Subs vs Dubs (breaking new ground in blogging!)

I'll get straight to the first point: Fuck you dubfans.

Little backstory; I started writing this a month or so ago with the opinion that "hey, you like what you like.. it's not my place to tell someone how to watch something" and I was going to do a piece looking at the pros and cons of both.

But the more I thought about it, the more this whole dub-community started looking bizarre to me, and I realized that people who are pro-dubs are either 1) Blind, 2) Lazy, 3) Morons, or 4) Young Kids (which is pretty much an "all of the above" answer).

Because if you told me that you prefer to listen to the dubbed version of Seven Samurai, Oldboy, Amelie, or whatever other myriad of foreign films out there I would slap you with my bitch-tits and assume you an uncultured knob-head.

Sure, Magikano may not exactly be Kurosawa, but that's no reason to not take anime as a legitimate medium of expression.

The second, and more important point
Anime is about two things: GAR and Moe/TEH CUTE.

Forget story, mecha, cheap gags, angst, and all that jazz, because those two key factors above are really the lynchpin of anime as we know it. Even if a show doesn't revolve about them, the elements will be strongly present.

And there's your problem. Western voice actresses do not sound TEH CUTE. There may be a couple, but I've certainly never run across them (and yes, I actually do a dub check on all of the DVDs I buy).

GAR is something us Westerners can do a little better, however there's still an unfortunate tendancy for VAs to just put on a strained Eastwood-meets-Ash-from-Pokemon voice and assume they sound awesomely hard. There's also an obviously clear lack of badassed exoticness that occurs with the replacement of the Japanese VA.

Would you think Hilary Haag voicing Pan's Labyrinth is "awesome"?

So in closing, championing a dubtrack isn't as clear cut as a matter of audible preference. It's basically saying "fuck you" to what the majority of series are trying to convey. That's kind of a dick move.

There's something seriously wrong with the notion of "fans" getting excited over the prospect of a dub announcement to their treasured series.

Extremely wrong.

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Loli Straight finale and a slight look back

Perfect screencap for a reflection, THX UFOTBL KEKEKE ^_^

I'm a little late getting to this, but episode 12 of Manabi Straight has finally made it's way through my backlog and I would be a bit of a dick if I didn't comment on it's greatness.

Overall Manabi Straight was a better than average series, but that ending was the real deal. I wasn't so sure about an epilogue episode after them pulling out the big school fair revival just previous, but Studio Ufotable proved that when they're not making shitty space actioneers, they're bringing the thunder in their pants.

Perfect example: most anime series would have been happy just to end it on a bit of Masugu Go! at the airport (if they didn't just do a magical reset instead), but ufotable table said "nuh uh dude," whipped out their proverbial hairy balls and added that touch of class with the slow-mo walk away.

There was tons of little touches like that throughout the show but I shall restrain myself, for fear of sounding like Michael at anime|otaku when Honey and Clover comes up.

Sad thing is we're more likely to see Coyote Ragtime 2 licenced before this or Futakoi Alt.