Japanese or English Voices?

By Sheldawg. 22/06/08, 01:35 pm

EDIT : Please post if you vote or vice versa Very Happy

Heres the one question I've pondered for quite a while...

Which one is your favourite?

I personally prefer Japanese voices over anything, ive gotten so used to reading the sub titles it actually makes it easier for me to watch anything now.

By SockPanda. 22/06/08, 01:46 pm

Japanese, 95% of the time.

But there are pretty decent voices in English dubs, as well as other languages ^-^

By Sheldawg. 22/06/08, 01:47 pm

True, Naruto dub... it was... interesting?
Bleach dub isn't TOO bad but .. meh

Some Spanish dubs ive heard are real good too Very Happy

By SpamTomatoSpam. 22/06/08, 01:51 pm

Generally I prefer the Japanese voices. 9 out of 10 times the American voice acting is somewhat irritating and in my opinion doesn't "match" the characters.

But once I have started watching a series in a particular language then I tend to stick to it, no matter how irritating. For example, Sailor Moon and Pokemon. The Japanese voices are significantly better in my opinion, but the English dub is what I'm used to, not to mention it has a certain sentimental value. *happy childhood memories*

By SockPanda. 22/06/08, 01:56 pm

Ah.. I agree with SpamTomatoSpam Very Happy

I watched Inuyasha and Naruto in Mandarin at first Very Happy

So the voices have kinda stuck. I don't mind the Japanese ones though.

**Guest** Guest

Japanese forever, this just not anime if it has english voices, maybe its just that the people who dub are really bad at it. whats really hard is having Japanese voices and so trying to understand them and 中文 (chinese) subs and so reading them.

By Pseudonym. 22/06/08, 02:08 pm

*reads posts* *nervous about posting*

Provided both options are available, at least for the first time viewing I personally prefer to watch the dub. However, I generally don't mind either way, but I'll only watch something subtitled when I'm 100% focused on what I'm watching, as I often like to multi-task and I can't really do that while reading subtitles.

The first time I heard the Naruto dub (acquired via the interwebs) I was horrified, then I saw it on Cartoon Network and wasn't quite sure if what I'd heard was the same voices, because I thought it was fine.

One thing I noticed about English vs. Japanese, is a lot of things in anime are really quite silly, and when you're hearing them spoken out loud in your native language, they can seem, well, really silly. But when you're reading it on subtitles, it seems to register differently (my experience anyway).

(As to fitting the voices, I really wish more men played the male Japanese voices, sometimes it suits the character but more often than not, I just think they sound like girls)

By Pura. 22/06/08, 02:09 pm

I used to watch everything in English because I had the DVDs. But now that I'm watching more anime that has been downloaded and burnt to a disk, or watched something online as it's been released, I now tend to like the Japanese more.

Like because I watched Death Note in Japanese when it came out, and now that I have the DVDs, I'm watching them dubbed for the sake of it, and it's just very stupid. Ryuk and L have bad voices, and Light and Misa's are weeeeird.

I also don't like the Code Geass dub, but if I buy the DVDs I would watch it in english just because otherwise it seems to defeat the purpose.

By Sheldawg. 22/06/08, 02:11 pm

Youtube is my saviour, but does anyone know good sites (preferably located in NZ cause of currency conversion?) to get DVD's off.

A few voices I think are made of win in Japanese are :

Yamamoto Takeshi - KHR
Daisuke Niwa - D.N Angel
GINTOKI! - GinTama

By Pura. 22/06/08, 02:12 pm

Japanese Voices made of win = Lelouch/Zero and Allen Walker.

Good places to buy DVDs from in NZ are the Madman website or Gpstore.

By Pyro. 22/06/08, 02:13 pm

I far prefer English.

Mostly because subtitles bother me, and mean I can't concentrate on other things in the screen easily, and also it means I have to stay 100% attentive at all times, or I lose the plot. English means I can kind of wander around, get a drink, read something, and still follow a show- a must in things like Le Chevalier D'Eon, where it's all political intrigue... Something hellishly boring to watch, but necessary to follow.

That said, often dubs can have particularly weak VAs, but hell, if you're gonna blame anything for that, don't blame the lack of acting talent. Sub scene is limiting the number of actors they can hire, and so it'd be hard in times like this for new people to get on the scene and freshen up the cast lists.

Other than the fact subs bother me, though, I like dubs more for the fact a lot of the actors have very nice voices... Very expressive voices. Steve Blum, for one, has all sorts of nifty low, rasping voices at his disposal, and Vic Mignogna has a very nice childlike voice which works well for young teens.

While the quality might not be as good overall, dubs are still (save for 4Kids dubs and a couple of other things) very well acted and shouldn't be disregarded.

By Sheldawg. 22/06/08, 02:17 pm

Vic Mignogna rules! Alex and I got his autograph on 2006 Auckgeddon.

Anyway, some dubs are good but yeah 4Kids is lame. The only problem is that in some dubs its noticable that some actors are 10 times better than some of the other characters.

Back to the whole japanese thing, I do agree that the voices stay. Like in DBZ when I listened to Jap voices after having many years of hearing the english voices, Son Goku's one freaked me out, plus many others ^^ (Only one NOT weird was Vegeta since he pwns)

EDIT :

@Pyro : Steve Blum did Orochi-san right?

By Pseudonym. 22/06/08, 02:42 pm

Rockin wrote:: Youtube is my saviour, but does anyone know good sites (preferably located in NZ cause of currency conversion?) to get DVD's off.

A few voices I think are made of win in Japanese are :

Yamamoto Takeshi - KHR
Daisuke Niwa - D.N Angel
GINTOKI! - GinTama

OT but anyway -

I use GPStore a bit, they're not too bad, but their prices are pretty RRP, you could quite likely find better deals at local stores, they do free courier shipping over $50 too, which is nice.

http://www.gpstore.co.nz/

I would recommend checking out GPStore at the very least before you buy anything second hand though (i.e. trademe), I was disgusted at how much people pay for some second-hand anime when I was keeping an eye on it for a while (in a some cases very near, or more than RRP if you included shipping - what's up with that?)

Our dollar is falling, so the exchange rate for international orders isn't as win as it was a few months back, if you can access a creditcard however, I'd check out DeepDiscount or DVDpacific, they're both reliable sites, personally I've used DeepDiscount about four times and DVD pacific twice (both are usually way cheaper than amazon for any given item),

http://www.deepdiscount.com/index.htm
http://www.dvdpacific.com/Default.asp

DeepDiscount seems to be a tiny bit dearer, but often have sales (like the 20% off one right now, though often you need to get the promotion codes emailed to you, or find them randomly on adds on other sites), and shipping is actually very decent, it goes up in brackets, (i.e. $12.95US for $50US to $100US of items), however they're nasty if you try to pre-order anything with them, they'll have things up on site, then they'll cancel them from your shipment because 'our supplier was unable to locate this product so we have discontinued it' - of course they can't get it, it's a pre-order!
Deep discount also send things out as they get them, for no extra shipping charge, however their site is terribly un-informative (always check the UPCs with a reliable site like Amazon before you order, as their headings/descriptions are terrible.) and often what they say is in stock has to be back-ordered (doesn't seem to take too long though - matter of days not weeks).
-Deepdiscount also sell books (Manga), and they don't charge through the roof for shipping like amazon, (which is outrageous) the same bracket rule applies, so if your average manga book is 9-10US, you can get 10 for the previous example of 12.95US (works out at about $15-16 a book at todays exchange)

DVD pacific on the otherhand seem to actually have what they say in stock, and their product descriptions are much more useful/reliable, no books though, and shipping seems to work out at about the same.

By Sheldawg. 22/06/08, 02:44 pm

Hmm.. ok, I'll check those out later Very Happy

By azeria. 22/06/08, 03:01 pm

I watch most anime subbed, though I don't mind the dub for most series. Except Tsubasa. Subbed is a must for Tsubasa *dies* Kurogan'es laugh is so much smexier in Japanese xD

Quote :: Japanese Voices made of win = Lelouch/Zero and Allen Walker.

Lelouch's voice is sooo awesoommeee. & Allen's is good at doing the screams xP

By Lavi_x. 22/06/08, 03:05 pm

Do you mean the screams like the time Road stabbed his eye?
That was just painful for me to hear
The voice actor is so good.

By Pura. 22/06/08, 03:12 pm

Heh, I have the first disk of Tsubasa dubbed. It's silly. And they say Kurogane weirdly -____-. And Mokona is so not cute.

By azeria. 22/06/08, 03:15 pm

Quote :: Do you mean the screams like the time Road stabbed his eye?
That was just painful for me to hear
The voice actor is so good.

YES THAT BIT. Gah Cringe moment Dx But of course I had to replay it a couple of times because it was so good.

Quote :: Heh, I have the first disk of Tsubasa dubbed. It's silly. And they Kurogane weirdly -____-. And Mokona is so not cute.

& Fai is not camp enough xD But the pronunciation of Kurogane's name... *stabs*

By Pura. 22/06/08, 03:21 pm

Kuro-gah-ney. IT'S SO STUPID D;

I'm not sure if I actually want to buy the DVDs or not. I don't think I'll bother. I already have the two seasons, movie and OVAs on disk anyway :/.
Heh, Cobi ran off with about half the contents of my disk folder last night xD.

By Lavi_x. 22/06/08, 03:23 pm

That scream made me rather upset ):

By azeria. 22/06/08, 03:24 pm

Quote :: Heh, Cobi ran off with about half the contents of my disk folder last night xD.

& I stole most of the stuff she alreay had xD But she wouldn't let me take PoT 25 with Fuji on the cover *sob*

By IcyRose. 22/06/08, 03:54 pm

It's a mixed bag for me, I most watch things in sub nowadays, but there are a lot of dubs that I watch. Say what you will about them, but I think a lot of them are pretty decent, some superior to the original Japanese voices dare I say.

I mean, I can't really imagine watching Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, Ghost in the Shell, Hellsing, Cromartie High School or the R.O.D series in Japanese because they had such a magnificent English cast. And in most cases, the dub was more well received by fans.

By Rocky. 23/06/08, 10:41 am

I cant stand english dubs. I mean, if its something like pokemon, which I've never heard any other way, thats fine, but anything new these days, even if i havent heard it in Japanese, just sounds wrong.

**Guest** Guest

It depends something that is based in japan i would watch in japanese but something based else where i would watch in english

for example Helsing in japanese was just painful similarly I would never watch something like samurai X in english cause it isnt really japanese.

However it becomes interesting with anime like trigun where they are both good however I would usually go with sub because its easier to understand and you dont get the really confusing translations

By IcyRose. 24/06/08, 10:21 am

Hmm, as Crispin Freeman said last year in regards to Hellsing, "It's set in London, my dear."

So yeah with regards to something like Hellsing, you kinda want the characters to sound british (and they do, although some have notably fake accents like Seras, Integra on the otherhand is voiced by a british woman, so you can't really fake an accent you already have) R.O.D. the TV also follows a similar stance in which they got british voice actors for the british characters.... plus Yomiko, but she lived in Britain at some point so she could have easily gotten the accent.

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