather than a woman imitating a young boy but still
@@Gensolink My problem isn't with women voicing young boys my problem is when they are obviously women instead of sounding like a young boy like they're supposed to. Bart Simpson is a great western example of a woman sounding convincingly like a boy and there are good examples of women voicing young boys in anime well but I'm just saying it's really noticable when they just straight up sound like a regular woman or a deeper voiced woman rather than a young boy.
Like when it comes to profanity or burst of emotions lots of dubs really do go the extra mile to convey the pain in a way that's so familiar.
Gotta love the Ghost Stories dub
When you were talking about Sekiro, I thought about the game Ghost of Tsushima.
The game is set in Japan, but it was done by a western studio and the dialogue was done in English first. But as a compromise, the voice actors use Japanese accents.
I think if you’re going to set your show or game in a foreign country, yet don’t know the language or just not enough time to learn it. Just make all the characters speak in an accent that cements where they’re from (respectfully)
Also, none of the characters in Hades use a Greek dialect. Which is funny to me.
@@Mister_Don888That functions as an exception becuase of how stylised literally everything in that game is
@@breadg1818 yea
@@breadg1818good thought
this is also the thought i've had. tho it's especially fuckin weird when a historical drama set in like france or greece has mfers walking around with british accents.
“I fight for my friends” took me out. Great video
As someone who has been studying Japanese for ~5-6 years and heard alot of normal Japanese people speak Japanese,
I think it's less about the barrier of understanding the language providing a wall of unfamiliarity between you and the weirdness
but more that since these character archetypes and scripts were mostly created by Japanese people living in a Japanese society
So, yes Japanese people don't talk like anime characters and alot of the archetypes and tropes are weird, but art imitates life and the life that the art is imitating is Japan. It's weird in Japan, but it's gonna be even weirder in English because English speaking countries are not Japan.
(I don't hate on either side I just mostly do Japanese dubs because I like learning the language)
I think it's more just down to the voice acting scene, lack of actors, and lack of education in this particular field. Japan has colleges for voice acting, while voice acting in English speaking countries is a pretty new industry. Especially in anime dubbing.
A good example of why dub's are cringe (because I just disagree with the video) is 'Classroom of the Elite' since I was just watching it a few days ago. The Japanese VA has an extremely distinct and intentionally 'boring' way of speaking because the entire point is he's trying to blend into the background and not stand out. But in the English dub he just sounds like every other male highschool protagonist who's 'cool'. No hate to the voice actor, he was just the wrong person for the role.
And 'Love is War' is often brought up as a good example of an English dub which is wild to me because, while I understand that it's a good English dub, Aoi Koga is a phenomenal Japanese VA who rightfully won awards for her performance as Kaguya. The female performances were just far more distinct in Japanese than in the English dub. I thought they all kind of sounded the same in English and often mistook who was speaking. In sub, it's very clear and the way they speak conveys a lot about their character. (Chika's an airhead, Hayasaka is a professional maid, Kaguya has a kind of snobbish/educated way of speaking normally. Despite not speaking the language, you can clearly hear it in how they voice act.)
I'm always confused how English dubs get praised because, it's not like English animation and games don't exist. There are plenty of examples of strong English voice acting. It's just that those roles are better filled. Take Velma from Scooby Doo. From her voice alone you can hear she's quite nerdy/intelligent. That's not really how anyone speaks in English either. But the way she speaks is relevant to her character... If it was an anime with an English dub, she'd speak the exact same was as any other anime girl, and that's kind of my problem. In English dubs, the voice rarely provides context for the character. The only real exceptions I can think of is Steve Blum's performance in Cowboy Bebop, Deathnote's Light and L's voice acting, and Michal Tatum and Ashley Burch in Steins Gate.
If you can't listen to the audio in isolation and not understand anything about the character, it's not a good performance. And I have a feeling more effort is spent trying to replicate the kind of 'high pitched/cutesy' way of speaking in Japanese, but in English. Instead of trying to represent the character in how they speak.
@@pagatryx5451 you make some good points. I'm not all that knowledgeable on voice acting either but I can see that perspective
@@pagatryx5451 damn that actually makes a lot of sense bro
no its not also just because you've studied jap and hear people speak jap doesn't mean you're right either about the barrier of understanding. It has more to do with social awareness and actually talking to people in the real world. Anime scripts are just garbage and the VAs are overhyped
@@yeahright3901 He is still more qualified than you to be making a judgement. And how do you know he has not talked to real people?
"Anime scripts are just garbage"
The fact that good sounding anime dubs exist, even for kiddy shows like pokemon or dbz, proves that this is not the case. Its all a matter of localisation. Plus most manga don't come off as cringe. Its all about the way the dialogue is delivered / localised, and if the dialogue has been altered enough to sound natural in a different medium / language.
Some of these dub voice actors sound unnatural and talk in a way that you don't really see in real life. Even JRPG dubs like in persona 5 tend to be a bit better.
"The VA's are overhyped"
No point in commenting on japanese VA's since you don't understand the language. I can judge the english VA's, though
Now I want a japanese voice actor to dub this video just for shits and giggles.
Another great video Nasu, an amazing start to my weekend ! ❤️
Nasu I swear, you are legit one of the best RUclipsrs out there and this video is proof of that, you portrayed your points perfectly allowing people who may not agree with you to at the very least see your perspective, as well as adding extra information like soft power. It's actually insane how you're able to provide all this information while still throwing jokes in the mix, brilliant video.
🤝
I think Steve Blum is a prime example of how to voice act for an anime dub. The guy is able to cover a wide range of voices and emotions. Also the quality of the dub hinges on the localization writing, take away too much of the source writing and the show looses its identity, use too much and cultural notes and idioms fall flat and some jokes make no sense.
Crispin Freeman too
Kaiji Tang too he excelled in anime and jrpg voice acting
Steve Blum is a good actor, I only knew him from Ben 10, I never knew he also did anime
@@1ce867 He has done Cowboy Bebop to Digimon to Tank Dempsey from CoD zombies.
Kari Wahlgren is another example, too.
Another thing a lot of people don't realize regarding dubs (or any sort of translation and localization, really), is that translation doesn't work by looking at individual words, translating them, and then cobbling together a sentence out of those. Translators read the source material, *understand what it says* (this is the important part), and then write that down in the language they are translating to.
This is especially true with languages that are very different like English and Japanese (languages that are closer to each other probably have to make fewer sacrifices). Subtitles arguably have *a bit* more leeway but still have to make plenty of their own substitutions and 'best fit' choices to make it understandable and sound or read naturally in the target language, and fit the timing enough that they can actually be read before the next subtitle pops up. Plus the struggle of translating things that are very specific to the original language, like idioms, culturally specific tropes, wordplay, (or specific honorific terms in languages like Japanese or Korean) you HAVE to make substitutions, otherwise the dialogue will just make no sense in the localisation.
@@SpaceCase1701 More often, explanation blurbs of the wit/pun are more helpful than substitutions, but you also don't want to overdo either strategy.
Rub a dub dub thanks for the grub.
@@SpaceCase1701The amount of subs I've seen where the sub team wanted to be "as true to the translation as they could" that end up just being a constant mess of translators notes filling the screen is just...yikes.
I'm from Germany and I love most German dubs. They're well made and usually not super over the top, they have the same "cringe" level as normal anime and I can deal with it. German K-ON! was the best thing I've watched, I even prefer it over the JP original because everyone sounds like a normal highschool girl. But I really have to say, and I don't dislike EN dubs in general; EN dubs usually tend to... overact? Genshin Impact for example. Many characters there sound like they are just reading a script. It feels like sometimes EN VAs aren't voicing the character, just reading the text without context. They either sound sterile and over the top perfect like someone talking into a microphone (English Lumine...), and therefore very unnatural with their perfect English, or they do this super high pitched loli thing that isn't even that crazy in the original. Other language dubs are usually more calm, most of the time English is way more over the top overacting. That's my personal little problem with EN Dubs, but the voice actors are still doing their best and sounds pretty cool overall.
This is why I always say Dubs should be willing to change dialogue a lot more to fit the language it's being spoken in. Yes; the translation team should always try to preserve the same sentiment and concepts as the original script; but harmless things like changing the specific synonym being used, or making a new sentence which flows more smoothly while still communicating the same message should be encouraged.
The issue is that anime dub translations must be the same length as the original lines, and never longer (nor too much shorter). This makes it impossible to optimize translations, which is one reason why English dubs tend to feel more 'cringe' in anime compared to JRPGs (e.g. Trails series, Persona series). And if the Japanese uses words or expressions that simply have no equivalent in English, the translators have no choice but to write new lines from scratch, which is always a hit-or-miss process, especially if the original writing is extremely good already.
The Danganronpa 1&2 games are an excellent example of the latter. The translation was virtually doomed to fail from the start, because the dialogue was perfectly optimized in the original. Asking a translator to produce a translation of equal quality would be like asking a translator to write a best-selling novel from scratch. It was never going to happen.
@@VVayVVard That is a concern; but I think that, once again if you cannot make a line sound good with a faithful translation, or there is no good way to faithfully translate it, then you'll be fine just making a new line with the same general meaning.
For example: In German there is the word: Erbsenzähler: meaning "Someone who is obsessed with details and a bit of a control freak." If you're translating a scene where someone gets called that, "Sie sind ein Erbsenzähler!" but obviously don't have the lip-flaps to write "You are obsessed with details and a control freak!" you could just change the line to "You're too Obsessive!" This doesn't carry over 100% of the original meaning but it conveys the gist of what the original script in a way which sounds normal when spoken in English.
even within the sub anime, this is an issue. back in the day of fansubs and TL notes, there was a struggle with being able to read and understand the lengthy subtitles as the jp lines were being delivered. it messes with the pacing
it's kind of a balancing act between contextualization and conciseness
@@cursedryona6265 It's hit-or-miss. There are some words that sound powerful in Japanese that are simply impossible to translate to English in a way that doesn't dilute the effect, either in terms of meaning or in terms of sound.
Example: 弱者 (jakusha) in Japanese. It means "weak person", and it can be used in various contexts and with various connotations. The interesting part of this word is that, while it implies weakness, the sound of the word is very strong (both the ja and the ksha) in contrast to the usual word for weakness, 弱い (yowai) which only uses soft consonants. In English, the most direct translation would be 'weakling', which not only is incompatible with an intellectual tone (since the word itself has a juvenile tone to it) but it also sounds weak in terms of articulation (the k being almost silent being the primary problem) making it very difficult to apply to lines where powerful articulation is desirable.
This example in particular has long been very vexing to me, as a translator, because it has no good alternatives in English, so you're forced to choose which aspect of the word you are willing to give up. If it's used as a simple insult, you could go with something like 'insect', but if a character uses it in a meaning-specific fashion, you're probably going to have to go with 'weakling' or 'the weak', the former being suboptimal in terms of articulation, the latter being hard to work with from a grammatical point of view.
This is true in general as well. A line that sounds extremely beautiful or funny or badass in Japanese will rarely be as impactful in English, and vice versa (cool or funny lines in English tend to be painfully hard to translate to Japanese). Losses in translation are inevitable. And because you're operating under the restrictions imposed by the source material, there are always going to be cases where writing a new line from scratch won't be enough to fix the problem.
@@cursedryona6265 You could also translate that as "You're so autistic", which is rich coming from a German.
I find it interesting that anime styled games tend to have better dubbing too. Persona, fire emblem, and ff7 remake all have solid dubs imo. It probably helps that they don't have to time the translated dialogue to the original Japanese because of still portraits, or the ability to more easily redo lipsyncing in 3d
Video game companies have a LOT more money to hire ADR writers and actors than anime ever did or will
For the longest time jrpg dubs were absolute crap, they've only been getting better recently
Devil may cry, MGRR are good dubbing as well
@@NN-cc8uo Devil May Cry is weird as an example because the series didn't get a Japanese dub until the anime. It wasn't until DMC4 Special Edition that there was Japanese dubbing in the games. It's a strange infinite mirror on itself with DMC5 where it was written in Japanese, translated into English for the original voice cast who are English Speakers, lip synced to them, then the JP Dub uses the original Japanese script, with English Lip Sync... it's head hurty.
"ff7 remake"
Y O U O W E M E A P I Z Z A
Huh... so that's why I've been acting weird lately, *Anime people don't speak like real people!*
I've been watching too many sugoi kawaii shenanigans it seems. Ai caramba...
Black Lagoon S1 E7 "Calm Down, Two Men" The Argument between Rock and Revi is GOD TIER in ENG DUB the performances of each are FREAKING GREAT.
I love the use of accents in the One Piece dub - the Bege New York accent, Dressrosa's Spanish accents, etc. I wish there was more of it. I thought for sure Wano would be filled with Japanese accents.
I believe "infinite status" did that, the British girl had a British accent, French girl French accent and so on, the only ones without accents being the American, the Japanese, and the Chinese girls.
@@final_zoink😂😂 you mean Infinite Stratos AHAHAHA what a throwback
@@final_zoink I guess they generally avoid accents for Asian characters cause it might come across as being more offensive. I think the only English dubs I've heard with one or two characters having a Chinese/Japanese accent were Black Lagoon and Hetalia dubs.
@@redgrave4492 the more offensive the funnier
THE ONE PIECE
People trying to argue that Genshin is only good with the "Original" Japanese will never not be hilarious to me.
genshin's japanese dubbing also was done with more direction and fittingness as it wasn't something done after the fact but concurrently and deliberately by the designers. The japanese creator team have no input over english dubbing for anime.
@@snow86241 but it's not the original audio, stupid.
Japanese VAs are good and professional artists. American VAs are some greasy weeb and a crazy fujo picked up on the street outside the studio.
As they say, "You haven't experienced Shakespeare until you've heard him in the original Klingon."
I love the emphasize on the ''original'' because the game is literally chinese not japanese, but even so, some people still think that it was made from a JP company or sum 😭
This man just explained and perfectly proved a point I've been trying to say for YEARS to my friends, and cuz I suck at arguing they never listen to me. I'm sending them all this video right now/
Nah his points are cringe. Very ignorant
Why many preferred JP dubs is simple because the dubber is more experienced and had more quality, Japan invested lots of money in that sector.
compared to the rest of the world.
Like Genshin Impact or Arknight, JP Dubber is better because they had more experienced and easier to hire and cheaper
@ truthboom
Dude, he literally had that as one of his points in the video
@@WhyNot-mj3hj nah he's arguing that it's because of anime culture that made dubber cringe but in fact it's just experience and the quality
@@truthboom found the weeb
@@crimson5pider found the ignorant one, doubt you even know the origin of "weeb"
I usually watch subtitles, because when dialogue is cringe, it at least hits me less when I hear it in language I don't understand. And I just like the passion and over-the-top deliveries of Japanese VAs.
My threshold for cringe is so low I can't even handle the more tropey Japanese voice acting... all the baby talk for girls makes me want to claw my face off by now. I straight up don't watch certain genres because the cringe of core anime tropes is too strong within them XD
Man i was one of thoes Weeabos papa franku described in his video
I used watch this crap all day
i went so insane i started learning Japanese and dreaming of living there
then i turned like 16
man i look back and cringe at myself so much man
on discord i used to use the Japanese Keyboard to type in fuking Japanese
with my fukin friends who didnt even know the langauge man
Anime really does something to a MF
My hate for anything Japan and Anime stems from my past Anime obsession
@@self-proclaimedanimatormy hate from japan comes from its history and from people simping over its fucking awful history which the government refuses to acknowledge or educate about
I just don't like anything dubbed. My native language is spanish and I find it impossible to watch american movies in it
Yeah same here. I think I can just embrace the camp a lot better when it's delivered with total commitment. There are still some pretty good dubs though.
Funny enough black lagoon is a FANTASTIC example of an anime thats just way better consume dubbed than subbed. Genuinely one of the best dubs of all time, and the woman who voices revy is THE SAME PERSON WHO VOICES JOHNNY'S TWIN SISTERS IN JOHNNY TEST it's really all about the script and how well the source material itself fits in English or Japanese
So glad someone mentioned the best dubbed anime ever
also was the magic horse show.
Anime with western influences/settings tend to just do better in english dubs, like Panty and Stocking or Blood Blockade Battlefront. For example, characters like Revy or Panty are known for being crude, but I feel like sub doesn't capture that as well since in Japanese, using certain forms of the word "you" is seen as an insult, a non-japanese speaker won't know if the character is using formal or casual dialect, and certain slang just doesn't translate well, so just watching subbed may leave that trait lost in translation. It hits more watching dub and seeing Panty throw out a the most creative string of f-bombs that would give grandma a heart attack.
@@Random98-ij8li that sure is an opinion you're having there, champ.
@@panzershreck8077 I agree, that IS a very apt description of Johnny Test
Although anime is corny enough to make the dubs cringe too, I have a soft spot for dubs and watch them regularly... And my reason might not be relatable to everyone, but the reason I do it gives me a sense of nostalgia? Like we all watched Dragon ball Z and Pokemon in dub back then. So when I watch a dub for another anime, it takes me back somehow. Even if it's corny, I still love dubs for this reason.
I hope I'm not alone lol.
sometimes a corny dub line might ruin it for me but i do respect the opinion
Your not alone. I also watch anime dubbed. It’s just easier for me. I also grew up watching Dragon Ball Z and can’t imagine it in any other language. No disrespect to the Japanese voice actors though.
I grew up in the UK watching the Canadian broadcast English dub of Dragonball Z (Ocean dub). Retrospectively, the dub itself leaves much to be desired, but it has a superbly intrinsic charm to it - like an Australian Piccolo thanks to the amazing Scott McNeil. Plus, the music done by Shuki Levy and Tom Keenlyside is kickass.
In the end, for me the most important thing is Adaptation.
When you take something from one country to another, it's inevitable that a certain level of localization of the source material will be required, as things like puns, references, figures of speech and country-specific terms wouldn't work just by translating everything. That's a difficult line to cross, because if you change it too much you end up completely distancing yourself from the original, but leave too much intact and you alienate the viewer who won't understand half of the references and terms.
This I agree with.
I think another thing that gets under-discussed in sub vs. dub debates is the idea of dubs as an accessibility feature. I remember several years ago I met a girl who was completely blind, and also completely obsessed with Naruto, which she had watched in the English dub. A lot of people with vision or reading disabilities watch things in dub because reading subtitles is sometimes just not an option, and it would be pretty dumb to insist that they all just become fluent in Japanese. There's no point in making fun of people who watch things the only way that they can.
no one has or will ever argue against a blind person watching in dub so this point is irrelevant
@@CaptainMizuki tf they even watching?
@@thecreativeducky5781 fr
more than that, it makes it possible to watch without it being your sole focus. You can multitask which makes it much easier to watch (react to and discuss) with friends or while working on something else which is more amenable with the little free time we have and how spread out over the world our friends are. You can watch it while tired, drunk, turned to the side, far from the screen. And without the distraction of required subtitles you can focus on the visuals when they are important.
Imagine being so mentally impaired that you can't read text fast. Are you going one letter per second or something? That's crayons eater tier.
With regards to the multiple languages thing, imo Mushoku Tensei handled it really well.
Though obviously characters speak Japanese most of the time, there are MULTIPLE entire fictional languages spoken in crucial scenes (like in the latest episode), sometimes alongside Japanese to differentiate between languages/worlds. They have their own consistent rules for writing and pronunciation, and have even been translated by fans. It makes some important scenes insanely immersive
Yeah that anime is actually competent even if I don't like some things about the writing it doesn't infuriate me and reek cringe like some isekais do
so the 40yo grooming 3 little girls and wifing them up and having kids with them is less cringe than other isekais? FBI @@aiiiia9971
I'm so glad you mentioned Japanese games with English/Western settings. I have never heard someone say "I prefer bloodborne in Japanese." despite it being Japanese made.
Wow , I didn't know it
Because the voice acting is recorded in English and IIRC not a single Souls game has Japanese voice acting.
Bloodborne and all Souls games were designed around English though. What I believe is important is the original language of the work, not the language of the country it was created.
@@kakizakichannelThat's true for most souls games except Bloodborne and Demon's Souls Remake. Sony provided dubs for a bunch of languages, including japanese.
But overall you're right. These games were designed around English voices, even though they were fully produced in japan.
Great video on the topic. You're one of the few channels that squeeze in little memes in between their points that actually make me laugh from them instead of making the video feel dragged out. Good shit
I've noticed a lot less elitism around Japanese vs English VO in anime styled video games than with anime. Not to say there aren't people who prefer exclusively Japanese or English VO in those games, but I think it's less common in my experience. I think that's because there's an extra degree of awkwardness in trying to adapt dialogue from another language, when you also have to match the rhythm and timing, not just of mouth flaps, but of the character's movement and mannerisms. Whereas in video games, the character models aren't typically moving as dynamically, so the localization team are free to script things in a more natural way.
3d in Games is loved but the moment there an episode counter its worthless whole China is making bank with 3d series like ringing fate just came out an rules
This is mostly true. However, it does come up in the video game Rain Code. During the animated segments with the 3D models, the mouth flaps don't match. It is clear that the 3D models were done to much the Japanese script.
Framing it as elitism is fairly dishonest. Japanese voice acting is simply better for the very simple reason of it being a well supported industry in japan while in America its mostly done by 2 companies whose hiring practices pretty much amount to cronyism exclusively.
The Japanese Voice actors go to school for this stuff and tons of teens in Japan aspire to be Voice actors in the future so their selection is huge.
The japanese script and voice direction is also way closer to the original authors vision compared to the dub that has to get translated, "localized", interpreted by the Voice Director and then communicated to the Voice actors.
English dubs for video games and anime are also mostly an afterthought and get paid accordingly which is why nobody competent stays with it long and instead moves on to titles that are regarded as more prestigious in America.
@@luminous3558 that's bullshit it's like saying French is superior in all ways because of broad assumptions an old news questionable data
There should be tbh because JRPGS often get the most crappy low budget translations / dubbing I have ever heard. People don't take the game's seriously because of how goofy the English voices are. There are only a few rare exceptions.
14:37 I saw people telling one of the Eng VAs in Genshin that they used the Japanese sub because they preferred "the original version"
.__. huh
Lol
13:53 I fucking died here 💀
That's why I love games like Punch-Out Wii where there's characters from several different countries speaking several different languages. They didn't get one or two people attempting to dub everything in a single language, they got voice actors for each person speaking in their mother tongues. It works great because it makes sense and feels natural to each of the characters.
Tekken as well
I never understood exactly what people had problems with, but the idea that anime sounding unnatural and cringey is a great explanation. I always knew what to expect from anime because I grew up on it. Overexaggerated weirdness. So the idea that Japanese provided a language barrier helped others, but for me, it made the those cringe moments far more noticeable.
I to grew up with dub anime and treated like any other cartoon before gaining access to the internet. So for me, if I turn on a corny cartoon, I am prepared for it.
Truth be told, I enjoy both Dub and Sub. Generally I go for Dub, but sometimes I just prefer the Sub version. I learned, a lot of times, it's whatever I was exposed to first. The answer is more nuanced.
Those One Piece and Fairy Tail customized fansubs was peak anime enjoyment even though I much prefer the English casts for both series. I wished they kept those subs exclusively for the attacks. I can't even find them these days.
I think there's also something that doesnt translate and it's the cultural aspect of a language you know "Eeeehh ?" "SUGOI" and all those interejections and those overreaction are very japanese some of them you could 100% hear in a conversation, but it doesnt work that well in other language imo because our reactions tend to be more subdue in the west
Same! I generally watch dub but sometimes it doesn't work for me so I turn sub. There's also some series like My Hero Academia where I like both versions the same
I think translating into English is just hard in general, and when you have to match the mouth shapes too? It kinda has to lose at least a little quality.
I’m a bilingual Chinese and English speaker, and while I’m obviously not a Japanese native speaker, there are passages that English speakers say are “cringe” that are just normal when translated to Chinese, and I think it’s due to closer phonetic origins. For instance, a lot of the stuff with trying to impress a respected “senpai” (which is seen as the peak of anime cringe) is just…part of the Asian social structure. A senpai is not the same as an upper year highschooler in the States. But even knowing that, I *don’t* want to hear it said in English. I feel equally uncomfortable hearing the word “senpai” in English dub or “the upperyearman” or “my upper year crush” or however they try to approximate it. It’s cringe. It cannot be the same.
When I hear English, I hear white Americans behaving like Asians for no particular reason, ignoring social norms, speaking pretty much like the weird kid in school. Anime may be a little cringe and exaggerated by design, but it’s upped to 3000x with a language and culture barrier
Edit: also, about the unnatural squeaking and young anime voices. That’s also like, I mean it’s not “normal” in Asia, but it’s not unusual either. Girls often compress their voices at least a little to sound more soft or feminine or younger, and a young voice is seen as more attractive. People often practice alternative voices for different scenarios. You often hear very deliberate soft voices from girls who are trying to impress a crush. That is exaggerated in anime, but it’s not as completely unfounded as when you hear a dub.
You're describing intentional choices in vocal delivery. Anime characters aren't doing that. That's just their voices lol. That is why it's unnatural.
@@hannahjensen3948 Have you ever watched a foreign movie dubbed to english? I feel it's the same "vibe" as watching anime dubbed but worse.
I feel like the main issue with most people is that it's not english, while most of the world watches most of their stuff with subtitles and in their original languages. So I feel it's "cringe" only to natural english speakers.
This is a take I agree with, probably because you're also bilingual. But my opinion extends into an area disagreeing with the video for the most part. Cultural difference plays a large role, and even beyond aesthetics. Take an example from the video. Fullmetal Alchemist might not take place in japan, but it was created by japanese people, the script thought up in using the japanese language. Even if the intent is to have it pretend to be anything else, in the end it's a creation by a japanese person's perspective of that setting/aesthetic. There still are going to be discrepancies even if it were idealized in another language from the get-go, so long as it goes through this translation phase by starting out in japanese. If you were to consumed it dubbed in another language, it's still in the end a secondary product.
That said, I believe you have to be at a certain level of acceptance for that in order to consume any foreign media. Regardless of voice overs or subtitles, you're still consuming a translation in both instances. You have to pretty much throw away the belief that you're watching/reading/playing something "how it's meant to be."
And even if you know the language, the argument for how you consume it in its purist form still persists, from watch order to fucking needing to read through referential literature beforehand or whatnot (seriously, despite playing it in the original Japanese, you'll still get hounded on by Subahibi fans for not playing it right because you didn't read Wittgenstein's philosophies first and 10 other novels)
Art is communication, so there are just constant varying level of understanding. In the end, the best way to handle your choice is simply which version best interests you. That's why you're consuming media in the first place isn't it.
I've thought about this stuff exactly and you fully fleshed it out and made it hilarious
The Hetalia Franchise is a wonderful example of what Nasu was saying. Because the series is made up of characters from many different countries the English cast uses the accents, phonetics, and slang used in and relating to that specific culture due to the widespread use of English throughout the world; and since many places already have their own dialects/varieties of the language they can be referenced and replicated with time and practice. But sadly the same cannot be said as much about the Japanese language as it isn't in much use outside its own peninsula's borders. Meaning watching the series in the original Japanese isn't as immersive comparatively for those outside Japan. But that doesn't mean the story is bad or the dialogue is any less weird either way. BTW the franchise is mostly 5 minute episodes spread throughout it's several sequel anime and a couple 1.5 hour movies. It's a historical parody about the world's nations with each character being a version of it's stereotypes personified. Mostly being about the Axis powers(Japan, Germany, and Italy) during WW2 but also lots of other nations and time periods and gives funny facts about their history, cultures, and politics. 9/10
that and the fact that the dub had better jokes. watching Hetalia subbed is a stale experience, at best.
@@greyghost2492 Comedic anime/scenes are generally better dubbed.
Well to an english speaker it might be (which is fair since that is who the video is targeted at), but for me that might actually make Hetaia worse. A lot of the accents that aren't from big countries, like Uk, Germany, Japan, US does not sound like the actual accent which can be even more immersion breaking thatn them just speaking with the same accent as it becomes an element that you start to think about. I notice this in a lot of media where they try to do an accent to make it more realistic, but it's like they didn't look it up and just went "eh, probably close enough".
11:57 My favorite tomato? Gee, I haven't thought about it before.
Over the past few years I've been getting more and more annoyed at voice acting that tries to sound more fake and "anime", from both subs and dubs, and I've gotten a few people scratching my heads as to what that means. This video explains it well. I have a much more enjoyable time watching and playing something where all the characters sound natural and believable. Also, it drives me up the wall when they make weird mouth noises for burping and sneezing too, we know nobody actually burps and sneezes like that.
Also in defense of dubs, many of the English VA's literally have to say crappy or weirdly worded dialogue to match up with a character's mouth flaps. Some Japanese words have 4 syllables while the English equivalent only has one and vise versa. This poses a challenge to English VA's and can be the reason behind some of the weird dubbing we hear. It's not that they're intentionally not saying what was said in the sub, they literally have to so that the audio matches up with the animation.
Title perfectly captures anime 😂
But dub is cringe though...
@@donaldf9055 so is the sub just it is less cringe because you can't understand what they are saying
@@donaldf9055if I can’t understand what the fuck their saying why would I watch it lmao 😂
@@jeffjhon4928 thats what subtitles are for lol. i agree that anime is cringe tho
@@theninjabird9510 no, you're just a braindead tourist.
I always liked to watch things in OG language, for the full vibe of the show. Anime in japanese, Miraculous in French. kdramas in korean, The Witcher in polish, Sherlock in english, The Dark in german. Sort of forced it on my mom who watches things with me. That used to be bc my native language dubbs were kinds stiff and the jokes make less sense when they are translated.
This might be really weird for some of you but in poland, before dubbing, there always comes Lektor, witch is an og film played on 70% of volume with a man reading all the lines at 100% volume. It's a very odd experience that polish people are used to. It's like, you get the translation from the dude, who doesn't put much emotions into his voice and it doesn't really get your attention, but all the emotions you get from og actors voice. And you end up processing two languages at once somehow and you get used to that chaos. So some people would rather choose that over polish dubbing witch is also odd but somehow i understand them. Hard to explain. You can search any movie and add "Lektor PL" at the end to have this bizarre experience.
A lot of movies in tv are played with lektor, there is usually info that this movie will be played on saturday with dubbing and this on sunday with lektor or something. I watched 8 seasons of House MD with lektor 😂 and the Big bang theory. All of sitcoms don't have dubb, they are just taken with OG language, some man reads the translations real time and polish people called it a day. Even on netflix 😂 no dubbs, just lektor.
@@legitkami5895 That's really interesting. I've only seen this "lektor" style of translation in English on news channels, and it can have its benefits like you mentioned.
However, one time they did this where the interviewee was speaking Hindi, a language I understand. It was so frustrating! I wanted to listen to the original audio, but I couldn't make out the words with the English dub over top!
I heard that Russians do the same too. Apparently you just get used to it
Thanks for sharing that term Lektor, I'd always wanted to know what that weird overdubbing method was called.
@@LeFrenchGuyGeorgesthey do. It works pretty well when you only know one language and the audio quality is OK. Too many of them sound like a guy in a phone booth with a shitty tape recorder.
Like @randomgirlxrulz said it can be pretty frustrating if you know both languages. Though you can get used to that too. (I've watched a few TV shows like this with monolingual family)
Imo a full dub is better but its a decent way to make something accessible in another language quickly and cheaply.
This video made me realize why some of the best dubs i've heard are seinen or anime set based on foreign culture. They don't focus on maintaining the stereotypical anime image because they have barely any limits on how ugly they can portray their worlds. Black Lagoon and Hellsing are prime examples, I can't imagine watching them in any way other than english although yes i would prefer if every character spoke their native when not speaking to other english speakers, there are descrepancies like in Black Lagoon when they go to japan and the yakuza characters speak in japanese while Rock is translating for Balalaika but then in other scenes the yakuza speak english. Instead of the dub and sub wars we should just have both when it's necessary.
I like Black Lagoon
Yet someone decided that some great VA next to god awful VA was a GREAT IDEA for the English dub
dragon ball is classic
It is such a weird feeling to realize that I simultaneously think this is the stupidest debate in the history of pop culture while simultaneously feeling an uncontrollable desire to defend my own thoughts on the subject. Truly, humans are created from contradictions.
Can we talk about how underrated the Goblin Slayer Eng Dub is?
They added extra sounds to voices to be more immersive when spells are being casted, and for crying out loud, the English VA for Goblin Slayer himself is the same guy who did the Mocap for Doom Slayer from Doom 2016 and he sounds awesome.
Wtf!?? This was news to me, thanks for sharing
no we can not talk about goblin slayer redditor
I agree it is 🔥
You were pretty spot on when you said
"People can't hate on sub because they don't understand it enough"
&
"People hate dub because in reality, most of the dialogue is actual CRINGE"
The problem Dub has is that it's mostly translated directly from the Japanese version. And then worked to form dialogue. Instead of having a different script that captures the message from the Manga, but delivering it in a manner that sounds more natural rather than on the nose translations
Personally, I prefer to watch any new show in dub first and if I feel it's not working for any reason whatsoever, I switch over to Sub. Most dubs nowadays are actually pretty good.
I'm not a dub hater (in fact, I used to be a big dub watcher before I took time to appreciate subs)
but I mostly just don't like certain dubs because the voice acting sounds poor or weak. And I know it's usually not the VA's fault, because the "mouth flaps" used when the characters talk limit their acting ability. funnily enough, I have no problem with the dialogue itself
I've only ever dropped one dub, and that was Fire Force.
Watching an artwork in its original state, e.g. watching subbed, is not about "better or worse", it's about not censoring your experience with it and having a unified experience you can share with the rest of the world.
One Example: There are two series, Sword Art Online and Rising of the Shield Hero, neither of which I would recommend. However, in the latter, where four Heroes with four signature weapons are summoned to fight for a fantasy kingdom, one of which is a swordsman cloaked in black, you can interpret the swordsman as a parody of the main character in SAO, Kazuto, another swordsman dressed in black because in the anime, those two characters are voiced by the same person.
This isn't preserved in the US version. And it's things like this that show, there are just a possibly infinite amount of details and aspects and things you can interpret from a piece of art that really shouldn't be ripped out of the experience in favour of of some kind of convenience.
Absolutely not. Dubs are cringeworthy because the voice actors are amateur. In Japan the seiyuu industry is worth millions and has over 100 schools specifically for training voice actors. Most dub casts are made up of second-rate American voice actors with bad intonation. In contrast when dubs are done well with a similar amount of money behind them as the original dubbing, for example the Ghibli dubs by Disney, that use actual actors in the cast, they sound completely fine and not cringeworthy at all. Saying that all anime dialogue is cringe just betrays that you either don't like anime in the first place or you haven't seen enough.
@@resder7502 many American dubs were made by casting people from local theaters with no prior experience.
Anyway, doesn't really matter since all dubs which aren't the original are equally irrelevant, regardless of quality or language.
The biggest problem across all anime dubs is timing. Every dub has lines with the most tortured delivery because they were recorded to fit lip movements for a completely different line in the original language. Obviously translators and editors do their best to minimize the problem, but sometimes you've just gotta throw in a completely out-of-place dramatic pause. Take any high-profile voice actor who sounds bad in anime and they probably sound fine in everything else.
The problem is a million times worse in live action because the mouth movements are more detailed and noticeable, and it's the reason you'll never hear anyone recommend a live-action dub.
Which is why Squid Game dubs are tolerable.
4:28 I'll never not love how Zero's voice dips into a lower register there, so fkn great.
I've always viewed dubs as another option. I think it's great to have more options. I watch some anime subbed and some anime dubbed depending on which cast I prefer.
The Vinland Saga manga (at least in the English version) handles language barriers much better, by using a different font for each language. I would've found all those scenes a lot more confusing if I hadn't read the manga first. I'd had the same idea as you about every character speaking their own language, specifically for Vinland Saga, because of how awkward it is otherwise.
What's funny is that it would technically be possible to do the same thing with the fonts in the subtitles, since that's how most overseas viewers probably watch it anyway.
Edit: inb4 anyone says I mean typefaces, not fonts.
i watched a genshin impact scene in chinese once and it made me die (one of my native languages is chinese) i feel like it's genuinely true that my preference is "language I don't know" rather than "original language" lol
Haven't played Genshin myself, but maybe it's possible that it's designed more around its Japanese actors, or they get more budget to work with...? I mean, it's very heavily anime-styled, so it'd make sense if they also put more resources into getting the Japanese voiceover sounding right.
I know Metal Gear is viewed that way- it's very much made by a Japanese studio, which can express itself in pretty funny ways, but it's primarily about Americans, so the first efforts are always put towards the English dialogue. despite being a Japanese studio... In some ways it seems silly, but it also makes sense!
@@hahasamian8010 Chinese language is just not very good on the ears in general.
@@vator53 Neckbeard try not to be racist challenge: impossible
what do you mean by "chinese"? mandarin?
@@Veilure yea? That's how words work lol
I think saying that anime dialogue is inherently cringey and the only reason we don’t cringe at Japanese dubs is because we don’t understand it is a bit too simplistic and reductive. If that was true, Japanese viewers would be cringing all the time while watching anime.
That said, I do think that anime dialogue and speech is very exaggerated and stylized, and that voice acting that would be considered natural in a live action film is vastly different from what would feel natural in an anime. Kind of like how the way you speak in a stageplay would be different from how you speak in your everyday life. Most japanese voice actors know this, and are coached on how to speak “like an anime character”, whereas most english voice actors try to sound natural and end up sounding out of place.
Nowadays though, english vas are also picking up on how to differentiate between normal speech and anime speech. For example, I enjoyed the english dubs of All Might from MHA (Christopher Sabat) and characters in Genshin (eg. Zhongli voiced by Keith Silverstein or Venti voiced by Erika Harlacher).
To tell the truth many people in Japan are also cringing about the voice acting in animes just like English sub elitists.
@@横尾将平 Really? I’m Japanese but I don’t really see people complaining about Japanese voice acting that much.
I do see people criticizing the acting of non-professional vas though. Ghibli is notorious for using actors instead of vas for example.
Maybe you don't go to 5ch much...
Speaking of foreign languages, Assassin's Creed actually does a very very very good job when it comes to how they use language in their games! Even when the characters are speaking in English they go above and beyond to make them feel like they're Greek, or Egyptian, or Italian, or Arabic. The Arabic dub for the newest Assassin's Creed game actually features lots of additional lines and bits that would make sense to an Arabic speaking player. Their secret is using accents to give the feeling like the character is speaking a foreign language but still being linguistically understood by the player. Accents can go a long way in making a foreign character still feel foreign, so long as the accent isn't racist or just bad.
Lmao reminds me of that one time where French have British accents in Unity
What a terrible example almost everyone in assassins creed has the same dog shit accent with absolutely terrible voice acting
no, its fucking dumb, why would italians have an accent while talking their language, its not that they are really talking english to one another, so it just doesnt make any sense. But what to expect from somebody who plays all AC titles lmao biggest piece of trash games
I follow you up until... wtf is a racist accent????? Does it spit N words between every word? Praises some funny mustache artist? It's mostly European languages that are being mimicked intentionally badly anyway, like Italian, British ect. and I've yet to see even 1 person call that racism.
@@spugelo359Well there are accents that get made fun of that are not from Europe. Indian accent gets made fun of a lot and I remember the Ugandan knuckles meme. I don’t want to judge it as racist but European accents are definitely not the only ones being made fun of
Sub is superior because we can't hear the cringe.
In Most Instances.
I used to have a friend that really and I mean REALLY romanticised Japan.
We couldn't have a normal conversasion that wasn't about Subbed vs Dub, Anime or something related to Japan.
One time, there was this Anime Convension and they were doing a QnA with I think some Japanese Musicians. I was walking around seeing the awesome Cosplayers and the art gallery with 2 other friends of mine. But this Friend decided that he wanted to enter the QnA and to be "culture apropriate" he would make a question in Japanese (even tho everyone was speaking in english like no problem and the only Japanese he knew was awfull).
Needless to say when he got himself on the mic I never felt so much Cringe because he kept making those awkward anime like stuttering and like "talking" if you call it that and nobody understood what he actually meant and the people in the QnA looked very confused.
It was after that convention that I stopped talking with him.
Damn, that sounds a horrible cringe experience
That's a literal weeb.
some people dont need to experience japanese culture
I got second hand embarrassment just from reading this 💀
This is more embarrassing than that failed robbery video
I was interested in how different animes would sound in german (my native tongue), so I rewatched some of them and compared the german dubbed versions with the english ones and the original japanese ones as well and I noticed something really important: fluctuating authenticity. Because most anime characters/shows are lip-synced to japanese, japanese originals tend to sound a bit more authentic than western dubs, especially over-the-top scripts. Imho this has two reasons: First, I don't think western voice actors aren't skilled, it's probably because most of them don't speak japanese and/or haven't seen the shows they're working on in the original dub. Thus, they tend to not have as good of a grip on how emotions in the character's voices should come across. Second and probably more important, the original japanese scripts themselves often contain over-exaggerated expressions and words that might only work in japanese and aren't really translatable 1 to 1 into english, german and other western languages. Thus, the translators have to work around stuff which will always lead to a decline in the quality and meaning of words or whole sentences, one way or another. This can ultimately lead to some animes sounding really plain and dumb in english or german while sounding way more fitting in japanese.
tl/dr: don't blame the voice actors for it, blame the ones that mess up the translations :D
Love your work Nasu. You simply do not miss
One thing I learned about anime when I was learning Japanese is how weird everyone sounds in anime it’s so hyperbolic most of the time
not really, i guess if you only ever watched my hero academia or those types of battle heavy shounen, most anime, even stuff like fantasy usually have the same pronounciation as cartoons in the west, that is to say, you can just listen to it and improve your speaking and you wont sound like a retard weeb
source: I basically learned how to pronounce Japanese from anime for 6+ years and having lived and worked in Japan for the last 4 years i have not been hit with a single "NiHoNgO JoUzU" in my entire stay here.
@@Random98-ij8li no it doesnt you nimrod. Japanese culture is literally known for being polite. It's quite literally a soft spoken language. Are you dumb
@@g76agi Same pronounciation? Do you know that Japanese have a pitch acccent
that is complete different system with English?
@@横尾将平 i didnt mean same pronounciation as english, obviously.
Also my first language also has pitch accents aswell and you can 100% learn it by watching cartoons in it
Your way of getting your point across perfectly while also keeping the videos hilarious and entertaining is really great. This is one of the best videos I’ve seen on the subject.
People preferring subs is basically a residual opinion left over from some of the bad dubs of the 90s and early 2000s when the dubs were objectively terrible.
Nowadays, pretty much every dub is at least competent, but mostly are pretty good and some surpass the original. But for some reason a large portion of the anime crowd has held onto this opinion for a decade way too long.
It’s a bizarre form of elitism that I’ve never understood. If the dub is at least competent then I’m watching that over a sub any day, why would anyone want to watch a foreign language if the version in their native language is pretty good in itself and is currently up to date.
Because some people want their experience to be as close to that of the original and subs are the closest you can get without learning Japanese. Outside of a couple video games I watch everything in it's original language regardless of what country it's from whether it's anime, movies, or TV shows.
On top of that, there are shows like Bakemonogatari where the style of dialouge only works in Japanese and literally can't be dubbed without changing a large part of the series' identity. Half the appeal of anime is that it's from a different culture and the language is an integral part of that. Wanting a piece of foreign media to retain aspects of the culture it came from so that you can experience them isn't elitism and acting like it is is ignorant asf
@@HalfMileHeadshotNasu literally talked about your first statement in the video. Did you even watch it 😂
Maybe the elitism came from how the nerd culture works in the USA + the initial subbing culture. Not sure about Europe if they have similar level of snobs. I don't feel like SA and other parts of Asia this is really a problem.
Ehhhhh modern dubs are pretty bad too, if anything the old bad dubs were at least funny and characters used to sound unique
@@ChangedMyNameFinally69 watch the video dude
18:00
I mean it's a Vinland Saga problem, not subbed anime. It's the exact same situation in Dub, only even dumber. They both speak english in this scene, but Thorfin says he doesn't understand english. In perfect english.
Here in Brazil we have a long history of Dubbing with varying levels of success, with the majority being very good, and much of that comes from a combination of great voice actors and good adaptation of the source material, with classics like Naruto, Bleach and Pokemon being anime that I will always opt for the dubbed version.
Nada como um Sáske bravo gritando "NARUTOOO SEU IDIOTA" enquanto eles lutam contra inimigos mortais. O jeito elevado de experienciar Naruto 👌
Sadly nowadays they tend to "Yusukerise" the dubs, making every single character say some completely out of place slang because "Yu-Yu Hakusho and One Punch Man did it and everyone loves it". Why does it sound like every dub is placed in Rio de Janeiro lol
I burst out laughing at Genshin Impact. It was not my first Chinese gacha game (Chinese people really got those down), so I just played it in English. I really don't get why so many people played the game in Japanese pretending it was the original.
Because the Chinese developers would rather market to anime lovers than the Chinese because Chinese people consider it a BOTW clone & nothing more.
@@ExtremeWreck Inazuma's release was the downfall of the game and its community because its when all the weirdass weebs discovered the game.
@@takemi_914 All because Inazuma sounded like a Japanese place.
@@ExtremeWreck God I miss pre-Inazuma genshin
@@ExtremeWreck inazuma is japanese for lightning 稲妻. so its the lightning nation. but fr yeah
I like the point you make about characters speaking the language they know. For my French class in high school I watched a show called "Les grand grand vacanens/ the long long vacation(holiday)" in French. All the people of the town speak French, the German soilders speak German, and in an episode an English pilot crash lands in France and he speaks English. Sometimes the Germans speak French but it's very broken. I think in the orginal French viewing there was no translation at all, and it was mostly the same in the version I saw. Sometime what the Germans were saying was translated, some time it wasn't. But it was refreshing to watch a show and hear something in German and know something bad will happen because you understand a word or two. Also I believe the voice actors where from their respective country, so for the English pilot it was an actual British person and not a French man speaking English
THANK YOU for bringing up Genshin bc it's something I've been thinking about for a while so I'm glad to have my thoughts validated
The Berserk dub is very good for the reasons you mentioned. It takes place in a western setting and is for the most part a very down to earth story so the dialogue doesn't come of as cringe. The voice actors are also amazing. Sure, there aren't a lot of them so most background characters end up having the same voice (although all of them being voiced by the same guy as Goku is hilarious).
Griffith and Guts are especially great, which is important for the many dialogue heavy scenes they share
I heard the guts theme as I read this in the rain.
Griffith is fantastic in the dub
Also helps that most everyone is an adult, with dialogue that matches that maturity. Same with Bebop and Fullmetal.
THANK YOU! I’ve shared this sentiment for YEARS and I’ve never been able to articulate it or give examples for comparison as well as you have here. Very well said and entertaining to watch. Easily earned my sub!
I used to be a sub purist but I watched that one Exclamation Point video arguing that dubs can often be a better experience, because animation is a visual-based media and therefore focusing one's attention on reading words can detract from the experience as often things are shown, not told
Neither sub nor dub are a good way to watch anime. If you dont understand Japanese, then dont watch anime at all
@@cheerful_crop_circle actual smoothbrain take
Really depends on how you enjoy watching them, personally I like to play lots of games with subtitles so I dont have trouble with reading and watching, if I dont understand a scene I just rewind or pause
I speak Japanese (English, French, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, German and Korean) and its true that anime is pretty cringe, not because the voices are bad but because they're overly dramatic and it sounds nothing like regular speech. Japanese people (and most east cultures) are particularly emotionally and personally reserved, even with their best friends. So stuff like "I love you" and "we're.... Friends!?" also doesn't translate well emotionally since friendship in more emotionally liberal countries is just commonplace.
With that said, my main problem with anime dubs is the "loss in translation". Things are translated awkwardly and directly translating word by word doesn't give a good context. Like, "I would die for my friends" in English context probably be more akin to "I'd gratefully give my life for them" or "I'd die if it meant saving them". Similar to how I see "あなた(anata)&きみ(kimi)" translated to my love or my dear when it's more like "babe", "hun", etc. Same thing with some words like 仲間(nakama) or comrade not translating well in terms of feeling.
I'd also argue there are some really good dubs, like cowboy bebop where the translation works well and the voices are fire and fits the characters personalities and dragon ball z where the voices sound more masculine in English. (I know Gokus voice is intentionally made to sound more childish but it's too much).
Exceptions aside most English dubs sound stale and weirdly phrased compared to their, albeit exaggerated, Japanese dub counterparts.
ps I don't care what language people watch their media in and sometimes shows would benefit from language adaptation in a setting (AoT in German, SpyXFamily in english, Cowboy Bebop in Martian). It's just that people should be aware that something's aren't translated perfectly. My cousin (who doesn't speak Japanese) opts to watch anime with me so he can ask questions on wonky or "this doesn't sit well" translations.
As a non native English speaker Finding content I want to watch dubbed isn't always guaranteed. This made me grow up appreciating works in their native language with subtitles, like this was the closest to the original experience the creators wanted to convey. So I find it funny how English speakers have the hardest time accepting content in another language with subs
same. the video made me kind of mad because i thought this was referring to every person, but, after reading your comment, i realize its meant for native english speakers more than anything
This isn't completely true, English isn't the only language in which anime has ever been dubbed to. Great examples are the load of animes that were dubbed for tv during the 90's and early 00's in Spanish and other languages that were extraordinary.
And I don't understand what's the "funny" part, it's logical to find people who complain about content not in their language.
@@Sijilos thats not what they meant. its not that other languages dont get dubs. the thing is, the language that complains the most by a landslide about things not being in their language or having to read subtitles is english
@@Gaogull bro, the point that I was making is that other languages have also demanded the content to be in their own tongue, and even some of those with great results.
"Common belief" he says... There is an abyss between creating a character and translating it with a voice. Then there is the question about the jokes with no translations, the dialects, the accents, even the "engrish" is something you can't find in the dub. Does exist a single dubber that can give life to Aisaka Taiga + Louise + Shana + Sanzenin Nagi (and more, Kugimiya Rie is so great) in such a way that during the watch you don't think "this is acting" (breaking immersion)? JP VAs are incredible talents that can create a character with their voice, if you watch the original you don't feel any discrepancy between the mood of the scene and the mood in the voices (no immersion breaking due to feeling that they are just acting), can you say the same in the dub versions? And even without the JP AVs supremacy there is the issue of the censorship, or even worse, the issue of the change of the original meaning of the scene, Onepiece firearms becoming toys, Sanji cigarette becoming a lollipop, onigiri becoming doughnuts, chopsticks becoming WTH, censor "too much" skin, censor "unacceptable" relationships, Shin'ichi becoming Jimmy and more and more...
6:45 that is not a problem about the voice, it's a problem about the translation/adaptation, the donkey that choose that translation and the other ones that gave the OK ("yes, this is good enough") are those that ruined the dialogue.
6:49 that scene needs that the actor becomes the boy, and needs that the voice is not that clearly recorded, there is the train noise, the canal noise, the nature + city noise, if you exclude all the sounds and just record the studio of the dub of a dubber that is not into the part as a JP VA, you've lost at the start.
7:45 I'm italian so for me even an en dub should make a good enough "barrier", but even I think that the en dub is cringe, so what are you saying?
10:11 This scene is really great, in the en version I couldn't get the nonsense of saying "simple boyish sporty a little girlish", in JP is an instant joke (partly thanks to the subs).
12:02 Yes, some part of the subculture are cringe if you don't accept to immerse fully in it for just the time of an experience, as a grown ass man is absolutely cringe to chant "oishiku nare" with an extremely plain girl in a too fake uniform, that is why you need to immerse and imagine the cutest maid with the best uniform, shed your shame and enjoy. Or just watch an anime with that kind of situation.
13:20 That atrocious accent! Who approved that pronunciation for the word Akira???? The accent mustn't be on the "i" ! That is another blunder about dubs, never a time an english speaker knows how to pronunce a foreign name, even after listening to the correct pronunciation: Sakura, Kirito, Asuna, Akira, Midori, Honoka, Kamina and more they are never pronounced right.
15:04 like I said up here. Localization done right? Better give some food for thought: call it onigiri (and pronounce it damn right!) so the child can get some new knowledge, instead of remaining inside the en bubble.
17:58 I see the problem, but most of the time there are original subtitles in the raws when there is a linguistic barrier between characters to emphasize where the barrier begins and where it ends, like in that Black Lagoon scene, just write JP subs until there is the shift between her talking in english and her talking in JP again.
Sub being better absolutely isn't something inherent, it's a product of the resources JP puts into its voice acting. There are shows out there where I genuinely prefer the dub - Sarazanmai comes to mind. That dub isn't even perfect, there are some weird/awkward moment, but when a dub actually tries there's no reason it can't punch in the same weight class as the japanese VAs.
I feel like I've outgrown anime and am sick of it. Most new stuff is perverted cringe and fans act weird and immature, like they have peter pan syndrome
As a dub watcher, the greatest thing that happened to humanity is english dub with english subtitles! Cause i swear even when i was young and know decent amount of English, characters in movies and heck even anime, i dont know what theyre saying sometimes.
Also from the Philippines and i started to watch anime in our language which is Tagalog. Then moved on to watch some subbed anime then dubbed. Early to mid 2010s went on to watch mostly dubs and went on to know more dub VAs than JP VAs. Still subs are nice tho
Bro, I almost spat out my water at this point 12:28
4:56 I was immediately interested in the sponsor honestly
I dont care what language you watch your anime in
As long as you enjoy it, watch it.
finally, some nuance on this topic 😩 i enjoy watching things in both dub and sub. there are many times i find a sub awful and go to a dub that fits more. the setting of a story really does make a difference in the language you watch it in.
This is why I'm glad that english is my second language. I can understand dubbed stuff but most of the time, as long as the dub is good enough, I won't die of cringe because there's still a barrier between what they are saying and my understanding of how actually cringe is the dialog. And I have noticed the difference a lot when I try watching something dubbed in my main language. Most of the time it just makes me die of cringe. And it's not even because of the quality of the dubs, because the general opinion is that they are pretty good most of the time. Even better than english in a lot of things, mainly old anime dubs for example.
English is my third language and I can't listen to any dub, original voice acting is always better because the voice actors have direction from someone directly involved in the project, while dubbing is either not directly directed, or through a dubbing studio with their own VA director.
TLDR; A good VA director is what makes voice acting good.
@@c00ki3IIIm0n5t3r love how people say this is always better then turn around and go it just depends on who is there
@@senritsujumpsuit6021 They aren't mutually exclusive, it just happens that the people there are always better in the home studio (how surprising).
the chainsaw man eng dub is one of the best i've seen, along with bungou stray dogs. both have good vas that embody their characters, and i think denji's and makima's vas did really well.
I've seen a bit of the English dub, but the Spanish dub for Chainsaw Man is great, I feel like that one has the best voices for the characters.
Glad I'm not the only one that agrees with BSD having a good ass english dub.
This is a great take and one I tend to use myself.
I wouldn't know bad Japanese VA if I heard it- I don't know the mannerisms or nuance of the language.
Dubs aren't inherently bad- it's just that when you take the often crazy ass dialogue and try to match the same energy in English, well, people notice it. English speakers don't generally talk like that. We're immersed in the language daily so Anime Energy sticks out like a sore thumb.
I'll still start a lot of shows in dub then switch over depending on what kind of premise & energy the show has. More down to earth shows play better in English, while wackier or intense ones tend to play better in Japanese. For me at least.
I know for damn sure my favorite series probably wouldn't be if I hadn't experienced it in English first. The emotional beats landed harder since I wasn't multitasking by reading subs. I've since gone on to fall in love with the original Japanese as well.
There’s bunch of shows get ruined by wrong translation by DUB. People watched it and say this boring, but they never know that’s DUB fault lol.
So stop lying, there’s so much shows should not have a DUB, it’s so cringe.
I agree! For me, I started with dubbed dbz, but mostly all of media I consumed was in its original language, because being in a small country, not many movies/tv shows were dubbed. So I keep watching everything in sub. Also doing so, it helped me with my english! I also don’t understand people that despise subtitles, because it limits them and doesn’t let them enjoy good media (e.g. Parasite Oscar win).Very entertaining video👍