| I didn't know Space Dandy or Samurai Champloo or Yu Yu Hakusho are considered classic |
| I don't know about anime dub because I watch everything with sub, but maybe it is the same reason that caused in my country the quality of the dubs of movies and series fall considably in the past decades. In the past there was less content that needed to be dubbed and the voice actors who were well known theatrical or movie actors at that time had enough time to take every scene multiple times if it was needed, they worked together on the scenes which made it possible for them to interact with each other and it was their prestige on the line if they would have done an abyssmal work. Now making a dub is more like a conveyer belt work, the workload has been multipled manyfold, every scene is taken only once, the actors don't have time to interact with each other and know only the absolute necessery of the context of the voiced lines; a lot more of them needed for the work to be done, the payment became less, and because of those reasons the profession became watered down with amatours. |
IshitatesoApr 28, 10:08 AM
 |
| I'd have to say there may be nostalgia bias in some cases. Some people hold dubs that don't really hold up like the original Dragon Ball Z as one of the greatest of all time, but when you go back to it, it has many major flaws that aren't present in modern dubs in terms of acting, scripting, and accuracy. A lot off people start of watching dubbed before moving to watching with English subtitles over Japanese audio and aren't willing to watch dubs anymore since they are getting a "More authentic" experience. |
This post is brought to you by your local transfem gamer goblin. Will not tolerate bigotry and will fight against "anti-woke" sentiment to make the anime community a safer place.  |
| It's the "First Audio Track Wins" phenomenon. For older/classic titles that viewers first saw dubbed, especially in their childhood/youth on TV, they got used to those dub voices as the "default" or how characters were "supposed" to sound. But for modern titles, viewers saw them in Japanese first, whether via TV-fansubs in the 2000s, legal streams or rips thereof in the 2010s where JP audio was the only option during the broadcasts, or in the 2020s if they watch the JP audio first to avoid waiting a few weeks for the English dubs to come out. So for those, the Japanese vocal performances became the "default," and the English version became "these characters sound different, therefore worse." But none of those well-regarded/classic dubs were made in a vacuum, i.e. by singularly-talented actors/writers/directors who only made those dubs and never worked in the industry again. All of that personnel went on to gain more experience over long careers in the dubbing industry, and the recording software and technology around them only got better as time went on. Plus, anime viewers who deride dub VAs as zero-talent hacks don't seem to have any issue with them in other media, e.g. Tabitha St. Germain as Shana vs. Tabitha St. Germain as Rarity. All of these disparities are explained by "First Audio Track Wins." Of course, there are some who'll always hate dubs in any shape or form, regardless of which order they encounter the tracks, and I'm sure they'll be showing up to PostCount++ spam this thread in due time. |
Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. Everything that connects to MAL |
| Because modern dubs lack the "soul" one might find in an older English dubbing. YYH is a good example to mention, but even before that show was airing stateside, there were plenty of OVAs or other programs that had a certain amount of cheesiness incorporated into their audio track that really can't be replicated anymore. I guess you could be intentionally trying to recreate that particular era of voicework, but where's the fun in that? In some instances, the dubbing is just objectively good. Even if someone (like myself) were to tell you the Japanese voice cast of Dragon Ball is better than the English one, that fact can't be denied when attempting to view the English version as a standalone thing with its own merits. This applies to a lot of dubs. Finally, more people now watch their anime subbed. As this trend has continued to become more prevalent, the attention and praise of newer English dubs becomes less pronounced. However, I think there are plenty of instances where the recognition is received. My Hero Academia quickly come to mind. |
 |
Zalis said: It's the "First Audio Track Wins" phenomenon. Ive noticed this too that it seems people just prefer what they heard first unless they watched both at same time to compare then it can go either way depending on what they are looking for. |
| Localization and dubbing has injected more politics and bad jokes than they did in the past. Also, they tend to be scared of saying anything not politically correct. |
 |
| Nostalgia. Enjoyable as a child. I watched Yu Yu Hakusho as an adult and tried the dub for the first 8 or 9 episodes and it was as trash as almost all the rest. Kuwabara's voice especially, felt like a different character (for the better) after I switched to sub. |
| There's a few reasons for me. It all kind of sounds the same. Voice actors express emotions the same way, talk the same way, and I feel like they are phoning it in at times. A lot of modern voice actors today just sound like how they sound in real life and it makes a lot of their characters sound exactly the same. I feel like a major reason for this is because they rush dubs out. Instead of refining their voices to suit the character they are playing, they just read the script and put a voice to it. I also feel like a lot of voice actors are becoming miscast. Another issue I have is sound design. I feel like modern technology has made voices unnatural, this doesn't just apply to Anime dubbing, this is in everything. It's like I can tell the voices are coming from a studio rather than outside in some random forest or in a school. Modern day equipment is so advanced now that I can hear everything and I can tell it's all coming from somebody in a studio. It's a bit immersion breaking at times. |
| Nostalgia and cherry picking. Few people are actually saying that dubbing back then was consistently good, but rather putting forth examples of good dubbing they just happen to be familiar with. Part of this is how anime has reached many western fans in their youth, with Toonami being a notable example of this. People who grew up with anime are not only likely to watch subtitles; subtitles feel not only more genuine, but there is greater variety since subtitled anime is more accessible than dubbed anime. After all, Japan has a thriving voice actor economy compared to the United States, where the lack of appreciation for animation as a whole has made voice acting an incredibly niche job career. American dubbing has gotten better, but even today it is almost always inferior to Japanese voice acting for this reason (A notable exception I would argue is Desert Punk). You simply cannot compare the two when one industry is actively cultivating talent and the other simply does not, where the nuances in inflection and tone are to be learned instead of passed on through formal education. |
PeripheralVisionApr 28, 7:31 PM
 |
| Maybe its because of Hidive's dubs? Iunno. |
| Keep scrolling |
| Devilman Crybaby, Cyberpunk Edgerunners, Beastars, Mob Psycho, Attack on Titan, JoJo, pretty much any Ghibli movie, Belle, etc. All amazing dubs, some of them I prefer over the subs. |
 "Don't let your memes be dreams."- Ancient Japanese proverb, probably |
| No, definitely not. It depends on which studio and VA set recorded the dub though. Dubbing was very inconsistent back then. Some of the dubbing was done by the company that licensed the work (Funimation, ADV which is now Sentai) whereas other companies outsourced the work to companies that specifically did voice work like Bang Zoom or New Generation Pictures and this is still how it works today. The in-house stuff was a crap shoot, while the outsourced stuff was usually consistently good. As time went on the in-house actors got the hang of it though around the mid-2000s and pretty much any modern dub I watch now is way better than some of the early dubs I suffered through. |
| "Laws exist only for those who cannot live without clinging onto them." -Souske Aizen "Bleach"  |
| Maybe one of the reasons could be that an English voice didn't feel too out of place with the classic character designs. And back then adult characters had more main roles than they do now, so English was able to come across in an unexaggerated tone more often which sounded more natural. on a grumpy note, these days I think people generally like to complain more than praise hence why there isn't any. |
on 
Reply to JoeChip
I didn't know Space Dandy or Samurai Champloo or Yu Yu Hakusho are considered classic
| @JoeChip JoeChip said: Indeed. Remind me of my childhood. Old but gold! Yu Yu Hakusho are considered classic |
| Signature removed. Please follow the signature rules, as defined in the Site & Forum Guidelines. |
| I think it's partly a case of being much harder to stand out due to the massive volume of dubbed anime being released in modern times. But the larger reason is that dubbing quality has overall declined in the last decade due to more rushed schedules, which means legendary dubs are few and far between. Though to be fair, we don't have as many trashy dubs either. The majority of modern dubs are very middle of the road. There are a few modern dubs that left a major impact on me and will stick with me forever, but there's also a far longer list of forgettable dubs I went through to even find those great few. Which is worlds apart from my experience with dubs of the 2000s where it was not unusual to find an amazing dub on an obscure show. Some modern greats for me include: Beastars, Cyberpunk Edgerunners, Lupin III: Part V, Mob Psycho, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure franchise, Odd Taxi, and the Aria franchise (an older series that got dubbed a few years back). |
 |
| Def nostalgia, when I was a kid and didn't realize they were dubs and subs weren't a think. |
PeripheralVision said: American dubbing has gotten better, but even today it is almost always inferior to Japanese voice acting for this reason (A notable exception I would argue is Desert Punk). You simply cannot compare the two when one industry is actively cultivating talent and the other simply does not, where the nuances in inflection and tone are to be learned instead of passed on through formal education. It's interesting that you bring up Desert Punk* here. The main dub VAs in that series, Eric Vale (who played Kanta and also wrote much of the dub script), Stephanie Young (Junko), and Luci Christian (Kosuna), all have lengthy careers in dubs made previously and afterwards, and the ADR directors and other behind-the-scenes staff have extensive credits as well. Is it likely that they only did high-quality, possibly-superior-to-the-Japanese work in that one series, or is there something else going on? I'd say it's the latter -- as you know, the characters in Desert Punk spend most of their time wearing face-covering helmets to protect from the elements. Which means that the characters' mouths usually aren't visible, and thus the scriptwriting / vocal performances do not have to worry about matching mouth flaps, like most other dubs. So perhaps, anime viewers' experience with the typical dub is not because of a vast disparity in acting ability, but because of the technical limitations of the medium. Put another way, I don't blame people for finding dubs awkward because of JP lines like "[Name]-san...!" changing to "Oh, [Name]...!", but that doesn't prove dub VAs to be talentless hacks. |
Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. Everything that connects to MAL |
More topics from this board
» Anime that made you feel emotionalST63LTH - 1 hour ago |
5 |
by Codric
»»
8 minutes ago |
|
» Best bald guy?Serafos - May 19 |
22 |
by Serafos
»»
8 minutes ago |
|
» Going through shows you saw a decade ago, have they fell off?Dragevard - 8 hours ago |
11 |
by Zarutaku
»»
9 minutes ago |
|
» Best Black Haired guy?RedTea33 - May 19 |
22 |
by lifesaver64
»»
10 minutes ago |
|
» Thoughts on NA?lezbifriends - May 19 |
17 |
by Theo1899
»»
42 minutes ago |