I like to actually concentrate on the animation rather than splitting my attention between it and text. Since I don’t speak Japanese I get absolutely nothing out of the Japanese audio voices such as the importance of inflictions in dialog. I’d rather hear a language I understand so that I can understand performances. I’ll only chose a sub if the english dub is outstandingly bad, but in most cases I find the dubs perfectly fine.
I think that while some non-Japanese speakers genuinely prefer the Japanese audio, I suspect there is a large group who only claim to prefer it for performative reasons or people who stay quiet because they know if they voice an opinion preferring dubs they’ll get dogpiled by the rest of the fandom.
100% with you. I think dubs get a bad rap. Just caught up on Demon Slayer and loved the english voice actors—especially for Zenitsu 💛
I am glad to hear this. I hate reading subtitles. I feel I cannot relax if I have to read. I want to sit back and casually enjoy anime. However if I hear about an anime plot and I cannot find a dub version for free, I will settle for subtitles. I find it annoying as well switching my attention from reading to what is happening. It kills the mood of becoming immersed in the story.
I feel I cannot relax if I have to read.
That’s horrifying, ngl
Hard agree. Most of the hatred of dubs comes from back in the day when they were terrible but nowadays a bad dub is the exception
Bad dubs or reading were all we had, and now I guess it’s muscle memory
Dubs have gotten better, and the decline of fansubs means no translation notes that really helped some oddities.
I’m also a middle aged man with kids and responsibilities. Sometimes I want to watch Anime and I have to fold Laundry or cook dinner at the same time.
In an average day if I’m really lucky I can maybe find a whole hour to sit and WATCH something.
I just rewatched Evangelion, and the dubbed dialogue actually made more sense idiomatically than the subtitles. I know there are cases where the translation is not great and the voice actors are doing 5th grade class play level overacting, but that’s not universal.
This is not an unpopular opinion. Netflix and Crunchyroll have both confirmed that more viewers watch dubs than subs.
I think even without speaking Japanese you can understand some of the choices the actors make with their tone of voice. It’s admittedly less that you get out of your native language, but sometimes the English actors make different choices.
For example, I don’t like the dub of Cowboy Bebop because the Jet actor made him sound more like a meat head than I think the character actually is.
Is that a common criticism of Jet? I never thought he was much of a meathead, more like the oft suffering father figure of the crew.
Just chiming in so there is someone that prefers subs in the comments…
That said, dubs have on average gotten better over the years, and the sloppy subs they put on streaming services are inferior to fansubs
FINALLY. SOMEONE LIKE ME!
Jesus fucking Christ, I don’t know how people prefer a perfectly reasonable dub to subs. Like, yeah, if the dub is crap, fine, I get it; but if it’s even halfway decent, why would you want to have to spend half your attention reading text when you could just be focusing on the gorgeous animation you probably selected this anime for watching in the first place? I don’t know, maybe this has to do with people who are slow readers vs fast readers. Maybe my mild dyslexia is the problem here. But I just don’t get it. Subs are work; why would you want to do work while watching an anime for enjoyment?
I’m a fast reader but still watch the dub unless it’s garbage, because if I want to read an anime I’ll just pick up the manga
If we press play and it auto picks English audio the entire room starts searching for the remote.
Maybe it’s what we watch, but English dubs are jank. Compared to the original audio they sound flat and amateur.
Skill issue.
I agree. For example: URAMESHI!
My rule of thumb is that I’ll watch dubs of anime that aren’t purely Japanese.
Fullmetal metal alchemist, ranking is kings, attack on titan, jojo, gurren lagann, Gundam, most isekai, I’d be happy to watch in dub.
Demon slayer, jujutsu kaisen, kaiju #8, hajime no Ippo, all blatantly Japanese settings that would throw me off watching the dub so I stuck to the subs.
To me, Japanese is too fast and I can’t read subtitles, don’t have time to learn Japanese and for me at least is not worth time, maybe sometimes in the future. But English i actually understand.
Honestly the sentiment I tend to see online these days is more case by case basis. Dan Da Dan has a great dub, Solo Leveling has a shitty one, the general consensus is that Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is best in English. I think you can tell if acting is good even if you don’t speak the language but I can respect preferring dubs to subs
Man I really could not stand the DDD dub at all. The Japanese voice acting is just 1000x better on that one.
