things in anime you get sick of seeing

I'm interested to know why people see English dubs as 'terrible' specifically. Sure, you can have personal preference against dubs, and prefer subs, but to say that they're terrible is kind of a different kettle of fish.

I'd argue that unlike the Manga dubs of the early 90s, that were actually awful, there's a lot of really high quality dubs being put out there now - after all, the people doing them are professional voice actors. They wouldn't be in the business/getting paid if they were crap.

So where does it stem from?

Dislike of American accents vs. original Japanese voices?

The phrasing and words used?

The actual performance quality (eg. empathy and enthusiasm put in)

Something else?

Yes, there's a lot of average dubs out there - usually on stuff like harem shows. But equally, you can watch something like Spice & Wolf, which is pretty much a two-person radio play and I'd argue it's of an exceptionally high quality.

Just my opinion - but as someone who loves English dubs, I just want to understand the mindset of people that are very anti-dub a bit more.
 
I'm confused, doesn't a dub use the same translation as appears in the sub? So if something has been given subtitles there should be no barrier to it being dubbed?
 
Not if you're a native English speaker, but i'm not. And that fact is why i don't like dubs that much, so for me it's a geographical issue :)
 
The thing is that people watch them on the net when they come out and they get used to the subs and after seeing the English dub they just hate it.

And that's it.

To be Honest I can understand that after watching garden of sinners I don't think they can do a good job of dubbing it because the sub is so good....so I get it
 
It was silly of me to use the word 'terrible', I should have re-read what I wrote before posting. As Lutga said, some of the 90s dubs could be called terrible but modern ones tend to be of a decent quality.
It's not because the accent is American, I would have the same reaction to a British voice, it's just because it's so out of place. Lets take this Good Luck Girl trailer as an example. The American voice actress does a perfectly passable job, but a teenage Japanese schoolgirl with an adult American woman's voice? No. Wrong, wrong, wrong! I just cannot stand it, I have the same reaction to that as I do to nails down a blackboard, it genuinely makes me cringe. If the anime was actually set in America with American characters then I would have no problem, but it's not.
And I'm not saying that the original Japanese dub is necessarily perfect or superior in any way, when a foreigner turns up in most anime you usually end up with some 'engrish' which makes me cringe just as much. I just prefer everyone to sound as they actually should. That's probably why I like the english dub for Cowboy Bebop, the characters have no story-defined accent or nationality, so you can use whatever you want.
 
BanzaiJedi said:
It was silly of me to use the word 'terrible', I should have re-read what I wrote before posting. As Lutga said, some of the 90s dubs could be called terrible but modern ones tend to be of a decent quality.
It's not because the accent is American, I would have the same reaction to a British voice, it's just because it's so out of place. Lets take this Good Luck Girl trailer as an example. The American voice actress does a perfectly passable job, but a teenage Japanese schoolgirl with an adult American woman's voice? No. Wrong, wrong, wrong! I just cannot stand it, I have the same reaction to that as I do to nails down a blackboard, it genuinely makes me cringe. If the anime was actually set in America with American characters then I would have no problem, but it's not.
And I'm not saying that the original Japanese dub is necessarily perfect or superior in any way, when a foreigner turns up in most anime you usually end up with some 'engrish' which makes me cringe just as much. I just prefer everyone to sound as they actually should. That's probably why I like the english dub for Cowboy Bebop, the characters have no story-defined accent or nationality, so you can use whatever you want.
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I totally get that 100%.

If you watch genshiken second generation they actually have a American in the show but they aren't American but a Japanese girl that tries to sound American.......It's true...those of you who haven't seen genshiken second generation go watch it.......It's like you said.....not even the Japanese does a good job if dubbing
 
animefreak17 said:
The thing is that people watch them on the net when they come out and they get used to the subs and after seeing the English dub they just hate it.

And that's it.
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Yes that explains my anecdote about the VHS era (it doesn't) :p

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I'm not 100% sure why I can't stand the acting in dubs. I used to think it was that the actors weren't very good compared to the skilled actors who do voice work in US cartoons (do they pay more?) but I actually think it's something to do with the scripting, casting and direction in general, because sometimes a dub actor escapes the anime world and I realise they're actually a talented person in their own right. The acid test is that if I close my eyes when listening to an anime dub of a title I don't even know, I still hate the dub. It doesn't sound like pleasant, natural dialogue to me even when I detach myself from my preconceptions, and sometimes it isn't even clearly spoken so I struggle to pick some parts up.

The worst part is the consistency. To use an example, I spent about 300 hours playing the US version of the Samurai Heroes game because I wanted to support it and I was excited my partner would be able to understand the plot (I think this is enough of a sample size to say I gave the dub a fair try beyond all reasonable doubt). Some characters were blatantly miscast, some were so-bad-it's-actually-kinda-good-somehow, and others made my toes curl in all of the wrong ways. A couple of the actors were really well cast and did a fantastic job, but their work was ruined by having to hear all of the weak performances in between their lines. Some people couldn't pronounce their friends' names the same way twice, others couldn't pronounce their own names; it turned a melodramatic feast for the ears into a cheap gag series. And in saying that I feel bad for the three or four decent performers in that cast who legitimately tried hard.

On the flip side, the Japanese version is full of top tier veteran voice actors whose performances are so polished that I readily pay hundreds (ok, thousands) of pounds to collect CDs of them talking at me. I travel overseas and pay a small fortune to sit in a room and have them talk in my presence. I cannot imagine paying money for a talk CD from a dub cast. I don't even listen to their commentaries on DVDs I already paid for. Sorry. There is one exception and that's Mary Elizabeth McGlynn; I don't have any interest in her dub work but she has a stunning voice on the Silent Hill soundtrack and it's nice to hear her being able to use it that way.

In principle, and as an overall rule, I prefer the original language for all foreign material. The mannerisms and subtleties in the choice of words are lost in a translation, no matter how good, and I'm sad enough to try to pick up on every intricate detail. I feel a little cheated when I have to read a heavily localised English-language manga too even though stilted manga translations are terrible in a different way - trying to guess what the original jokes and wordplay might have been is distracting.

Still, I am glad dubs exist as they have an audience. I don't like it when the dub fans pressure companies about dubs not being made since I don't think it's widely understood how ridiculously expensive they are to produce. In an ideal world, everything would be available in a wide range of languages so everyone could watch as much as possible without having to compromise on what they enjoy.

R
 
My main dislike of dubs is that I can't stand most of the accents that anime voice actors seem to have. A lot of them sound far too fake compared to say, a US TV actor's voice. As Rui said, they often don't sound like pleasant, natural dialogue.

I also think it's weird to have Japanese characters in Japan speaking English. I think this is why the dubs I do like (Tiger and Bunny, FMA, for example) are all from shows which aren't set in Japan, and why if I ever have the money to, I'm going to finance a British English dub of Victorian Romance Emma. I loved that show to bits, but hearing Victorian English people speaking Japanese did take away a significant amount of the enjoyment for me.

I also agree with Rui about no matter how hard you try, you will always lose something in translation. Yes, that applies to subtitles too, but less so than with a dub, where you have to adapt the script to match the mouthflaps.

I can also read quickly, so I can read a subtitle before it's off the screen. I never have trouble keeping up, so that doesn't affect my enjoyment. We shall see if I can manage Tatami Galaxy.
 
While I can understand that it's weird to have characters in Japan with western accents, most anime characters look caucasian to me so I've never really questioned the accent.
 
Anime characters just look like anime characters to me. I've never really thought about them looking like a particular race, but when the setting is quite obviously meant to be Japanese high schoolers, in Japan, for example that trumps looks for me. They might look vaguely Caucasian, but they're obviously meant to be Japanese people in Japan, so to hear them speaking American English with ridiculously over the top accents is just kinda meh to me...
 
I had to use this as an excuse to post this - quite possibly one of the single worst/funniest examples of an English dub ever:

 
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I've never understood the view that anime characters look Caucasian in some way - it's extremely common so I'm not trying to get at you specifically, Unit-00 :)

To me, they generally have Japanese names and (originally) speak in Japanese, so I default to assuming they're all Japanese unless there's an obvious indication of their race in the show or the series is set somewhere other than Japan. Their mannerisms tend to be quite Japanese too even though some characters play this up more than others. I don't think they look Caucasian at all but I think people tend to default to what they expect to see, to some extent?

(That Violence Jack dub clip...)

R
 
I suppose that the typical anime face doesn't actually have a great amount of detail so it's easy for your mind to automatically fill in the blanks.

Given the improbability of a lot of anime plot lines, getting hung up on exactly what the cast should look and sound like seems pointless. In my mind, nothing is really set in our Japan, it's more of an 'alternate reality' Japan. After you've accepted that then anything goes.

That clip is hilarious though. While I tend to gravitate towards dubs I'd happily switch to sub if things got that bad!
 
Lutga said:
I had to use this as an excuse to post this - quite possibly one of the single worst/funniest examples of an English dub ever:

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LMAO. think I'm gonna have to import Voilence Jack from the U.S. after seeing that. OMG this is one of the things that actually got me into anime... Cartoons with swearing.
 
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Some voice actors make a dub terrible. Ikki Tousen Season Two, Tokko and Reqiuem From The Darkness being examples I can think of. There's a harem one or two thats ridiculous.

I love dubs because thats how I was introduced. Watching anime with dubs feels more fluid for me plus I'm a fan of a lot of the voice actors which helps. I don't dislike subs but I can't see my enjoying it more because of the existing fluid-ness with dubs and I bet it's like that but the other way around for those who prefer subs too?
 
Great topic! I haven't been here in a while but my dislikes are still the same. Others will disagree I'm sure but these are my main gripes:

Moe: This 'lovely' aesthetic runs through the majority of anime these days and I especially dislike when a character is drawn not looking remotely like their age. This aspect alone has put me off recent trends (Let's just say since roughly 2005) of depicting characters as mostly eyes and pretty much nothing else.

Unexpected fanservice: I may be enjoying an anime when suddenly the camera takes on a male gaze and zooms in to parts of the female anatomy. This may be suited to anime which clearly is denoted as harem or is obviously pandering.

Voice Acting: High-pitched voices (Japanese and dub). Again, this may be tied to the above two.

Lack of mature anime: No, not hentai! I guess I wish anime was more like Perfect Blue and less like Lucky Star. Anime is generally seen to be immature and I wish this was not the case. This is because the anime industry (like the game industry) need to appeal their fans who have grown up in the last 10-15 years and now have the disposable income/purchase power. Unfortunately, school anime settings seem to dominate anime as a whole as well as a severe lack of adult characters (especially women).

...I think that's all for now.
 
^ I know right

I mean come on there is loads of anime that have fantastic storys without that moe crap and crappy high school

Fate zero
Death note
Monster
Moribito
Garden of sinners
FMA......brotherhood did a bit of moe
When they cry......yes yes I know this takes place in school and it has moe BUT!!!!!!! At the very least it had mystery and dark moments and it may look light and fluffy but it just hate to the caught you off guard thing.

I like a moe show when I'm depressed and I need something to cheer me up but Jesus Christ give us a story instead of bloody moe school friends talking about nothing.

Fan services anime is also a big no when it comes to anime.... I mean yes if it's a ecchi show but don't put it in a anime that has a good story.......

So yeah I agree
 
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