Good Dubbed Anime

[RikuCrafter]

Death Note has the best dub I've ever seen. Pokemon is okay, but the anime is pretty bad now (Pokemon is one of those watch dub only anime)

 

[Midna]

Sloshy, perhaps you and others are capable of hearing your anime characters in badly acted, badly translated, badly romanized English without tearing out your hair. For me, it utterly kills all enjoyment of the show. It's not about what they changed, usually. It's about how god damned jarring the voices are. I can't even express what went through my head as I tried to watch the dub for Gurren Lagann. The horror.

I guess dubs are for people who can't read and watch at the same time?

 

[Arnold Schwarzen]

It's anotha troooooooooooooollll dick! I happen to prefer dubs and I've seen what I believe to be some damn good ones. Not every single character's voices are perfect but I see most of them are well done in the ones I like. Some of the dialogue is altered for the better too sometimes.

 

[Edgedancer]

I am much the same as you TC. I prefer dub over sub 9 times out of 10. Some good ones are Gurreen Laggan, Death Note and Zoids. That said, I dont have very high standards so feel free to take my opinion with a grain of salt.

>Gurren Lagann's dub
I'm so sorry.

I guess thats what I get for not checking to make sure I spell it right. Haha. Unless I am totally missing the point you were trying to make...

 

[Midna]

I am much the same as you TC. I prefer dub over sub 9 times out of 10. Some good ones are Gurreen Laggan, Death Note and Zoids. That said, I dont have very high standards so feel free to take my opinion with a grain of salt.

>Gurren Lagann's dub
I'm so sorry.

I guess thats what I get for not checking to make sure I spell it right. Haha. Unless I am totally missing the point you were trying to make...

No. I watched Gurren Lagann in Japanese. It was the epitome of manly epicness.

I tried to watch it in English. Every awesome moment felt absolutely off. Nothing had the same meaning. Kamina didn't even sound manly. Viral went fro being an intimidating badass to being a flamboyant, arrogant prick who couldn't back up his words.

In short, I can't be sure the bros who watched it in this language really got the full effect of that show. Maybe I'm just picky and intolerant, and normal people can actually get away with watching this stuff.

 

[Edgedancer]

I guess thats what I get for not checking to make sure I spell it right. Haha. Unless I am totally missing the point you were trying to make...

No. I watched Gurren Lagann in Japanese. It was the epitome of manly epicness.

I tried to watch it in English. Every awesome moment felt absolutely off. Nothing had the same meaning. Kamina didn't even sound manly. Viral went fro being an intimidating badass to being a flamboyant, arrogant prick who couldn't back up his words.

In short, I can't be sure the bros who watched it in this language really got the full effect of that show. Maybe I'm just picky and intolerant, and normal people can actually get away with watching this stuff.

Fair enough. To be honest, I dont follow any anime a hell of a lot, so I am sure that the moments were lost to me simply not paying enough attention. I can understand you though, since 99% of the time, everything is better in its original language. If I invested more time into it, I am sure I would have the same opinion as well and investigate the sub versions. But as background noise or simple entertainment, I dont believe that I heed to go that far. At least with english voices, I dont have to watch the screen all the time and can do other stuff while stick picking up the vague overarching story.

 

[mameks]

There's no such thing as a good dubbed anime.
You have to watch them in their original language to experience them as they should be.
Jesus, some people are so ignorant some times.


In seriousness though, Death Note's dub is really good. Light's voice can be a little annoying, but it's a seriously good dub.
Gurren Lagann's dub's not bad, although Simon's voice goes weird occasionally
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya has pretty decent dubs, and is worth it
And Evangelion's dubs are good too. Shinji's annoying no matter what language you hear him in

 

[Panzer Tacticer]

You COULD at least go a bit out of your way to describe what floats your boat eh.

Lets see, good dubbed anime, an entirely subjective concept. Just because I like it doesn't mean you will.

You mention 3 flavours of Dragonball, and we are supposed to conclude you have only seen THAT in dub?

I could mention 100 shows with zero effort since 1990 easily.

But how the heck would we know if you liked Sailor Moon? I did. I also liked Ranma.
Azumnaga Daioh is one of the funniest shows out there. But there are no mechs or buff guys beating the snot out of each other.
Bleach is good, lots of guys beating the snot out of each other.
Noir is good if you like girls with guns.
Rune Soldier is great if you like a D&D like show with a sense of humour although nothing beats Slayers.
Blue Gender was a cool scifi without the warm fuzzy happy happy angle. But Nadesico is a great scifi if you want the humour with the serious.
I could name you a countless list of anime shows involving school girls or just plenty of reasons why school girls end up in the show one way or the other.
If you haven't seen Tenchi Muyo, you haven't seen the show that gave us the harem anime syndrome (supposedly).
Bubblegum Crisis 2040 for serious cyber punk.
And scores of shows that are fun, but do tend to revolve around a lot of girls showing off a lot of skin.

 

[prowler]

Azumnaga Daioh is one of the funniest shows out there.

Erryday Life > Azumanga Daioh.
4koma of Azumanga is much better.

 

[Midna]

There's no such thing as a good dubbed anime.
You have to watch them in their original language to experience them as they should be.
Jesus, some people are so ignorant some times.


In seriousness though, Death Note's dub is really good. Light's voice can be a little annoying, but it's a seriously good dub.
Gurren Lagann's dub's not bad, although Simon's voice goes weird occasionally
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya has pretty decent dubs, and is worth it
And Evangelion's dubs are good too. Shinji's annoying no matter what language you hear him in

I genuinely enjoyed FMA's dub. It was extremely well done, and all of the voices really fit the characters. Especially the Fuhrer. He really wasn't the same in Japanese.

But we're rarely so lucky with dubs

 

[mameks]

Ooo shit, forgot about FMA's dub.
One of them (FMA or FMA:Brotherhood) had dubs seriously sucked, but I can't remember which.

 

[prowler]

I genuinely enjoyed FMA's dub. It was extremely well done, and all of the voices really fit the characters. Especially the Fuhrer. He really wasn't the same in Japanese.

But we're rarely so lucky with dubs

Have you watched Baccano?
The VAs did a good job, especially Issac and Miria, it's probably better than the Japanese VA.

EDIT: But I'll say it again, Funimations dubs aren't that bad.

 

[Sloshy]

Sloshy, perhaps you and others are capable of hearing your anime characters in badly acted, badly translated, badly romanized English without tearing out your hair. For me, it utterly kills all enjoyment of the show. It's not about what they changed, usually. It's about how god damned jarring the voices are. I can't even express what went through my head as I tried to watch the dub for Gurren Lagann. The horror.

I guess dubs are for people who can't read and watch at the same time?

Well excuse me for enjoying something that you didn't

The way I see it, unless you speak fluent Japanese and understand Japanese culture very, very well, watching them subbed over dubbed is pretty pointless. Besides, there are just as many bad Japanese voice actors as there are American ones. If I'm not mistaken, for some Anime, the western voices are considered somewhat better than the eastern ones (like Lelouch in Code Geass). It all depends on the show of course.

Also, I haven't found a single badly-translated anime besides maybe the 4kids ones. If you can point to more specific examples of "good" anime with bad English dubs, I'd love to hear it.

 

[mameks]

Haters gonna hate
Anyways

If I'm not mistaken, for some Anime, the western voices are considered somewhat better than the eastern ones (like Lelouch in Code Geass).

Lies.

 

[Sloshy]

There's no such thing as a good dubbed anime.
You have to watch them in their original language to experience them as they should be.
Jesus, some people are so ignorant some times.


In seriousness though, Death Note's dub is really good. Light's voice can be a little annoying, but it's a seriously good dub.
Gurren Lagann's dub's not bad, although Simon's voice goes weird occasionally
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya has pretty decent dubs, and is worth it
And Evangelion's dubs are good too. Shinji's annoying no matter what language you hear him in

What's the point in experiencing a show "as it should be" when I know absolutely nothing about the Japanese language? I don't see how it's ignorant to prefer a show being dubbed in the language you know best. Some dubs are very well done and sometimes are done better than the original Japanese dubs (you can't pretend like every Japanese voice actor is perfect, after all).

Also I completely forgot about Haruhi! I'm such a huge Haruhi fan. I have all of the English light novels released so far and I've watched the entire dubbed anime. They did a very good job and it's already considered a classic even though it's pretty young.

As for Shinji... Well, I think being annoying at times is part of his character the voice actors seem to capture his emotions pretty well.

 

[alidsl]

There's no such thing as a good dubbed anime.
You have to watch them in their original language to experience them as they should be.
Jesus, some people are so ignorant some times.


In seriousness though, Death Note's dub is really good. Light's voice can be a little annoying, but it's a seriously good dub.
Gurren Lagann's dub's not bad, although Simon's voice goes weird occasionally
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya has pretty decent dubs, and is worth it
And Evangelion's dubs are good too. Shinji's annoying no matter what language you hear him in

What's the point in experiencing a show "as it should be" when I know absolutely nothing about the Japanese language? I don't see how it's ignorant to prefer a show being dubbed in the language you know best. Some dubs are very well done and sometimes are done better than the original Japanese dubs (you can't pretend like every Japanese voice actor is perfect, after all).

Also I completely forgot about Haruhi! I'm such a huge Haruhi fan. I have all of the English light novels released so far and I've watched the entire dubbed anime. They did a very good job and it's already considered a classic even though it's pretty young.

As for Shinji... Well, I think being annoying at times is part of his character the voice actors seem to capture his emotions pretty well.

You should learn Japanese to get the full experience

 

[Sloshy]

You should learn Japanese to get the full experience

There's the problem. A good majority of the people who want to enjoy anime (as in, they don't live in Japan) are people that don't really care if it's anime or not and just care if it's a good show. Thus, they don't really care about learning Japanese and just want a show that's well-written, well-acted, and overall well-made. If that takes translating that show and getting foreign voice actors which may or may not be better than the original Japanese ones, then so be it. Besides, I don't even know what a good or bad Japanese voice actor sounds like so if I listened to the original voice actors, I wouldn't even know if they sounded good because I'm not fluent in Japanese. I'd just assume they sounded good simply because they sound foreign.

If you know fluent Japanese and know the culture well, then by all means watch them in the original language. People like me and the original poster of this topic don't want to have to learn about another culture just to appreciate a show and just want it conveniently packaged in the language we already know. There are bad dubs and there are good dubs, of course, but most of the good anime being published in the west today have very serviceable dubs at the very least, and that's what matters.

 

[alidsl]

You should learn Japanese to get the full experience

There's the problem. A good majority of the people who want to enjoy anime (as in, they don't live in Japan) are people that don't really care if it's anime or not and just care if it's a good show. Thus, they don't really care about learning Japanese and just want a show that's well-written, well-acted, and overall well-made. If that takes translating that show and getting foreign voice actors which may or may not be better than the original Japanese ones, then so be it. Besides, I don't even know what a good or bad Japanese voice actor sounds like so if I listened to the original voice actors, I wouldn't even know if they sounded good because I'm not fluent in Japanese. I'd just assume they sounded good simply because they sound foreign.

If you know fluent Japanese and know the culture well, then by all means watch them in the original language. People like me and the original poster of this topic don't want to have to learn about another culture just to appreciate a show and just want it conveniently packaged in the language we already know. There are bad dubs and there are good dubs, of course, but most of the good anime being published in the west today have very serviceable dubs at the very least, and that's what matters.

Well if you enjoy anime so much you should use it to improve your Japanese learning

 

[pokefloote]

Or we could do what OP asked and list which dubs we like and not argue sub vs dub.

 

[alidsl]

Or we could do what OP asked and list which dubs we like and not argue sub vs dub.

I actually don't use subs, I watch my anime in Japanese with no subs, the way you're supposed to