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Sub VS Dub, which do you prefer and Why?

Sub or Dub?

  • Sub

    Votes: 49 74.2%

  • Dub

    Votes: 17 25.8%
  • Total voters
    66
It depends on the show, really. Unfortunately English voice actors simply can't do Moe well which ruins many dubs that feature "moeblobs" as a selling point. The only notable exception is Tia Ballard, who pulls off an excellent moe voice as Chiho in Devil is a Part-Timer.
 
Subs, because I generally find the original voice acting quality to be quite a bit higher. I'll make exceptions for good dubs, though!
 
AmineHsu said:
Ahaha~ Azumanga Daioh tends to be one of the animes I recall really disliking the Osaka accent in. I actually recall two different version, a really thick Brooklyn accent and a really thick Southern Belle accent, and I really didn't feel like either fit the character.

I know there are others, though I probably couldn't name them without looking over a list, that said, I can identify a Osaka accent in the Japanese version of animes I watch subs and it comes up semi-regularly.
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I prefer those accents actually. Osakan accent apparently implies some cultural thing that doesn't cross cultural barriers easily, so I can understand it quicker if it tries to do a closer analogue.

The accent apparently implies some bias stereotypes and brings to mind certain ideas initially.

Imo the dub for many anime I've seen seem high quality, possibly higher then subs for me.
 
Subs because I can't hear when the Japanese is only average or mediocre but can sure hear it when it in English. You have to be quite bad for a complete non speaker to notice just how bad you are. I'm not going to turn my nose up at dubs but you have to be good or it has be be a popcorn show where I don't want to focus to much on it.
 
sapphirenebula said:
I prefer those accents actually. Osakan accent apparently implies some cultural thing that doesn't cross cultural barriers easily, so I can understand it quicker if it tries to do a closer analogue.

The accent apparently implies some bias stereotypes and brings to mind certain ideas initially.

Imo the dub for many anime I've seen seem high quality, possibly higher then subs for me.
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Two things, first, what it implies is usually not all that complex. Second and most importantly, while you might feel like you understand quickly, you don't really cause they aren't from Brooklyn nor the deep South so what feels like understanding is misdirection and you'll just have to explain things a different way. Really they need to do a more subtle accent if they're going to do it at all. Either way, any of the information that would be conveyed by the accent needs to be conveyed a different way.

Really though, it's mostly I just find them obnoxious...?
 
AmineHsu said:
Two things, first, what it implies is usually not all that complex. Second and most importantly, while you might feel like you understand quickly, you don't really cause they aren't from Brooklyn nor the deep South so what feels like understanding is misdirection and you'll just have to explain things a different way. Really they need to do a more subtle accent if they're going to do it at all. Either way, any of the information that would be conveyed by the accent needs to be conveyed a different way.

Really though, it's mostly I just find them obnoxious...?
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If your ears are fine-tunes enough to follow sentences, reading subs that you know are inaccurate or less-than-accurate translations can also be obnoxious.

It's probably just easier to let people enjoy what they enjoy.
 
Fernandel said:
If your ears are fine-tunes enough to follow sentences, reading subs that you know are inaccurate or less-than-accurate translations can also be obnoxious.

It's probably just easier to let people enjoy what they enjoy.
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Ah, I don't mean it quite like that, I'm just saying...

Like in a game I was just playing a couple side characters are portrayed with a 'Hillbilly' type accent but visually they are living in a traditional looking Japanese house with relatively traditional Japanese looking character designs... It's weird, what am I supposed to take away from this...? Probably that they live somewhere that's 'backwater'...? There are a lot of things I could, but it's incredibly dissonant and confusing.
 
DBZ is the only one offhand I prefer the dub because Goku's Japanese VA is objectively worse

Any other dub I watch it's usually to riff the show, like Date a Live's, or because it's hilarious like Malaysian dubs


I typically just stick to subs because I'm used to reading captions
 
If there is a dub that's known to be heavily censored/adapted (like One Piece), I'll avoid it.
I used to swear by subs but after so long, I find reading the text separates me from the thing I'm supposed to be watching. Dubs these days tend to be faithful to the original material so if I ever start a new anime that has been dubbed, I'll try to watch it.

One day I'll watch the whole of Angel Cop dubbed, because it's hilarious
...I don't really know what to make of this, though
 
I am a sub person (lol). Anime isn't one of the media formats I consume passively, so I don't have a problem with paying attention, and my ability to read english words with my eyes is "adequate." I find that subs offer a more reliable translation, and while I can't comment about the quality of voice acting when compared between east and west, I can say that bad voice acting is not very noticeable to me if I cannot understand the language in question, and that makes it much better than a bad english dub. Just... So much better. Dear god.

Part of my subs preference is probably related to the fact that as an impressionable youth in the early 90's, my access to anime was filtered exclusively through a couple of dedicated proto-weeabos, and thus literally the only things I watched were subbed stuff--especially AnimEigo's catalog. Bubblegum Crisis and A.D. police just weren't available in english dub, and neither was most of the stuff I watched at the time.

Later on, I did watch plenty of dubs. Street Fighter 2: The Animated Movie is one of the rare cases where I prefer the dub to the sub, but that is a) due to nostalgia, not an actual comment on the quality of the VA, and b) the music in the dub is just better. Strictly IMO, obvs. In further support for dubs, I have to second DargonBull Zed. I find most of the english dubs objectively terrible, but I will always preferentially choose them over subs because Goku's japanese VA drives me up the god damn wall.
 
Based on what I can gather from this thread, we really need a third option on the poll that says "Subs. Unless we are talking DBZ, in which case for the love of god save me from Japanese Goku!"
 
Subs exclusively. Maybe it's because I have always watched subs, but Japanese artstyle + English causes massive amounts of disconnect in my head. It's actually to the point where I haven't watched past the first couple episodes of RWBY despite English being the original voice.
 
Subs. It's closer to the 'original' content and I've seen too many dubs that were mildly innacurate to just plain wrong...
 
I prefer dubs to subs because I find subs very distracting. Rather than being able to enjoy the subtly in the art of the emotion of the scene I'm forced to focus on the bottom 3rd and read the lines rather than really take in what they are saying. Also if you like watching stuff that's so bad it's good a bad dub can often carry the day.
 
VolantRedX said:
I prefer dubs to subs because I find subs very distracting. Rather than being able to enjoy the subtly in the art of the emotion of the scene I'm forced to focus on the bottom 3rd and read the lines rather than really take in what they are saying. Also if you like watching stuff that's so bad it's good a bad dub can often carry the day.
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Same, though I will sometimes watch a sub if it's the only thing easily available or if the dub is particularly atrocious. Though I think the single best argument in favor of dubs is Ghost Story. Subtitled it's a generic kids horror anime, dubbed it's the funniest shit in the world.
 
DracoDracul said:
Same, though I will sometimes watch a sub if it's the only thing easily available or if the dub is particularly atrocious. Though I think the single best argument in favor of dubs is Ghost Story. Subtitled it's a generic kids horror anime, dubbed it's the funniest shit in the world.
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I think there is perhaps a discussion to be had of translation vs localization vs deviative work. The Ghost Story dub may be entertaining work, but it's a quite poor translation. Now, the extent to which the goal of localization is to translate or to create a deviative work that will be enjoyed by a target audience is certainly a point of discussion but my prefeence is heavily towards a 'translation', when I watch anything, dub or sub, I'm hoping to receive an as accurate portrayal of the source work as possible. If the source work kinda sucks, that's too bad, but I think I was still feel more annoyed an an entertaining deviation than something boring but accurate to the source. But that's probably just me.

(( which isn't to say a deviative work can't be entertaining, just when I go to watch an anime I'm usually wanting an accurate representation of the source. ))
 
AmineHsu said:
I think there is perhaps a discussion to be had of translation vs localization vs deviative work. The Ghost Story dub may be entertaining work, but it's a quite poor translation. Now, the extent to which the goal of localization is to translate or to create a deviative work that will be enjoyed by a target audience is certainly a point of discussion but my prefeence is heavily towards a 'translation', when I watch anything, dub or sub, I'm hoping to receive an as accurate portrayal of the source work as possible. If the source work kinda sucks, that's too bad, but I think I was still feel more annoyed an an entertaining deviation than something boring but accurate to the source. But that's probably just me.

(( which isn't to say a deviative work can't be entertaining, just when I go to watch an anime I'm usually wanting an accurate representation of the source. ))
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The thing about Ghost Story was that it was a commercial failure in Japan and ADV was told to do whatever they needed to do to make it profitable. Unless I'm actually attached to the original, I'm more interest in a good end product than authenticity.
 
DracoDracul said:
The thing about Ghost Story was that it was a commercial failure in Japan and ADV was told to do whatever they needed to do to make it profitable. Unless I'm actually attached to the original, I'm more interest in a good end product than authenticity.
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I think it's again an issue of expectations. If you're expectation an authentic translation and get instead a deviative work, you very well might be disappointed even if the end result is 'good'.
 
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