Do you watch anime in English or Japanese?

[Little Broken D0ll]

The title is self-explanatory.
Which do you prefer?

I rather Japanese though I'm not adept enough to watch without translated subs and because I can read the written text in the characters voice (apparently my friends thinks this is abnormal ^^" ). It doesn't falter from the original plot unlike english when the sentence had to be structed to fit the timing of their mouths.


It differs between people I guess, I have a friend who likes to watch it in english instead because she simply can not multi-task and keep up with the subs.


What do you think is the most horribly dubbed anime or the most amazing dub?

I thought Vampire Knight english dub was ridiculously shameful.

Saiyuki was the best I ever seem, that is until they changed the cast.

[Stabby McDoom]

It varies pretty wildly. I mostly base it on the quality of the english dub. Certain shows have such top-notch dubs that I can't see watching it any other way like Baccano or Death Note. Otherwise I'll just default to the sub.

[Mugetsu Ookamiza]

translation is as much art as science, you know. there's often more than one way things can get translated. I remember hearing a story about someone wanting to translate a Japanese song into English for an English language cover of it, they had three or four different professional translators work on it and each one came up with something with some significant differences to it, some of which needed more altering to scan with how the song was in Japanese more than others.

really, if you're judging dubs poorly just because they try to make the lines fit the lip flaps, sometimes even more than the Japanese dub does, you're missing out on the fact there's a WHOLE lot more that can affect the quality of a translation than that. there's a whole host of stuff that can affect a translation quality that apply to both sub translations just as much as dub ones.

and subs translations CAN be pretty off in spots. seriously, I saw a professional sub that had a translation issue I don't believe the dub version had, and I've seen fansubs that have made HUGE mistakes, stuff that I could catch even before I started trying to learn Japanese the first time (granted, in those cases it was in relation to various things I had some interest in and knew the terminology for, such as one fansub that translated shikigami to "snake god" for some odd reason - I do have an interest in religion/spirituality that I was surprised they'd force that translation onto it rather than going with something like familiar or fetch if they insisted on translating it).

[iShieru]

I prefer watching it in Japanese.
I used to watch it in English a lot, though.. before I realized Japanese was better.

[Bitty Buttons]

I'll watch both the Japanese dub and English dub. o u o

[Summ3rSw33tn3ss]

Kagamine Shi

I'll watch both the Japanese dub and English dub. o u o

[Little Broken D0ll]

Mugetsu Ookamiza

That is the case sometimes, I had witness a fair amount of awful translated subs. I know that not everything is translated 100% correct all the time. And it is sometimes its difficult to grasp the Japanese speech when it's either casual, polite, humble or honorific and the whole context of it (especially if it were dubbed). The characters are slightly different too, as for example; Saiyuki english dub was a lot more vulgar than the Japanese (which provided to be quite entertaining.) and the characters don't always match up with the voices (like a serious character with a dopey and heavy accent in english)


I've once witness the word Youkai translated as 'genie' before when the anime obviously refers it as 'demon' even if Youkai is a general term for monsters in Japanese folklore.

So yes, the two do have their ups and downs.

[Ken Saint]

As a rule I generally avoid English dubs. I know there are some good ones out there, like Baccano! and Black Lagoon, but really it's so much easier to find in Japanese and it usually is quite a bit better. Though I pretty much only watch dubs when I'm with my friends, because we watch on Netflix on an actual TV.

[Sai X Kaitou]

xxx xxx




I like both dubs and subs. It depends.
Can't really pick one over the other.
My favourite dubs are Baccano, Black Lagoon, Hetalia, Papuwa Island, Peacemaker Kurogane, Gravitation and Descendants of Darkness.




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[WeLovePandas]

mine was vampire knigh guilty heart

[Katsumi_Noir]

I tend to watch it in Japanese with Subtitles - most of the time I don't like the voices used for the English dub, they don't seem to fit well for me.
I do have a few exceptions though, such as Escaflowne, Cowboy Bebop etc.

[jj1027]

It depends on the nature of the show and the qualityof the dub. For something like baccano, influenced by western culture as it is, I watch with dubs, but a lot of times the dubs aren't nearly so good, especially on older shows. It alkl just depends, but niether one is automatically better than the other.

[fairy-phoenix]

It basically depends if I prefer watching it in English dub or if I prefer to watch it in Japanese with the English sub.

[Nishmail]

For me, it depends on the seiyuu/voice actors. biggrin

[sambart]

Japanese all the way.
English dub absolutely sucks!