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Wednesday, June 27, 2007

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.

Elite snobishness has been brought to you by
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6 Comments:

Blogger Rubi said...

I completely agree with you O_O;

10:06 PM

 
Blogger Zeb said...

Heh while I am in the "whatever floats yer boat" camp, that was definitely an amusing & interesting read :)

1:11 AM

 
Blogger Xerox said...

That got to the point pretty fast, O_o. First line too, Fuck you dubfans. XD

Well, in a sense I agree, but it's alright to me if they watch the dub. I personally prefer the raw (which I don't understand) and the fansub (which I do understand.) There's something lacking about American voice acting when it comes to anime. But then, Japanese voice actors might sound equally strange in say...Dexter's Laboratory or Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends or something.

Anyways, interesting read.

1:55 PM

 
Blogger Unknown said...

much agreed mi amigo.

i actually got a dubbed copy of Pan's.. and refused to watch it. I ended up watching the undubbed version, but with NO SUBTITLES:: i d/loaded the script, opened it on another laptop, and referred to that if i needed to know what they said. heh.

-pups

10:20 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Haha wapanese people and their dislike of dubbing.

2:06 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ugh. I'm so tired of this whole argument.

If we didn't have dubs, we wouldn't have Crispin Freeman and the world would be a sad, unsexy place.

END.

6:35 PM

 

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