I Despise English Dubs!

[Karpusia]

Ugh...it' just the voices they use. Like, Tohru Honda in Fruits Basket. I hated her voice so much that I couldn't even watch it. Also, Vic Mignoga or whatever his name is. I don't understand the hype about him at all. I liked him in FMA, but he killed Fai in Tsubasa and Dark in D.N. Angel. :<

The only dubs I like are Baccano and Azumanga Daioh.  

[Brina458]

The 4Kids dubs are super-bad....I used to watch it as a kid, but then I finally exposed myself to the raw japanese versions, and now I hate 4Kids... xp  

[Helenxx]

I hate the English dubs.
In most animes, they sound weird and often, you hear cheesy jokes or sarcastic comments in almost every other sentence in the animes that are supposed to be funny. Also, they pause a lot when they talk.  

[Fujita_Makos]

Pistll

I hate English dubs for many many reasons.
I'll list a few:

1. They almost always pick the most annoying voices for the English voice-overs. stare

2. In Naruto, the part where Tsunade just becomes the 5th Hokage and is heading to the stairs and Konohamaru is running up the stairs to see who the new Hokage is, they meet in the doorway and his face collides with her massive cleavage, making him roll his head back and forth saying "So soft!". They cut that whole bit out in the Dub. scream Not to mention many other awesome parts in the series that have been deemed 'Not Safe for kids'.

3. I heard they plainly didn't air an entire episode of Outlaw Star just because there was no way they could edit it without disrupting the storyline. stare

ahh the hot springs planet episode -nods- oh yah there was a good view of aisha clan clan's nude body in that one.

but that episode did have an important part to it.. its the episode that gene gets the very special caster bullets for his travel into the galactic layline.  

[Pi-face Sho]

Brina458

The 4Kids dubs are super-bad....I used to watch it as a kid, but then I finally exposed myself to the raw japanese versions, and now I hate 4Kids... xp

This is usually the reason people hate dubs.
Thank God for Funi taking over One Piece 3nodding  

[turtlegirl100]

I tend to not like the English dubs because many times, the words don't match the character. And even if words do match closely, the actors/actresses are limited to what they can say, so original wording is tweaked (and sometimes leave parts out).

 

[Silvie Verisimilitude]

haha I don't really mind dubs and they seemed to have gotten better over the years. Or maybe it's just that I'm watching the ones that are aimed more toward the older age group rather than the younger kid aimed ones. lol I really do prefer Japanese audio for anime though. Although, sometimes there are those moments when the dub is actually better (extremely rare lol) or when they're about equal...or when they just both suck. lmao  

[LavenderMintRose]

beylese

what about haruhi suzumiya no yuutsu? they took out nearly every moe scene crying

Where are you getting this from? Haruhi wasn't edited...  

[RedSpade11]

I have to say, a lot of problems many of you have with dubs can be traced back to a few things:

1.) FCC or executive requirements- Sometimes a dub has no choice to be edited a certain way to be up to the regulation standards by the FCC. Take, for example, the Funi dub of One Piece, which is definitely better than the 4Kids version. Even they had to make some edits due to the broadcasting restrictions, such as editing out Sanji's cigarette. However, editing it out completely is better than turning it into a lollipop. As for the name changes made by 4Kids, they had to remain in the broadcasted dub for sake of continuity for the public. These kinds of edits are taking out of the dub in the uncut editions.

2.)How Old the Anime Is- Many of the dubs we have today are substantially better than the ones of the 50's (think Astro Boy) or even to the early 2000's. This is because the anime industry is slowly becoming more mainstream, thus given more priority in quality. The poor voices, heavy edits, and bad scripting, while not completely gone, are at least a good chunk of the past now as the industry becomes more responsive to our wants and reactions as consumers.

3.) Scripting to fit Lipflap- An issue being more easily handled today thanks to the advancement of technology, this appears in older dubs. Thanks to certain phrases not translating out to fit a longer amount of lipflap, voice actors, a good few not familiar with the industry yet, had no choice but to add extra filler words to their character's dialogue, lest it look like a poorly dubbed kung-fu movie. Shortening a phrase is a lot easier than to elongate it and retain the same meaning. Example- at least the earlier episodes of Cyberteam in Akihabara.

4.) Cultural Differences-Things that will simply not translate out, such as regional accents and pop culture references. When translators and script writers have to deal with these, most of the time they have no choice but to find a suitable equivalent so that we, the American viewers, can relate to it better. Granted, not all of these can be overlooked, such as different values, but it's not because they think we are stupid (except for a certain company...). They just want us to understand.

5.) Which Company Gets the License- Sometimes, that's all it boils down to. Who they have on contract, who they have hired, what kind of effort they put into it, anything you can think of production-wise. A good example would be Funimation. While some of their earlier dubs were... a bit cringe worthy (Dragonball, anyone?), they have learned from their mistakes and become a successful, respectable company. When I hear a dub is going to be done by them, I know I am getting a quality dub. But if I look at Viz Media, I get a bit worried because I know how hit-or-miss their dubs can be, quality even fluctuating within the same series. And if I know 4Kids got the rights, I know to panic because of a shoddy resume of other works they completely destroyed poorly dubbed, time and time again, never learning from past mistakes, and ultimately, not listening to their audience.

6.) The Quality of the Source Material- Let's face it, some of the shows used as examples, like Naruto, Sailor Moon, or Dragonball, were actually not that good to begin with. If you are given a bad product, you really can't change it's quality by much.

But even besides all of that, to say that ALL dubs suck is a very wide generalization. In fact some dubs are BETTER than their original Japanese versions. For example, Beck Mongolian Chop Squad. It's an anime about 'a group of teenagers who form a rock band', to use the Wikipedia one sentence summary of it. A lot of songs used in the anime during the actual program, and even some conversations, are in English in the original format. When it got dubbed, all of it sounded a lot more natural.