Alright now let's get this one started! The infamous sub vs dub debate, that has many people vying for elitism or equality XD. I, for one, am favoured to the sub myself for various reasons. But before we do that let's look at the pros to dubs.
Dubs are anime translated into English to make it easier to watch anime for people in North America and other main English speaking cultures. This way people could understand the characters without having to look at close captions. At the same time it gives you differentiating voices that you hear more often and sound like someone you would naturally speak to. This is also done in games, commonly games ported from Japan. We sometimes find it hard to keep up with everything on the screen if we are also reading exactly what the character is saying. This causes a certain disconnect between the audience and the show. People don't want to take the time to train their eyes to multitask on the screen. Now while all this is very easy to understand, at the same time people don't feel like it is necessarily the right way and takes away from the source material.
Subs are a translation through closed captions for people who wish to watch in the original language the anime was done in. This source material is exactly how the creator intended it to be and you can fully watch their vision. While in the dub version they have to change the dialogue to fit the moving of the mouths for the characters, which causes the dialogue to ultimately change and might not be as fluid. If you try listening to the dub with the sub playing on the screen for the DVDs or the Blu-rays, they don't match. While the source material is changed, so are the characters as they are portrayed by different voice actors. We commonly get the superficial problem of "He/she didn't sound anything like I wanted him/her to!" It's a problem no matter how ultimately stupid it is and causes disconnect. Even the quality of the voice-acting differentiates from time to time. Before the Cowboy Bebop dub, anime dubbing was considered sub-par and often seen as bad. That is because before such pieces like Cowboy Bebop, there wasn't a lot of money placed into the industry for dubbing since it didn't really hit it big until big movies and shows like Ghost in the Shell and Cowboy Bebop made anime popular in North America. Even today as well, we do get the umpteen amount of bad dubs of characters sounding too overly whiny or overacted. Even though we are in an age where dubs are now coming out for popular pieces. If you want to watch some anime, you can only do so in sub because nobody will dub it. It is also the problem of licensing anime which could cause that, but I digress. Subs ultimately are the better medium to watch in if one truly cares about the source material.
While this sub elitism sprouted from veteran anime watchers who believe the source material is the only thing, it is definitely not shared throughout the community. I for one love the dubs from shows like Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, Fate/Zero, Shiki, and others. You need to ultimately decide for yourself which of the two you would prefer for the anime. Anime is a world of expression, beauty of animation, sadness, heartache, happiness and ultimately art. It is how you perceive it that should truly matter. So for this debate I'm just going to leave it with a tied for myself since its anyone's game here. |