To dub or not to dub

Sub is better .... no, dubbing is!
Oooh, that age old debate – subbing versus dubbing. I'm not about to argue both sides with pros and cons. This is more because I lean towards the subtitles school of thought (all voice actors must be cursing me right about now). But if you are interested in the arguments against subs (along with pros for dubbing), do check out the link here and here. Nah, for this article I wanted to point out the most common reasons why fans cringe and gag whenever they come across a dubbed version of their favorite anime show.

Subs, dubs, what's it all about? When I say subs, I refer to the anime shows which uses English subtitles as a means of making it more accessible to non-Japanese speaking audiences. This means you get the show in all its glory, with original voice actors, Japanese honorifics and hopeful no needless editing of the plot. Yea, I suppose you can see I am biased towards subs. Dubs, on the other hand, refer to anime shows that have voice actors pitch in with English speech bits for all the characters. This particular practice is hated by fans because dubbing usually comes with a number of undesirable changes.

Firstly, there is the misinterpretation of one or more of the characters. I'm guessing voice actors are bringing in their own interpretation of the characters. To be fair, a few of them try and stay true to the original concept. Unfortunately, there are many instances where the dubbed version falls short of fan's expectations. Two examples I noted were the voices for Rukia and Byakuya. Rukia always came across as a somewhat mature (well, remember how old she is), tomboyish character from both the manga and subbed versions. Not so much in the dubbed one. There, every time she asked Ichigo a question, she sounded a tad too possessive of him, you know, in a 'you're my man, what are you doing with her' sort of way.Nice girly voice, Rukia .... snicker!

That actually brings up the next problem. In dubbed ones, folks love making characters fit certain stereotypes. For this reason, all female characters have to sound 'girly'. And the lead male character have a wise-cracking, slightly macho attitude. What bugs me the most is the way characters end up as black or white characters; villains are pure evil and they do what they do because they are bad. That's it, end of the story. Weirdly enough, what you end up liking about the show in the first place is the way each character has shades of gray to him/her. Taking that away sort of kills what you like about, don't you think? By the way, I should add that this particular feature is more common to anime shows targeted at kids.

What do you know, that leads to the third rant. Is it me or do a lot of dubbed shows sound like it is aimed at kids? I mean, the voice actors put on a certain amount of the cutesy factor and you always feel like every other sentence might end with a 'Who's a good little kid, cootchie cootchie coo'. Actually I don't know if it is such a thing 'made for kids' effect. Sure, it seems that way for many but it is not like that for all shows. What is it then? Maybe it is that some of the voice actors sound like they are doing loud stage whispers where the dialog seem fake instead of sounding natural? I noticed that this seems to be a problem seen in foreign flicks that have been dubbed in other languages. Excuse me while I have horrid flashbacks of the time I sat through the dubbed version of City Hunter.

That's not all though. A lot of dubbed anime shows are also edited where folks might cut out certain scenes or characters. Sometimes this is done to adapt the story to the new audience. Sometimes censorship is to blame as people get antsy about keeping gore, violence and any mention of death in anime shows. Think about the number of anime shows that were creatively ended so that folks didn't really die in them. Maybe they just went to another dimension (Dragon Ball Z) or maybe whisked off to the Shadow Realm (Yu-Gi-Oh).

On an end note, check out TVTropes for a whole list of dubbing mishaps.