the quality of american dubs.

There are one or two Animes where I cant stand the original Japanese language and always put on the dub but its pretty rare. (Sometimes their voices just grate or are excessively squeeky or they have a dumb laugh)

I stopped watching Sora No Otoshimono because of the main male leads voice. :( (I'll probably watch it sometime in the future but it was one of those moments where you just decide that you REALLY cant stand it)

Outlaw Stars dub was pretty good, I liked The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiyas too also Full Metal Panic wasnt bad at all.

Lucky Stars dub was just fail though as some guy on this thread already stated.

Id love to hear a dub in English but with a Frrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrench accent (David Ginola could do it because hes worth it) That'd be pretty cool! Or English with a German accent! (AWESOME) :D

I agree, it can sometimes sound good, but it makes no sense. Animax dubbed Hayate no Gotoku and almost all the characters had different accents!

Its just not possible in Japan unless they are foreigners in japan.

Because most dubs are made by 4Kids tv which sucks. And also, adapting any media from another language will tend to make it not as good. Look at the Japanese dubs of American movies. Even with Norio Wakamoto voicing it, it still doesn't sound as good as an American movie.

Nah, actually, it was a pretty good dub. Like Code Geass, it had a couple odd voices, but once you stop comparing the tone of English and the tone of Japanese you can tell that it's better than "horrible".



Pray tell then how you dub a character with a Kansai dialect when it's a commonly referenced aspect of his/her character?! If you want to take things further, then none of the characters should be dubbed at all because "it doesn't take place in the West"!

Except when the situation dictates, like if it does not take place in Japan (Last Exile, Cowboy Bebop, Hetalia) I don't mind them using western, or even more exotic accents. Especially in Hetalia, where Japan has a major case of the Engrish.

^^^THIS
There are very few good dubs but they're out there such as Cowboy Bebop.
I think the industry needs new blood to join as the current crop of actors are getting long in the tooth.

Edit: Forgot to mention english dubs are like the dubs of Hong Kong action movies of the 80s. They're terrible but funny to watch because they're that terrible.

The Lucky Star dub is horrific and burnt my ears. I watched the first minute of the first episode in English and I turned it off straight away. This was after I had watched it in Japanese; I just wanted to compare.

i think it depends on your particular preferences.For me watching subs of anime online is far more affordable than buying the DVDs.Though i feel guilt as well because all the animators hard work isn't being paid by my pocket so i do feel like i'm stealing from them.So when i do have the cash i usually buy products from my favorite series to show my own support.

i think are some dubs that do an average job,that could have been done worse in English.(Bleach,Lucky Star,The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya).I also believe it also depends on the target audience the quality of the voices (Naruto and One Piece)were aimed towards a lower demographic than it was originally intended thus less effortless believable voices.

Not all dubs are terrible. Like a lot people have said the work that funamation does is quality work. Though there are some sins in the dubbed world(4kids) that does not mean all dubs are terrible. I prefer to listen to dubs most of the time because sometimes I don't want to read subtitles when I work on something. I want to just put on the dub and listen while I focus on something else. Though I believe hearing the indented voice and soundtrack to an anime is overall better; I still believe that dubs a good watch once in a while.

You have no idea how much I thank dubbing for allowing me to do something else while watching an anime, otherwise you have to focus entirely on just watching (especially if it's a sub-par series or one I've seen before and just putting it on in the background).
None the less, this is a serious topic of discussion at the comic shop that I hang around from time to time and we have come to a reasonable conclusion on the subject, given that we are all raised in an English speaking community.
As an English speaking audience we are MUCH more critical on dubbing since we are around English speaking people all the time, we grew up around them and know the mannerisms, dialects and normal ways of conversation, so when we hear something that isn't quite right we pick up on it much more readily and are much more likely to label the dub at a lower quality of work . Personally, I've never been around a real world group of Japanese folks conversing. I'm not sure of when or what they are saying and what to take as sarcastic, what regional dialect they are using etc. I can't be a fair judge of wether Japanese dubs are GOOD or not since I can't understand what good or bad is from my background of not speaking Japanese. Even if I learn it, I will still be from an English speaking background and that would influence my own Japanese dialect.
When I first started watching anime I only thought the Japanese audio track was better because everyone told me that was the case, and I wouldn't say otherwise because I didn't know what was good or bad anyway, they may all be good, they may all be bad. It's fair to say there could be just as many bad Japanese dubs are there are English ones, but until I learn the language properly I'm not going to be able to say either way, and it doesn't matter if other people tell me what's good or bad since it's all a matter of personal preference.
I myself am in the minority though saying I prefer the dubs. I've listened to them my whole life so I can 'tolerate' basically all dubs imaginable. I actually enjoy a lot of them, but I understand why everyone likes the Japanese audio better, there can be no lost in translation moments or misinterpretation there, but as far as I'm concerned as long as you are provided with both audio options, you've really got nothing to complain about.
Apologies for the essay :D

English dubs are so horrible, because in America dubbing is a shit tier job in the entertainment industry. You get paid less and usually the production is a rush job, so no re-takes and often the dubber reads the script the first time when he's acting it.

I live in Hungary and back in the "Goulash Communism" we used to have excellent dubs.

The reason was, they were produced by the same state owned company (Studio Pannonia) that employed most film/theater actors.

So films were dubbed by the same stars who you otherwise saw in domestic films or playing Shakespeare in the theater.

When commercial TV stations appeared the quality of dubs went into a nose dive, since they employed ridiculously cheap dubbing companies.