To be fair, dubs used to be really, really bad back when us old weebs were growing up.
Nowadays, studios think about localization from the start when creating the original dialogue, leading to much better quality dubs. Thus, the newer weebs never developed the cringe reflex we have.
The quality and quantity of voice actors has exploded, there are still plenty of places that cheap out, but the baseline level of voice acting in dubbing now is barely even comparable to 15 years ago.
Finding decent dubs used to be a needle in a haystack with big studio money required, you can name them all off on one hand, the OP did later on in the thread. Now it’s almost the opposite!
There’s also a shift in western, especially American, voice acting away from subtle emotional performances to the emotive and excitement filled performances of the Japanese voice actors too. It’s a few things right now.
I’m an older weeb, dubs are the only way I’ll watch, reading subtitles is exhausting and takes all the joy out of watching the show, dubs are the only reason I actually like anime
Me, a sub Connoisseur looking at all these dub peasants(also me looking at the subs themselves);
Good dubs have always been a rare gem.
IMO the key to a good dub is two things:
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Actors and direction that prioritizes caricature without becoming “campy”. This is something JP VO is ridiculously good at. They identify a character’s personality, crank it up to 11, but still make the emotional delivery feel genuine, even if extreme
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Direction that understands the characters as intended by the author. This is where a lot of dubs fall horribly short. They do not consult with the original content creator, and wind up with voices and characterizations that may seem to work on the surface but are lacking the depth of understanding for a character needed for the performance to make sense over time as we learn more about them.
Just my 2c, but IMO this is where most of the problems with dubs come from, and why they wind up sounding either generic or campy.
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To me, dubs make the characters feel out of place.
If I’m watching an English show, I assume the characters speak English. Same reasoning can be applied with Anime.
It’s just distracting to me when there’s a language mismatch. I would rather read subtitles on a screen, but have the ‘correct’ audio, than having characters speak a language they shouldn’t.
This has to be sampling bias or something; most classic dubs sucked.
Or it’s just nostalgia. MS Gundam Wing, Trigun, YuYu, DBZ, Tenchi, Bebop, all those Toonami era shows feel right dubbed. Tho watching stuff like DB Super I prefer the sub now.
As bad as the translation and other changes in Pokémon were, the voice acting was great (English and German dubs)
rewatch and compare closed captioned (Japanese with Japanese text). Then localized on your own, and review how Toonami butchered a LOT.
whole ass episodes they omitted.Yeah, the ones that made it to TV in the late 90s and early 00s had mid to decent dubs. But anything else was localized as cheaply as possible. There’s some gems in there, but mostly the dubs sucked until business realized how deep the market was. Evangelion is a good example. Great show, but it was clear when it was brought over they thought they were doing some cartoon and not a generational existential crisis.
It’s all in Tuna’s title:
Classic dubs seemed so much better. Now most dubs seem unwatchable
Anchoring to nostalgia is one hell of a bias.
I don’t watch dubs so can’t know for certain, but I can’t imagine newer ones are worse than the horrific cringe that made me decide to not watch dubs in the first place.
Pretty much the opposite for me. The older the dub, the cringier it tends to be.
Subs or dubs? Doesn’t matter, I finish the series and then go read the original manga because I’m impatient
You can’t truly experience a show until you’ve read it in its original Klingon.
ノーゲーム・ノーライフが好きから，日本語を勉強した まだノーゲーム・ノーライフのライトノベル読むことができないんけど，ウィーブーになった
