Superlative Dubbing / Spanish Dubs

Note: there are two kinds of Spanish dubs. Latin America dubs or LatAm Dubs (Which uses Neutral Spanish) and Spaniards dubs (Which uses Spaniard Spanish). They usually are very different, and they can generate a lot of angst between fans of one or the other.

Anime & Manga

• In general, any LatAm dub produced by Cloverway Inc (Toei's former subsidiary in the Americas from 1991 to 2007) are considered to be of excellent quality, as they remain faithful to the original script, have little or no censorship, and have great voice acting with a cast made up mostly of legends of the dubbing industry. It is not unreasonable to affirm that Cloverway and its dubs were the triggers for the anime boom in Latin America during the 90s. In fact, several of the examples cited on this page are Cloverway dubs.
• All Studio Ghibli films. Since Buenavista (aka Disney) took care of the distribution of their films and, as mentioned in the Animation Film folder, they have an incredible localization team for both territories, the Spanish dubs of Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, etc., are nothing else but spectacular.
• Despite its inconsistences and frequent changes of voice actors through the franchise, the European Spanish dub of Neon Genesis Evangelion is seen as one of the best anime dubbings ever on the peninsula. Most of the success is due to Shinji's voice actor, Albert Trifol Segarra, who even dub haters were forced to acknowledge as deeply superior to the original seiyu Megumi Ogata.
• A special case with the European Spanish dub of Attack on Titan. The dub is not perfect by any means, since some secondary characters are quite lackluster. However, the overall quality is actually pretty damn good. What makes it noteworthy is that the anime was release in Spain just five months after the anime was finished in Japan. That's a goddamn record! Even more surprising is the fact that many of the cast members aren't very experienced, but still managed to deliver a really good performance. Special mention to Laura Prats, Mikasa's Spaniard voice actress. This anime was her voice acting debut and she nailed the character perfectly, to the point that some fans prefer her over Yui Ishikawa!. Unfortunately, Prats wasn't able to keep the role as the franchise expanded due to conflicting schedules. It's a testament to her performance that fans were appalled by this even though her replacement was no less than Graciela Molina, one of the best voice actresses in Spain, who's loved by the anime community.
• Almost no important dubs were made in Argentina, save for one: Serial Experiments Lain LatAm dub is nothing but a master piece, to say the least. Not only did it translate perfectly the content of the original Japanese series, but it also expended it! Besides, the voices were perfectly choosen.
  • The Spaniard dub of SEL, while not as impressive (YMMV), it's also exceptional and very well done. Assumpta Navascués's voice as Lain is just chilling.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica is another example of a really good Spaniard dub. Albeit not perfect, since Kyubey and Kyouko are quite lackluster (and even then, they were fixed in "Rebellion" by casting stars Marta Barbarà and Graciela Molina, respectively), Carmen Ambrós as Madoka, Ariadna Jiménez as Homura, and very specially, Carme Calvell as Sayaka, offered all solid performances. There are certain scenes where they arguably even surpass the original Japanese (Sayaka's major Tear Jerker moment towards the end of Episode 7 would be a perfect example. Which is an outstanding feat on Calvell's part, considering how genuinely heartbreaking Eri Kitamura's performance is in that scene!).
• The Spanish Latin American dub of Yu-Gi-Oh! couldn't not be described as anything but awesome. In particular one could say that they can't see this anime in English or Japanese, simply because they saw the LatAm Dub and associate everything with it.
  • It says something that Yu-Gi-Oh!'s official YouTube channel uploaded the Latin American Spanish dub of the first episode in its entirety in all its glory (the channel also has other language dubs of the first episode).
  • Even LittleKuriboh included parts of the LatAm Dub in his Abridged Series.
• Yu-Gi-Oh! was not the only series to be saved by the LatAm dubs from the clutches of 4Kids. The Spanish dub for Shaman King was not only uncut, the portrayal of the characters are also spot on. It's not surprising therefore why so many fans end up watching their episodes en español due to the 4Kids Cut and Paste English dub (even if it faced less cuts than One Piece and Yu-Gi-Oh!) and the So Okay, It's Average Japanese original.
• Until the fourth entry (which was not awful, but not really popular), Digimon got excellent LatAm dubs, particularly for the first ^note  save from some goofy voices and third seasons. The series was translated from the original Japanese version and not the American Dub (thing that not always happens), so the script were intact and so where the openings.
  • In mainland Spain, the Digimon franchise has been synonym with excellence both in dubbing and translation. It got rid of any censure or cultural changes from the American version and employed a cast which hardly could be replaced by a better one for the work, and the result was worthy of it. The voice actors were all pretty charismatic and knew how to play several characters at once, the dialogue was surprisingly mature, and the original Japanese soundtrack was left intact or well played. The only exceptions in the franchise are Data Squad, which was seen as good but less inspired than the rest mainly because of a lower budget, and Fusion, which was handled by a different dubbing company and suffered from Executive Meddling to left and right (for example, it was directed by a team without any experience with anime, and they were told to respect the American version to the letter).
• LatAm dub managed to pick up an obscure series full off untranslatable-puns like Dotto! Koni-chan and turn it into a cult classic for Spanish speakers. Since there is no way to translate the puns, the series was chock-full Woolseyism, making the plot 50% Woolseyism and 50% Quirky Work.
  • On a weird subversion, most of the Spanish Dub puns are untranslatable to English as well. So there is no way in which not-Spanish-speakers can fully understand this awesome Dub.
• Despite the sheer improbable of the case, the European Spanish of Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo is considered one of the best anime dubs in Spanish in both sides of the Atlantic, especially in mainland Spain. It's not only due to the charisma and adequacy of the voice actors chosen for the work, but also because it made clear that the dub team had a hell of a time while working on it, and it paid off for the final product in a glowing positive way.
• In Spain, Bleach is one of the top examples of a Superlative Dubbing unfairly brought down by sheer Fan Dumb. The series had some of the best voice actors in Spain that truly nailed almost every single character. The script translation was also amazing. However, fans in Spain still didn't pay not even the slightless attention to it. Hence, they stopped dubbing the series at episode 108.
• A similar case was the Spaniard dubbing of Naruto. It was controversial and divisive, as the translation (just like Dragon Ball at his time) was very irregular and it changed several times with varying grades of success, but the voice actors themselves were impeccable and many of them were noted to put very inspired and fresh performances compared to their usual work. However, the fan response was tepid, many of them just because they preferred the original version without thinking very much, and the series dub was put in hiatus in 2010. There are plans to continue dubbing Shippuden, but it is not know when it will be.
• The Slam Dunk Latin American Spanish dub (made in Mexico) is brilliant. Special mention goes to René García as Sakuragi, Cristina Hernández as Haruko, Salvador Delgado as Sendoh, and Jorge Palafox as Mitsui.
• The Cardcaptor Sakura LatAm dub was widely recognized at the time as one of the best anime dubs in history. The dub respected all dialog, didn't have censorship unlike the English one, and have a great voice casting that didn't change during the series. Cristina Hernández was an adorable Sakura, Enzo Fortuny played a pretty good Yukito and Alfredo Leal as Eriol sounds much less forced than Nozomu Sasaki's.
  • The Spanish dub is one of the jewels of yore done by the company Arait Multimedia. Isabel Gaudí's work as Sakura is considered legendary, which only made even sadder that Gaudí retired from voice acting in order to move to live action. In fact, the main reason the dubbing of Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- is much less liked despite having almost all the same voices is precisely that the Sakura's voice actress (which coincidentally was another seiyu in the original Japanese as well) had to be replaced.
  • The Catalan dub is also very good. Marta Ullod, while a tad annoying at the high notes, is very good. The highlight of the dub is Kero, who sounds absolutely adorable!
• Lequinni: The Latin (Chilean) Spanish dub of You're Under Arrest! is one of the few times where the translated opening themes were so similar to the original songs and sounded even better than them. And the acting was very good too.
• In Spain Rurouni Kenshin stands as a weird example of this trope. The translation and adaptation of the script had A LOT of mistakes, partly because it was translated from the first English dubbing (aka, "the bad one"), keeping all the mistakes from it, like the character names (Kenshi instead of Kenshin, Kori instead of Kaoru and Yoshi instead of Yahiko). Some dialoges were completely different form what they were supposed to be (from time to time, Kenshin talks about KILLING the villains), the Kyoto arc takes place in Edo (¿?) and some lines were totaly anti-climatic or right straight stupid ("¡Basta, basta, basta, basta!"). But on the other hand, the voice actors work were, for the most part, spectacular. Nacho de Porrata is arguably a way better Kenshin than Mayo Suzukaze (even though his lines are more aggressive), Carmen Ambrós nails Kaoru, Sanosuke in Spanish just feels wrong without Mark Ullod's voice, Alfonso García Zambrano pulled off one hell of a Shishio, and so on. It's one of the few Spanish anime dubbings that not only really reproduce the infamous "emotion bursts" and "cool yellings" that Japanese voice actings are so famous for, but also surpass them in many scenes.
• Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball GT That one anime that has become a cult classic almost in the whole entire world, specially in Latin America to the extend of Saint Seiya in Brazil. Its is often praised for having perfect dubbings for Goku, Piccolo, Vegeta, and everyone else doing great. It also was translated from the original Japanese version, so it didn't have censorship, which in turn led to the meme of "Latino kids watching crowds chant 'SA-TAN!'", as the dub kept Mr. Hercule's original name "Mr. Satan" intact. Sadly averted in Dragon Ball Z Kai, where the aforementioned characters had their voices changed for the worse as well as being based on the censored version that Funimation made for Nicktoons (to the point most of the original voices were brought back for The Final Chapters and have no censorship).
  • The Dragon Ball dub is so iconic in Latin America, that most of the Dragonball Evolution copies distributed in cinemas were the dubbed ones, just because of Mario Castañeda and Carlos Segundo (Goku and Picollo, respectively) reprising their roles by public demand (their voices weren't in the first dubbed trailer). In fact, it's pretty much the only reason why most people went to see the movie. Also, a meme usually found in Latin American forums has an image of Goku followed by this phrase: "Hi, I'm Goku! And you are reading this with my voice!", as Castañeda as Goku presented the On the Next montage for each episode with "Hi, I'm Goku!" (Castañeda's Twitter bio even reads, "Hi, I'm Goku! Well, I'm the dubbing actor who has dubbed many characters, including Goku...").
• The European Spanish dub of Elfen Lied is damn fine, especially considering that Spaniard dubs, due to their accent, are quite unpopular in Latin America. Hear Lucy when she's busy gouging out Bando's eyes: "¿La pasas bien?... Bah, me aburres".
• Although the dub of Burst Angel is sometimes weak, it has some jewels like giving Jo a little bit of Cluster F-Bomb:
  • In the Spanish dub: "Fuck dammit, if you say one more fucking word I'll kill you!" ("¡Chingada madre, si dices una sola pinche palabra más te mato!").
• The Latin American dub of Sailor Moon is one of the most greatest and iconic dubs and made the series one of the main anime references in Latin America. Despite the name change of most of the characters, the dubbing remained true to the original Japanese script, all the seasons were dubbed without cutting any episode or scene (with the exception of episode 89, but taking into account that this is a non-canonical special that only collects scenes from the previous seasons was not a big omission), there was no change in the plot and the characters retained their original personalities. Add to that the fact that the dub kept the same five main voice actresses (Patricia Acevedo, Rossy Aguirre, Mónica Manjarrez, Araceli de León and María Fernanda Morales) throughout the all series, and they all did a great job voicing their characters. Also since the dub became directed by Patricia Acevedo from season S, all the new characters kept their original names. All this makes the Latin Spanish dub look comparatively much superior to the English dub, despite the fact that both were made during the same time.
  • The voice cast is so iconic that most of them returned for the Sailor Moon Crystal dub.
• The Latin American dub of Saint Seiya. The dub that made the late-Jesus Barrero (Seiya), Rene Garcia (Hyoga), Jose Vilchis (Shun) into dubbing legends. Need I say more? Says a lot that they kept bringing back the whole cast for every possible project, including local translations of video games.
  • The first Spaniard dub of the original series is not particularly remembered (it wasn't bad, but it wasn't as good as other anime dubs, even at its time). Dubs of more recent arcs and re-dubs, on the other hand, are top-notch.
• The Latin American dub of Ranma ½ is really good, with Carlos Hugo Hidalgo and Irma Carmona doing a great job voicing male and female Ranma, and Rossy Aguirre giving Akane Tendo a cute but temperamental voice. Also this dub dubbed all 161 episodes and uncensored (the censorship was applied later by TV stations). Special mention to José Antonio Macías as Mousse, who gives him a really funny voice.
• The European Spanish dub of xxxHOLiC is sadly unknown among anime fans, but most of the people who had seen it agrees it is one of the best anime dubs of all time in Spain, possibly even better than the original on its entirety (!). Unfortunately, the distributor company which dubbed the series folded after just one more licensing, and its voice actors (with some one-time exceptions) were never used again in any other medium.
• The Inuyasha Latin American dub is impeccable, with Enzo Fortuny as Inuyasha being very, very funny.
  • There's a reason why Sesshoumaru is considered as Alfredo Gabriel Basurto's Star-Making Role. He's perfect for the it.
• One Piece got dubbed in Latin-America only until the Alabasta arc and the 4Kids dub was its base. The VA's, on the other hand, are mostly exempt from criticism since they did they work as well as they could. Special mention goes to Alfredo Basurto's Zoro and Georgina Sánchez's Nami.
• The Spanish dub of Bannertail: The Adventures of Gray Squirrel really shows how emotional the characters go through.
• The Spanish dub of the 1986 series Maple Town (known as La aldea del Arce) is very decent. The Spanish voice actors put more life and emotion into their performances. This is especially true with Patty Rabbit, whose Spanish voice actor gives more emotion and life to the character, along with making her cuter and sweeter.
• The European Spanish dub of Pokémon: The Series qualifies for the simple fact that it's one of the very few dubs of Pokémon, apart from the Japanese original, where the main cast hasn't undergone The Other Darrin at any point. Considering that as of this writing the series has been on air for more than ten years and over a thousand episodes, it shows a truly staggering amount of dedication. The voices of Adolfo Moreno (Ash), Amparo Valencia (Jessie, also the dub's director), Iván Jara (James), and José Escobosa (Meowth) have consistently been around since their characters' debuts and are considered absolute classics. The only time they've been replaced is for the dubs of Pokémon 3 and Pokémon: Mewtwo Returns, and even then it's only because they were handled by a completely different crew for unknown reasons.
• Konosuba in its Latin American dub. Aqua's voice actress (Nycolle González) can go on par with Sora Amamiya in hysterics and hilarity, Megumin and Yunyun (Wendy Málvarez and Alondra Hidalgo, respectively) sound even more childish and disgustingly adorable than in Japanese, and Darkness (Mireya Mendoza) just sounds even more perverted (and rougher) in Spanish.
• The Latin American dub of High Score Girl has been highly praised as superior to the So Okay, It's Average English dub by the anime community thanks to the combination of a good cast, excellent voice direction and some Woolseyisms sprinkled here and there, while there are some translation mistakes, they are barely noticeable thanks to the excellent performances of Diego Becerril (Haruo) and Jessica Angeles (Hodoka) plus the funny-as-hell performance of Irwin Daayán as Camp Straight Bishie Sparkles Doi.
• The Spanish dubs for all animated projects starring the Osamu Tezuka character Unico, which is notably decent and has a unique charm to them. The voice acting for the characters are actually on par with the original Japanese version and English dub. Notably Verónica Castro's performance as Unico during emotional moments in The Fantastic Adventures of Unico and Unico in the Island of Magic. Helena Rojo also does a decent performance as Unico for the Spanish dub of Unico: Black Cloud White Feather and Aracely Arámbula for the 2000 animated short Saving Our Fragile Earth: Unico Special.
• It's a general consensus that the LatAm dub of Sword Art Online is excellent. Special mention to Luis Leonardo Suárez, who is generally agreed that he gives a lot more of personality to Kirito than in the original Japanese (which, considering how much of a Base-Breaking Character he is, says a lot).

Films — Animation

• The Disney Animated Canon. ALL OF IT. Both in Spaniard Spanish and Latin America Spanish. Here we have some highlight examples:
  • First, the songs. They are usually so well adapted that, if a Disney song was a hit in the United States, you can bet your ass the localized Spanish versions were too.
    • The apex of this can be considered the Latin American dub of Hercules — where Megara was dubbed by famous Mexican singer Tatiana, and Hercules by Ricky Martin.
  • In the Latin American dub of The Little Mermaid (1989), Ursula is voiced by Serena Olvido - a drag queen. There's something about Olvido's deep, just-feminine enough voice that could not be a more perfect fit for the Sea Witch. Well, that, and the fact that Ursula's design was literally based off a drag queen.
  • The original Latin American dub of Sleeping Beauty, man, that's such a masterful work of art! Rosario Munoz Ledo's performance as Maleficent is especially amazing. Just watch this clip! Supposedly Walt Disney himself was a fan of this dub, it's often considered to be superior to the original English version, and it's thought to be a great achievement in Latin American dubbing. Unfortunately, it was "replaced" in 2001 with an all new dub (due to Lupita Pérez Arias' lawsuit) with very boring and underwhelming voice acting. To this day, fans are still on Disney LA's heels about giving the original 1959 dub a DVD release.
  • Beauty and the Beast was a landmark, since it was the first movie in the canon which had a proper Spaniard Spanish dub. Before that, all the Disney movies and shows only had the Latin American dub, which was used in Spain as well. Disney decided to expand its Spanish localization team to make Spaniard dubs and this movie was the first showcase. And the results were amazing! The film got some of the best voice actors of the country, the translations were top notch, and the songs are still sung up to this day.
  • In Spain, even critics of dubbing bow before the much missed Constantino Romero, who gave his voice to Mufasa in The Lion King (1994). The rest of the cast weren't slouch at all either. Many people consider the Spaniard version even superior to the original.
  • Romero was also highly praised for his performance as Judge Frollo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, where he dubbed a song for the first time in his extended career (Romero himself considered this one of his favorite works). Latin America doesn't stays behind, to be fair it is need a great voice to sing this, no matter the language.
  • Between the mid 90's and early 2000's, most dubs of the Disney classics, some Pixar films and other live-action features were mixed with professionals from both Barcelona and Madrid having roles in them. Barcelona stablished professionals like Joaquín Díaz (Amphytryon, Fa Zhou, the King of Atlantis), Juan Carlos Gustems (Clayton) or Josep María Ullod (Kerchak, Gantu); and Madrid professionals such as Claudio Rodríguez (Zeus), Matilde Conesa (the Matchmaker from Mulan) or Rafael de Penagos (the Emperor of China, Mr. Whitmore) could be heard together in one single film.
  • Since Phil Collins did most of the translation of his songs in Tarzan, different versions tend to sound the same, yet Woolseyism keeps the flux of the song going. Interestingly enough, even though the lyrics are the same for both Spain and Latin America (normally there are some differences), Collins went out of his way to record the two versions anyway and, with the help of a speech coach, try to imitate the usual pronunciation of both territories as best as he could (for example, the sound of the letter "C").
  • The Latin American dub of Toy Story was so good that John Lasseter himself sent a letter congratulating the team behind the dubbing.[1]
  • The Spaniard dub of Wreck-It Ralph was seen by most of people as PURE AWESOME, especially the voice of Vanellope, done by the known yet never really noteworthy Sandra Jara.
  • The Latin American version is pretty good, too. The use of Maria Antonieta De Las Nieves ("Chilindina" from El Chavo del ocho) for Vanellope's voice gives her a perfect combination of annoying, adorable and emotionally hurt vocal range.
  • The Spanish-language dub of Coco was done in Mexican Spanish by Mexican actors, for the very obvious reason that the film is set in Mexico and based entirely on Mexican traditions. Mexican audiences absolutely loved the film, and Mexicans who speak English (who for obvious reasons are many) and have seen both versions frequently say it's better in the original Spanish. (And frankly, even non-Spanish speakers have noted that it might have been better to use Spanish for the songs even if the dialogue was in English.)
• The Latin American dub of Cats Don't Dance. In particular the songs. I don't know what it is about Latin dubs—as I've heard a lot of very talented Latin American singers—but it's just rare to find a dub with the singing on the same level as the original. Observe.
• Both (Latin American and Spaniard) Spanish versions of The Brave Little Toaster are equally well done, especially the Spaniard Spanish dub.
• The Latin American dub of Shrek is absolutely HILARIOUS. Mexican comedian Eugenio Derbez providing the voice of Donkey is the highlight of the film to most. The Muffin Man exchange between Lord Farquaad and the Gingerbread Man was also translated SUPERBLY, quoting a Spanish-language nursery rhyme (Pin Pon) with the exact same pace and comical payoff as the original.

Films — Live-Action

• The Back to the Future trilogy Spaniard dub. Although the translation had some mistakes, like the name of the Flux Capacitor, it made up for them with some brilliant examples of Woolseyism, like the translations of Marty and Doc's Catch Phrases ("¡Qué fuerte!" for "This is heavy!" and "¡Santo cielo!" for "Great Scott!"), which have full Memetic Mutation status in Spain, even to this day. But what made the dub work the most was the outstanding performances of Jordi Pons as Marty and Luis Posada Mendoza as Doc. The rest of the cast were also unforgettable.
• The Spaniard dub of Braveheart. Luis Bajo served as The Other Darrin for Salvador Vidal, who was not available at the time, to voice Mel Gibson as William Wallace, but the role made Luis Bajo a prominent figure in the Spanish dub and making Wallace's powerful speeches about freedom as good as Gibson. Vidal continued to voice Mel Gibson in posterior films with excellent results, though Luis Bajo is still thought to be one of the best actors that had voiced Mel Gibson.
• The Spanish translation of the 1990 film adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac starring Gérard Depardieu was widely acclaimed for respecting the Alexandrine verse of the play. Even Jean-Paul Rappeneau, director of the film, was aware of and approved it. The translation was in charge of Camilo García, who directed the dub and voiced Cyrano (Depardieu), as he is a true fan of the play and was really excited to take the task of adapting it. Also, the excellent job of the rest of the cast (including Camilo García himself, Luis Posada as Christian and Nuria Mediavilla as Roxane) makes this verse spoken dub delicious to listen.
• The Hangover in Latin American Spanish, in all the trilogy. The voice acting is superb, with every one involved in its making sounding like they definitively love what they are dubbing, and improvising in such a way that it doesn't sound out of place from its original language, nor out of place for four guys that get thrown into this situation. The acting also fits quite well to each of the actors that are in the action.
• The dub of L.A. Confidential in Spain is one of veteran dubbing director José Luis Angulo's key pieces. Javier Dotú in his first time as Kevin Spacey, Luis Bajo as Russell Crowe (like with Mel Gibson, he wouldn't voice him again as Crowe became a star with Gladiator and Jordi Boixaderas was the preferred choice after that), Claudio Rodríguez as James Cromwell and the late Jon Crespo as Guy Pearce among others made fine vocal performances for one of 1997's most acclaimed films.
• The LatAm dub of the Spider-Man Trilogy movies has not only the virtue of having amazing voice actors (most feel that the voices of Spidey, MJ and Harry improve over the original performances), but also the bonus of using them for the dubbing of both Spider-Man: The New Animated Series and The Spectacular Spider-Man, giving the three movies and both animated series a sort of continuity missing in the originals.
  • Salvador Vidal voicing Norman Osborn in his villainous persona Green Goblin in the Spaniard dub has been widely praised for being a great example of Playing Against Type. Vidal uses a raspy and high pitched voice for Spider-Man's nemesis in contrast to his usual deep and suave smooth voice.
• The original Star Wars trilogy is considered to have one of the most memorable Spaniard dubs ever. Its cast got an entire generation of awesome voice actors in their prime, like Salvador Vidal for Luke, Camilo García for Han, Maria Luisa Solá for Leia, Luis Posada for Obi-Wan, etc, etc. And of course, Constantino Romero for Darth Vader, who made the Dark Lord of the Sith just as memorable in Spanish as James Earl Jones made him in English (maybe even more, since while Jones was a little bit off sometimes in Episode IV, Romero was spectacular throughout all three movies, and it is said that Jones himself praised him for his work).
  • The Mexican Spanish dub of the Original Trilogy's Special Editions is no slouch either, with memorable performances coming from the late Jesús Barrero as Luke Skywalker, Gerardo Reyero as Han Solo, Carlos del Campo as C-3PO and Federico Romano as Darth Vader.
  • The Mexican Spanish dub of the Prequel Trilogy is considered to be vastly superior to their original language with Irwin Daayán as Anakin and Mario Filio as Obi-Wan giving more emotional performances than in the original English performances. Because of this, the prequel trilogy doesn't have the same negative reputation than in the United States or the U.K.
• Woody Allen loves Joan Pera, the voice actor who dubs him in Spain to the point that Allen said in an interview that he "makes a better Woody Allen than himself". Allen even wrote a small role just for him in Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
• The Latin-American Spanish dub for Con Air is incredibly fun to watch. This is a textbook example of how a very good dub can turn a very cheesy movie into something worth watching, since most of the voice cast are well known veterans in voice acting there (including Salvador Delgado as Poe, Humberto Solórzano as Cyrus and the late Jesús Barrero as Larkin).
• Many Americans found Annie (2014) to be much better in the Castilian dub of the movie because of the lack of auto-tune used in that dub.
• Technically not a dub in the strict sense of the word but the equivalent back then, as it was technologically impossible to dub in the 30s the studios often filmed several movies in different languages using the same scenarios. In the case of Dracula (1931) the Spanish version is often considered the superior version. One reason for this is that they filmed the scenes right after the English crew finished and said to themselves: "we can do better".
• Similar to the case above Laurel and Hardy actually re-filmed most of their shorts in different languages most commonly Spanish, French and German. Although quality was similar lots of fans of those respective languages found heartwarming that they went for the trouble to do it making the shorts particularly beloved.

Live Action TV

• Fur TV is a beloved cult classic in Latin America thanks to its dub, which has fun voice acting and hilarious moments. In fact, are more videos in LatAm Spanish in YouTube than videos in English about the show.
• Spain is not only famous for good voice acting in animation, but in live action as well. Take for example House. The voice acting and translations are almost always between "pretty damn good" and "spectacular". The best example is House's voice actor, Luis Pórcar. He's so good that most dubbing haters don't even dare to speak bad about his performance. And those who do, are incapable of finding a good argument beyond the fact that Pórcar's voice doesn't sound quite like Hugh Laurie's.
  • The LA-Spanish dub from México was pretty decent, too. Salvador Delgado has quite the talent at portraying snarkers, and it shows.
• Another Spaniard example was Friends. All the voice actors for the central six characters were perfectly casted, and a lot of people prefer them to the original, even among many OV purists.
• The LA Spanish dub for The X-Files is quite iconic to these days, thanks to Alfonso Obregón's Fox Mulder and Gisela Casillas' Dana Scully.
• César Arias is completely, absolutely perfect as the Narrator from Too Cute.

Video Games

• The first Metal Gear Solid game is considered up to this day as THE example of good video game dubbing in Spain. There even is some fierce debate about whether Alfonso Vallés was a better Solid Snake than David Hayter. The catch is, though, that the following games in the series were not dubbed to Spanish, while David Hayter improved his acting and Snake's character with each new instalment. Hence, the debate is totally pointless (and unfair) by now.
• Kingdom Hearts II had an unexpected great dubbing. At first there was some suspicion, since Sora was voiced by Adolfo Moreno, Spanish voice actor of Pokémon: The Series' Ash Ketchum. But he nailed the character, despite the comments of some people. Some secondary characters were a little bit off (Roger Isasi-Isasmendi was a disappointing, emotionless Cloud) and some Disney characters didn't have the same voice actors as in the movies (this was specially evident in Jack Sparrow's case), but the general level of the voice acting was really good with some Role Reprises such as most of the cast for The Nightmare Before Christmas. Like the Metal Gear Solid example above, it's the only Spanish dubbed game in the whole series and is the only pure Square Enix game to have a dub.
• The Batman: Arkham Series have some of the best voice acting in years. It's especially worth noting that for Batman they hired Claudio Serrano, who dubs Christian Bale in the Chistopher Nolan movies. Although some people argue he sounds a little bit too young for the Batman of the games, the Continuity Nod was a nice touch. Also, José Padilla as the Joker had very little to envy to Mark Hamill's performance.
• The LatAm dub for LEGO The Lord of the Rings was also excellent, with most of the cast of the movies reprising their roles, the sole exception being Frodo, voiced by the very talented Eduardo Garza, who filled in the shoes of the just as talented Enzo Fortuny very well.
• The Uncharted series. Has an excellent cast and direction from both LatAm and Spain. However, many dislike the increased strong lenguage in the LatAm dubs. ^note The words Bitch (Perra) and Crap (Basura) are translated to Puta (Whore) and Mierda (Shit) respectively which are considered stronger words.
• The Prince of Persia series. Specially Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (Ricardo Escobar as the Prince is one of the best performances in a video game EVER, and Miguel Ángel Montero as well in the following Darker and Edgier sequels) and Prince of Persia (2008) (David Robles and Mar Bordallo made one hell of a couple).
• This may sound like cheating, since most of countries choose Spaniard over LatAm, mostly because LatAm is more expensive and also Spaniard should work with both, so Microsoft games is the major LatAm dubber, only Microsoft Certified games are dubbed
  • Master Chief & Cortana's voice is top notch. Ur Didact doesn't stays behind
• Both versions of Alan Wake's voice are really good but LatAm is wonderful Barry sounds kinda goofy in both versions, but in LatAm keeps him Goofy and realistic, spaniard, LatAm (jump to minute 33:29)
• The Spaniard dub of LEGO Jurassic World features a top notch cast that brought several voice actors that participated in the franchise and respects the translation from the films (e.g. "¡Qué lista eres!" for "Clever girl!").
  • Salvador Vidal, who is almost never heard in videogames, voices Alan Grant like in the third film (the first film had Tasio "Jake the Dog" Alonso) and César Lechiguero returned as Ian Malcolm, whom he hadn't voiced in 22 years (the second film had Salvador Vives as Malcolm) yet he still captured Malcolm's jerk personality as he did in the first film.
  • The The Lost World: Jurassic Park levels had Nick Van Owen and Eddie Carr voiced again by José Posada and Antonio García Moral. Luis Marco reprised his role as Roland Tembo even for a few lines though strangely enough he didn't voiced Udesky (whose choice was the younger David Robles).
  • Owen and Claire had their actors Guillermo Romero and Ana Esther Alborg reprising. The funny thing is that most of the Jurassic World characters don't have the same voices as in the film probably because it got dubbed before. Hoskins and Masrani are voiced by Juan Carlos Lozano and Luis "Ezio Auditore" Reina (with a Not Even Bothering with the Accent voice) yet actors Gabriel Jiménez (Hoskins in the film) and Abraham Aguilar (Masrani in the film) appear as random bystanders.
  • Several characters didn't have their original voices, specially John Hammond who was voiced by the late Joaquín Díaz. Though the cast is still comprised of very professional voices (Paco Vaquero, Carlos Ysbert, Luis Mas, Olga Velasco...) and actors like Pepa Castro, Victoria Angulo, Carlos del Pino and Fernando de Luis had voiced Laura Dern, Julianne Moore, Wayne Knight and William H. Macy previously. Also, Claudio Serrano as Billy Brennan isn't a bad choice since Claudio has been known for voicing handsome actors and being funny at the same time.
• Mortal Kombat X's Lat-Am dub has Mario Castañeda as a deliciously snarky Johnny Cage and Gerardo Reyero as a very imposing Raiden.
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild managed to surpass expectations by having excellent dubs in both territories. It's largely agreed that both of them are superior to the English dub and pretty close, if not as good as the Japanese dub. The overall translation of the game was also more faithful in general to the original text in Japanese, albeit the LatAm dub still drew some lines and terms from the English version, probably due to the fact that it was made in Nintendo of America alongside the English team, while the European Spanish dub was made in Nintendo of Europe on its own.
  • Zelda's voice is particularly noteworthy. While Patricia Summersett was at best extremely divisive in the English dub, Nerea Alfonso in Spain and Jessica Ángeles in Latin America were both almost universally praised in their respective territories. A good example of this was the now iconic crying scene in memory n.º 16, where both actresses managed to pull off a more balanced performance than their Japanese and English counterparts^note Not as hyperactive and over the top as the Japanese version, nor as weak and underwhelming as the English version, making Zelda's breakdown even more of a Tear Jerker.
  Zelda (LatAm): Todo mi entrenamiento... Toda mi preparación... ¡No se valió para nada! ^{In English}All my training... All my preparation... It wasn't worth anything at all!
  Zelda (Spain): Yo... me he esforzado tanto por llegar aquí... ¡pero todo ha sido en vano! ^{In English}I... I worked so hard to make it this far... but all has been in vain!
  • For the LatAm dub, something that's note worthy is that, for the first time since Nintendo of America started making Spanish dubs, this one was made in a Latino country (Mexico in this case) with established voice actors instead of using ex-pats in Los Angeles, and it was much better than the previous Nintendo LatAm dubs as a result.
• Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity followed suit with outstanding dubs for both territories. The vast majority of the actors from Breath of the Wild reprised their roles, with Alfonso and Ángeles being the highlights once again voicing Princess Zelda, and the newly voiced characters also received very well cast actors. Specially noteworthy were the battle grunts and shouts, something Spanish dubs sometimes struggle with when dubbing Japanese media, but in this game they are at the same level as the Japenese dub, if not better in some cases.
• Gears of War, on its Mexican dub, on all of the games. Sebastián Llapur makes Marcus Fenix sound angrier, snarkier, and sounds even more badass than John DiMaggio. Ricardo Tejedo and his interpretation of Dominic Santiago is way better than the original, and Gabriel Pingarron's acting as Chairman Richard Prescott sounds even better (even if he sounds like Seymour Skinner) than the original, and can cause fist-pumping on Latin American gamers.
• League of Legends tops as one of the free-to-play online games with one of the best dubs — both the Spaniard and the Mexican dub. Unlike other F 2 P games like Team Fortress 2, the game's updates (new released champions, reworks, legendary skins) are still translated and voiced. Also, it features a large Ensemble Cast with some of the finest actors from the Spanish-speaking world. While it's true that a few actors voice the same character (Inés Blázquez voices five of the most popular females^note Akali, Ahri, Ashe, Janna and Syndra and Amumu, but she adapts to every champion's personality), it is a large list that continues to grow thanks the updates. Juan Carlos Lozano, Claudio Serrano, Roberto Encinas, Olga Cano, Eugenio Barona, Gabriel Jiménez... are only a few to name. It is also a rarity to hear Conchi López not voicing attractive grown up women, without counting Kayle, as she voices Tristana and Annie. The tip of the iceberg came with Gangplank's rework with Alfonso Vallés voicing the pirate himself, who was previously dubbed by Antonio Esquivias.
• Overwatch in Spain. Veteran voice actors like Ramón Langa (Soldier: 76), Gabriel Jiménez (McCree), Miguel Ángel Montero (Hanzo) and Antonio García Moral (Reinhardt) join forces with newcomers Tania Ugía (D.Va), Ana de Castro (Tracer) and Laura Barriga (Mei), while still with some Not Even Bothering with the Accent, to bring some pushed payloads and healing needed. The introduction of Miguel Ángel Jenner, the main voice for Samuel L. Jackson, as Doomfist just confirmed it even more.
  • The Latin-American dub is nothing to sneeze at either, with actors like Eduardo Garza (Lúcio), Carlos Segundo (Soldier 76), Laura Torres (Zarya), Alfonso Obregón Inclán (Junkrat), Circe Luna (Mercy)...
• Admittedly, the first Time Crisis game came out at a time in video game history when voice acting was still a relatively new thing, which is present when listening to the English Dub. But the Spaniard Dub, holy crap is it so much better. Admittedly, Rachel's performance is just slightly better than her English counterpart, but just listen to how much more menacing Wild Dog is.
  • Wild Dog: ¡Quieto! ¡Tú y este maldito castillo podéis arder en el infierno!^note Translation: (You) Hold it! You and this damn castle can burn in Hell!
    • This is actually a Fan Translation + fandub injected into a PlayStation disc file.

Western Animation

• Many Hanna-Barbera series, which were met with little enthusiasm on the U.S., became absolute classics in Mexico, thanks to the quality and creativity of their dubs. Noteworthy mentions include Top Cat, The Flintstones and Pixie and Dixie. It says something that, when a Top Cat movie eventually came out, it was done in Mexico.
  • In Pixie and Dixie's case, Pixie speaks with a Cuban accent, Dixie's voice is that of a Mexican, and Mr. Jinks became a hilarious spaniard from Andalucía. The script changed for the better, too: comical add-libbing was at the order of the day, and scenes that had no jokes -or not dialogue at all- in the original version were spiced up to no end.
• Mexican-dubbed Hanna-Barbera shows, as well as many other series dubbed there (from Disney movies to a large number of Saturday Morning Cartoons as well as some animes), ended being released in Spain on the grounds it was cheaper to buy the cartoon already dubbed in Mexico, rather than doing a separate Spanish dub for Spain. While dubs were more than often good, the differences between Lat Am Spanish and Spaniard one were, of course, present^note For example, usted(es) (second person pronoun) is used in Latin America for all situations, when in most of Spain is used for formal usage, and for familiar one Tú/Vosotros is used instead.. This started to change in The '90s, when Spaniard actors were used for releases in Spain, with Drawn Together being the last Mexican dub to air in Spain.
• The Simpsons in the Mexican dubbing, was absolutely hilarious and considered a cult classic by many. Anyone who understands Spanish, aside from some wordplay that can't be translated, will have a better time watching this dub. The Seasonal Rot of the later seasons became more evident in the Mexican dub after the voice cast went on strike against their new studio and got banned. Fortunately, Marina Huerta, the original voice of Bart, returned starting in season 16 after sitting out for a few seasons after a pay dispute. She also became Marge.
  • This holds especially true since the voices are brought down from their cartoon-ish English interpretations to a more down-to-earth style. While many other cartoons would suffer from this change, in the case of the Simpsons it actually worked perfectly. The only sad thing that for every 200 awesome translations and woolseyism there was some glaringly obvious bad translations (Robo-Richard Simmons was translated to Lorenzo Lamas, for some reason, and there's the episode where Luke Perry was revealed as Krusty's half-brother, where Perry was translated to Robert Redford, again, for some reason).
  • Also something that improves the series is that each character has his own dubber (except for very minor characters). This also helps to avoid goofy voices, which are necessary in the English version since every voice-actor makes 6 to 10 roles.
• Actually, the The Simpsons dubbing from Spain is also spectacular. Matt Groening himself recognized it as the best European dubbing of the series, by far. Too bad its level dropped severely when Carlos Revilla, the voice acting director, script writer and Homer Simpson's voice actor, passed away in 2000. However, up to this day it's still pretty good.
• Futurama's Spain Spanish dub is hilarious. Iván Muelas (Fry), Olga Cano (Leela) and Abraham Aguilar (Bender) are on the same level as Billy West, Katey Sagal and John DiMaggio, if not better. Specially Bender, who in the Spanish VA speaks as he is talking between his teeth (his accent from the original English voice is impossible to reproduce in Spanish, after all). It's impossible not to laugh with him.
  • The same can be said about LatAm dub. It's considered a cult classic in Latin America, not as big as The Simpsons, but still great, and Benjamin Rivera's Fry is very well-loved.
• Although it had a drop in quality since season 5 (along with the Seasonal Rot of the series), the LatAm dub of SpongeBob SquarePants is really good (especially seasons 1-4 and the movies). Luis Carreño sounds surprisingly similar to Tom Kenny and Luis Pérez Pons gives Mr. Krabs an iconic voice, but the one who gets all the applause is Renzo Jiménez as Squidward, whose performance is simply masterful and is the only character that hasn't changed his voice actor throughout the series.
  • The LatAm version of "I'm a Goofy Goober" is amazing!
• South Park has some really good Spanish dubbing, both for LatAm and Spain.
  • Radlum: I am not able to watch the series in the original language; if there are jokes that have to be in English to be understood then I use close captioning to read them.
  • It should be said that there are two LatAm dubs of South Park: the Mexican one and the one from Miami. The last one is used in South America because the Mexican was too regional, and use so much profanity than one at least can't imagine the series in another version without feeling like a watered down version of the former.
  • Also, Patricia Azan probably gives one of my favourite performances of Cartman. Her performance is colorful and expressive, as though she combines every aspect of the character into one; he's crazy, but he's a child. He's angry, but can also be scared. Her Cartman is more child-like in tone even than the other female performers, so she makes him sound just as bratty as he needs to be. In every way, she's perfect.
• There is a reason Drawn Together was more popular in Latin America than in the United States. His dub is completely hilarious, with a lot of woolseyism and more outrageous jokes than in the original version. To this we must add a great voice cast, highlighting Gerardo Reyero as Capitanazo (Captain Hero) and Eduardo Garza as Xander (Xandir).
• The European Spanish dub of Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog is a complete cult classic, especially when compared to the mediocre LatAm dub. The voice cast is excellent, especially highlighting Rafael Alonso Naranjo Jr. as Sonic, which gives him a cartoonish and charismatic personality that makes him even more fun than in the original language. In fact, many Latin Americans prefer to listen to the Spain dub instead of LatAm dub. Not to mention the absurdly large amount of memetic content it generated, not for nothing is it one of the most used sources on Hispanic YouTube Poops.
• Codename: Kids Next Door became one of the most remembered shows on Cartoon Network in Latin America thanks to its funny dub full of woolseyism and references to pop culture (there were even references to the LatAm dubbing industry).
• Batman: The Animated Series was a tremendous hit in Spain as much as the United States and the awesome dub had a lot do with it. The case on Batman's voice is specially worth noting. The voice actor chosen for the role was Fernando de Luis, since he dubbed Michael Keaton in the Spanish dub of Batman Returns. The catch? His voice is rather high pitched, instead of the deep voice pitch of Kevin Conroy. The other catch? It still worked! De Luis still managed to pull off one hell of a badass Batman and made him just as memorable.
  • Batman is currently dubbed by actor Claudio Serrano, who started dubbing Christian Bale (and, ironically, Ben Affleck) and became the voice of the character. However, De Luis is a legend in his own right for those who grew up with Batman TAS
  • Take a look and check it out: Batman TAS in European Spanish
• Spider-Man: The Animated Series was also a big hit in Spain, and yes, the dub had a lot to do with it too. Spider-Man's charisma was left intact from the original version thanks to a great script translation and an awesome performance by Juan Antonio Arroyo, who is still considered up to this day as the best Spaniard Spider-Man ever.
• The Latin American dub of Justice League Unlimited is awesome. Batman and Luthor were spot on, Superman sounds a little deeper but still very good and Darkseid's voice is made to be more menacing and terrifying than the original, as he manages to be even lower than Michael Ironside, and has an absolutely Darth Vader-esque menace to his voice.
  • His name is Nestor Araujo, he also voiced Hugo Strange on The Batman and Brother Blood on Teen Titans.
• In LatAm Esteban Garcia has been the voice of Lex Luthor in most incarnations since Superman: The Animated Series, not without a good reason, tough
  • Ditto for Rubén León as The Joker since Batman: The Animated Series. The guy is pretty much the LatAm equivalent for Mark Hamill in this role: Check this clip from the Batman: Under the Red Hood movie, and this other from Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
• While the Latin-American dubbing of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic isn't entirely spectacular, it does have a few perfectly cast voices: Pinkie Pie, Derpy, and Princess Cadance. Seriously, Melissa Gedeón is so adorable as Pinkie Pie, so much so that she's at the same level as Andrea Libman, if not even better than her! Here's the Latin-American version of the Smile Song (There's no choir due to an error caused by the TV station that aired it, but that doesn't make it any less awesome)
  • The veteran actress Elsa Covián plays a really nice Rarity, with the exact doses of snobbishness and sweetness.
• The European Spanish dub of The Adventures of Tintin (2011) was handed to long time tintinologist Juan D'Ors, who adapted the scripts, directed the dub and also voiced Tintin. The result was more faithful to the comics than the English version, correcting the anachronic order of the episodes, and even referenced the never-adapted albums "Land of the Soviets", "Tintin in the Congo" and the unfinished "Tintin and the Alph-Art".

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