Anime Poll: Sub or Dub?

[Algo Fonix]

I usually default to subs, but if a dub is available I'll give it a try. I don't really prefer one over the other, I've just made it a habit to go with subs first. Live action stuff, I never watch with dubs (the stuff I watch rarely has one anyway).

[Daniel Evans]

Subtitles all the way. The Japanese voices sound way cooler than the English dubs.

[Elgyem]

Unlike all the weeaboos who think that dubbed anime is the spawn of Satan, I actually would rather watch dubbed. As long as it's not a 4Kids dub, I'd much rather watch it than a subbed version, as I'd rather watch an anime, not read an anime.

[Cirno]

I prefer subs, though I do still like dubs (anime like Soul Eater and Durarara!! were dubbed excellently). As was said by a few others, dub voice actors are not "talentless" like some Japanese fans assume; a lot of the time those people prefer the original Japanese voices because it sounds nicer being foreign iirc, not because it's actually of better quality. The only dubs I dislike are those that heavily change the original dialogue.

[Charizard★]

Sub. All the way, I don't know how people can stand dubbed. It just makes me shudder when I think about it.

[machomuu]

Originally Posted by Charizard★

Sub. All the way, I don't know how people can stand subbed. It just makes me shudder when I think about it.

Because they don't all sound bad, most don't. I mean, back in the 50s through 80s (and arguably the 90s) they did (not all of them, though, Dragon Ball Z is a notable 80s anime that has a great dub), but most modern dubs are well done, especially the Funimation ones.

So that's how.

[Charizard★]

Originally Posted by machomuu

Because they don't all sound bad, most don't. I mean, back in the 50s through 80s (and arguably the 90s) they did (not all of them, though, Dragon Ball Z is a notable 80s anime that has a great dub), but most modern dubs are well done, especially the Funimation ones.

So that's how.

Touche. I'd have to say that the older ones were better. Cowboy Bebop, Pokemon (old ones), Yu-Gi-Oh, Ghost in the Shell and a few others were great, but, nowadays, not so much.

I know the ones I mentioned aren't all that old, but, they're not like the new ones which aren't very good. But, that's just my opinion.

[AlexOzzyCake]

In general I prefer dubbed because the songs etc are better and you can relate the character to their voice more, however most of the time subbed has much better voice acting so it's a pretty hard choice. :p Really it depends on the show most of the time, but in general I prefer listening to English.

[SwiftSign]

Subbed every time :3 I just feel that a lot of the time some character is lost in dubbed voicing - they just seem a bit less emotional? Not really sure :3.

[digi-kun]

Originally Posted by Charizard★

Touche. I'd have to say that the older ones were better. Cowboy Bebop, Pokemon (old ones), Yu-Gi-Oh, Ghost in the Shell and a few others were great, but, nowadays, not so much.

I know the ones I mentioned aren't all that old, but, they're not like the new ones which aren't very good. But, that's just my opinion.

As far as old shows went, they were pretty much hit or miss. While a good deal of the big shows had good dubs, a lot of the less known shows had some pretty atrocious ones. A lot of it could also come from watching the dub first, which puts up more familiarity with said dub. Same goes for subs, tbh.

Don't really watch dubs all that often anymore, but from what I see, most of the dubs these days don't really stand out too much unless they do something out of the ordinary (Haruhi, FMA), can make full use of stereotypical accents (Baccano), or have little to no (young) female roles.

[machomuu]

Originally Posted by AlexOzzyCake

In general I prefer dubbed because the songs etc are better and you can relate the character to their voice more, however most of the time subbed has much better voice acting so it's a pretty hard choice. :p Really it depends on the show most of the time, but in general I prefer listening to English.

Wait...did you seriously just say that you prefer dubbed songs over the originals? Seriously? That's the first time I think I've heard anyone say that...ever. Not that I have anything wrong with this, I'm just very interested in the fact that you say it. Do you have any anime in mind where that's the case? I mean, I can understand songs like Freckles (Ruroni Kenshin's OP), because they sound almost the same in terms of vocals (and the English version is redone, so the intro to the song is cleaner)

Spoiler:

(Seriously, it's hard to believe that they're different people)

Some more examples would be Dragon Ball and Yu Yu Hakusho, both of which actually really care about the songs they're singing, and get quality singers to do the job (often trying to match the voice or tone of the original singer), that way it will still pull in in viewers. This isn't a common practice, mainly because originally English openings were created to make the anime more localized and less Japanese.

Spoiler:

As you can see, authenticity was key, and they tried to match the original songs as best they could, most likely because that was the way the original composers meant for them to be sung.

Then, you have shows like Digimon and One Piece. All of these shows suffered from certain producers wanting them to seem little Japanese as possible, and for this reason they changes their openings entirely, often using lower grade and weakly put together openings, often using scenes from the show (or rearranged pieces of the original opening) and adding sound effects to the song (though, this wasn't uncommon among the original songs), as well as going off of some type of fad as the basis for their song (Rap was often used, mainly since it was used in cartoons, and it worked- in cartoons, that is, not anime).

Spoiler:

They're goals, however, weren't to create a good translation or even a good substitute, but rather, to create a catchy opening that people would remember, especially children, even if the song itself wasn't that good.

Then, there were shows like Pokemon, Dragon Ball Z, and Yu-Gi-Oh! which did the same thing, except they took care in what they were doing rather than simply what they were trying to do. While the former shows indeed had openings that were catchy, not nearly as much care and effort were put into their creation than these, and even if the audience didn't care about the quality of the shows, the songs themselves ingrained themselves into the memories of their viewers. It's hard to find someone who watched any of these shows as a child who can't remember how their themes go.

Spoiler:

Even still, they couldn't resist showcasing action-packed moments rather than going for the tone of their originals, not that they went to their discredit.

And yes, I did use your post as an excuse to take a look at dubbed openings. Though I still am interested in the ones you have in mind

[-Lapras-]

Never understood the massive dub hate, I mean I've heard loads of dry seiyuu performances. Guessing it's just a case of Japan being the coolest place in the world ecsdee.

[Sector Revenge]

100% all for Dubbed. I only understand English, so there's your answer. Yes, I know Subbed is Subtitled, but why not read a book instead? I've always been a watcher over a reader, that's my style.

[Mentalii]

By far, sub. Dub sounds just awful. Japanese voices are awesome, and hearing the original voices also allow to learn japanese expressions and so on. The english dubbing, and not only the english one, the french one, the german one, the spanish one, they sounds very odd to me. Some are just ridiculous. And dubbed anime are often censured a lot, that point is pretty annoying. I can't watch a dubbed anime, if I don't find it subbed, I prefer not to watch it at all x) Really.

[machomuu]

Originally Posted by Mentalii

By far, sub. Dub sounds just awful. Japanese voices are awesome, and hearing the original voices also allow to learn japanese expressions and so on. The english dubbing, and not only the english one, the french one, the german one, the spanish one, they sounds very odd to me. Some are just ridiculous. And dubbed anime are often censured a lot, that point is pretty annoying. I can't watch a dubbed anime, if I don't find it subbed, I prefer not to watch it at all x) Really.

There are other anime than ones dubbed by 4Kids, y'know.

[Mentalii]

Originally Posted by machomuu

There are other anime than ones dubbed by 4Kids, y'know.

This is why I said "often".

[machomuu]

Originally Posted by Mentalii

This is why I said "often".

Yes, I know, but the thing is 4Kids rarely touches anything anymore (being that they went bankrupt), so "often" would imply that you've seen quite a few edited versions of anime, that they make up the majority of the dubbed anime you've seen, even though there are far more uncut and unedited anime out there than there are edited ones.

[Mentalii]

Oh, no, I don't have only seen edited dubbed animes Of course I've seen other animes than 4Kids one too. And I'm sorry to say that but for the moment none of the dubbed animes that I've watched sounded good to me. The japanese sounds so perfect in the animes that it's even difficult to compare english voices and japanese voices. Maybe it's not even because of the dubbers but... The japanese sounds so much more natural on manga characters to my mind.

[Bashiyoto]

I tend to prefer subs. Nowadays English voice acting has greatly improved and rarely are dubs "bad" but, since I lack a fine tuned ear to the Japanese language, even the more mediocre voice work won't distract me from the story.
I feel that in the case of Cowboy Beebop though the English voice work surpasses the Japanese.
In the modern scene it really just comes down to preference.

[Elite Overlord LeSabre™]

Most of the dubs I watch (aside from the Saturday morning variety of series) have been pretty good, so I don't have any hate for dubs. However, since the majority of the series I watch are either "niche" titles or never got a release in the US, the dubs aren't even an option.

So, I'll watch dubs when I can since it doesn't require reading and they aren't that bad, but I mostly watch subs because they're the only option available for the shows I usually watch.

[Arcanine]

I prefer subs, mainly because over the years it's what I've gotten used to. Sure it was hard at first, trying to keep up reading what was going on and trying to watch what was on screen. But now days it's second nature, and like I said it's what I prefer. Do I wish I understood Japanese? Sure I do, as a lazy person it'd be even better for me. XD

That's not to say I don't mind some dubs. Like a few weeks ago I finished up Samurai Champloo, I could have gotten it subbed but I wanted to watch it dubbed. I have the Baka Test boxset and I've watched an ep or two dubbed (I want to get around to rewatching the series but this time the dub). I also have the FMA:Brotherhood boxsets and when I get around to watching them I'll be watching it dubbed. I'm going to give the Steins;Gate dub a shot, as well as the Evangelion movies. And I haven't watched Inuyasha The Final Act because I wanted to watch it dubbed.

I just like subs better because I don't have to wait forever for it to be dubbed (I hate spoilers). I tend to like the voices better. And like I said, it's second nature for me to read subs.

[Megaman3007]

I like whatever I see first. For me if I see it in dub I prefer the dub and if I see it first in sub then sub. For example I despise the Naruto and Pokemon subbed but despise the Beyblade dub.

[Kotowari]

I'm in favour of the subbing and that for several reasons, both easthetical and practical reasons. I'm of the mindset that often the original is better than any edited version available. And from the dubbed clips I've seen,I kind of prefered the Japanese dub. That doesn't take away that sometimes I could kill character's voices, but overal I'm quite content with the anime I watched in Japanese dub.
Similar to something mentioned before, I tend to watch the-not-so-uber-popular anime... which don't have a dubbed version. Some of them end up being dubbed years later...

A more practical reason is that English isn't my first language. Although my understanding of English is quite good, I still tend to understand more of written than spoken English.

[Patchisou Yutohru]

Dubbed. Don't watch a lot of anime, and don't feel like reading through it. I'll do it if there isn't a dubbed version available, but I'd rather actually watch what's going on and solely focus on that than focus on that as well as reading.

[Lightning]

I prefer dubs, but I don't tend to watch them because I rarely watch anime old enough to have them. Usually dubs don't come around until a year or two after the Japanese release and I tend to check out anime because of hype surrounding it as it airs.

But I prefer dubs because I don't have to read subtitles at all for them and I don't have to pay much attention to them. I like to watch anime while I'm doing something else (grinding in an RPG, browsing the web, etc.) so having it in my native language is easiest. My Japanese is pretty good and I can usually understand something fairly well without subtitles but I have to pay close attention to everything someone says and I do sometimes have to check the subs to see exactly what's going on. I tend to prefer anime with complicated plots so having it in the background in the original language doesn't work out for me very well.

Eventually I'll get to the point where it won't matter what language it's in because I'll understand it just fine either way but until then I'll pick it up in English whenever I can.