Chatterbox - Anime & Manga

"Should I see it??"

Tamako's English actress is the exact wrong fit! If it weren't for Greg Ayres' first line in the pilot ep, I would've thought it was a fan dub with a budget!!

Still I would say that it is 50/50 on good dubs vs bad ones. It was closer to 10/90 compared to 10 years ago.

Ooo could be a nice horror anime for tomorrow night.

Sometimes I don't like the dub because the original performance by their seiyuus is just too damn good. See: Takahiro Sakurai as Shogo Makishima, anything Chiwa Saito was in (especially as Homura and I doubt Funi can find anyone that can top her performance as Yona).

Mediocre means average, not "bad". Though I've little will to argue further if people insist that mediocre means bad.

The issue these days isn't so much that dubs are lower quality, it's that they're slower to come out and (often) harder to find. Unless you ignore all online resources, which I'm pretty sure nobody posting here would do.

Slower to come out? Uhh Gundam Wing and Sailor Moon were 5 years old when it hit the US, Dragon Ball Z was closer to 9 years old.

Now dub disks come out about 1 year later maybe 2 max. Unless they expedite it by going with Dub only and/or hard subbed because Japan has serious concerns about Reverse Importing.

edited 30th Oct '14 11:23:33 AM by Memers

My university has an animation society that sees about fifty students meet up every week and most will talk about a wide range of shows they've seen. The society chooses ones to screen that are not too mainstream (everyone will have watched them) or have too narrow appeal. Most have genuine qualities or are amusingly bad (they're looking for music to play to Akame Ga Kill). But they are all subbed, with the exception so far of Nerima Daikon Brothers.

I've hear a fair amount of dub-hating on principle among them as well as online, though for some it's simply because they're learning the language. There are many who are fine with dubs. But I think I can fairly say that they only consider you an anime fan if you are willing to watch subs. Otherwise you're at least months behind and missing some very peculiarly Japanese oddities.

Also, the animation society gets some criticism for not paying attention to other countries' animation.

I didn't mean 'dubs take longer to come out than they used to', I meant 'subs come out much faster than dubs'. Simuldubs might change that, but that's still too rare to have a real impact.

edited 30th Oct '14 11:37:07 AM by Gilphon

As said, Funimation is thinking of solving all these dub delays by picking 2 shows they have and releasing the dubs only a few weeks after the original version airs. For now, it's just an experiment though.

Wouldn't this result in really awful quality dubs?

They managed to get Space Dandy dubbed weeks before the TV broadcast with a large cast, and that came out great!

They also had a ton of lead in time and had Japanese scripts months in advance to put the effort into it. I don't see them having THAT much time with these two shows without rushing.

You're assuming they're just doing this on the spur of the moment instead of putting just as much planning in as with Space Dandy. For all we know, they've had the scripts for months and only told us now.

Space Dandy was a co-production from early on, as I understand.

To be fair, while some people will consider you not a true anime fan if you do this, I personally don't give a crap about this.

I've always been years behind on all my media consumption (anime, movies, videogames, TV shows, etc.) and I've never had a problem with this.

Not to mention that I like anime as a storytelling medium with aesthetically-pleasing characters. I'm not really interested in anime as a means for coming in contact with Japanese cultural tropes.

Wow, the Super Sonico anime is pretty boring.

There is snobbery in the fandom as in any about who is worthy. But being behind means missing on the bulk of the discussion and speculation that comes just as it is airing, which for many is the defining experience of the fandom. It depends on whether you enjoy the online-social side of it.

And many of them enjoy Japanese productions for how different they are from anything Western, so those in Western style that are most likely to be dubbed don't interest them so much. It's one of the faultlines in the wider fandom. Also some shows like Bakemonogatari would be nightmares to dub for the same reasons that they are liked.

That said, I'm often puzzled by the choice of what is dubbed, especially by Funimation. They pick things that would be unairable on most channels while nothing by KyoAni has been dubbed in years.

Sex Sells

Also prices of the series and the distributes themselves might be an issue.

Funi also ran polls on series to license and well they were mostly fanservice series as well as one rep directly stating they sell so we will keep putting them out.

I like to think for every fanservice-laden anime Funi licences they also get a reasonably serious or good action show to balance it out.

edited 1st Nov '14 6:07:05 AM by JRPictures

Which more than likely makes less money than the fanservice show.

The implication being that action is superior to fanservice?

Action is merely another form of fanservice.

In fact, while we're generalising (and for the sake of argument) maybe the fanservice shows simply fill a niche western media generally doesn't.

Yeah I guess I'm not really much into that.

Especially what with the internet's habit of mocking and snarking about everything and making folly of it with quoted snippets and reaction gifs.

In contrast, I typically like drama series and more serious stories more so I guess I'm looking for a quieter, more introspective reception.

And same here I guess.

edited 1st Nov '14 10:12:52 AM by GlennMagusHarvey

Funi keeps licensing shows I really want to watch and that means I can't watch it legally since it doesn't work outside the USA.

I'd like to see some more slice-of-life or dramatic shows get dubbed. Golden Time in particular.

It's somewhat understandable that fanservicey shows or action shows get the big-budget treatment, because aside from a small percentage of the show's run, it's mostly loud and bombastic voices or voices bristling with emotion and rage, which are easier to do than natural-sounding human speech when you're putting on a fake voice. But as a guy who gets a kick out of watching people live and interact in their daily lives, I'd like to have the opportunity to view some shows in my native language and soak up the ambience in a new way.

Also - Funimation are pretty good, but they need to get their asses in gear and release the Evangelion 3.33 dub already. I used to be a strictly-dub person which has changed considerably over the years, but Evangelion is a franchise I watch exclusively dubbed. It's all I know, and it's all I wanna know - they've mishandled this particular dub a lot, and it bugs the crap out of me.