Sub vs. Dub is a Tired, Pointless Topic—And yet....

22 Sep, 2025

You ever see a comment thread underneath a clip of an anime or video game get completely derailed by people saying "EW, DUB???" Boy, that's annoying.

Look, many (if not most) people expect to watch stuff in their native language and don't think twice about it. And if someone feels immersed in the story while watching a dub, what more can you really ask for?

Now me on the other hand, I am a nerd and a weeb, and I absolutely do want to watch the show in the original language with subtitles. But I don't expect everyone to be like me.

Why do people even try to debate this issue? It's so tired. There's nothing new to say about it, really. You're not going to convince people to switch sides with your unsolicited complaints about the language they’re hearing when they watch a show.

But you know, since I'm not trying to win a debate or anything, I do have a lot of thoughts on the topic. You know. Just for the fun of it.

Part 1: Do You Actually Have To Pick a Side?

The Boring History of How I Became an Anime-With-Subtitles Guy

First of all, let me say that I didn't actually watch any anime until 2014, when I watched the first episode of Attack on Titan on Adult Swim's Toonami block. This was the debut of the series' English dub. It didn't actually occur to me, with how popular the series seemed to be getting, that everyone had been watching the Japanese version with subtitles until then.

Anyway, I watched the episode and didn't really like it. (But that was mainly because I didn't like the idea of a human being chomped on, blood flying out—which is the same problem I had with Jaws in middle school. Later on, I would give Attack on Titan more of a chance and really love it, though I still haven't gone back to watch Jaws again).

I did feel that there was too much yelling. Back then, I was the type of kid who was uncomfortable with strong emotional expression, though, so I can't really respect my past self's opinion there.

(Note to current self: please rein in the tangents a bit).

Anyway, a few years later, I'm hanging out with my brother, who had watched a lot of anime while I was away for a couple years, and he wants to show me some. I'm keeping an open mind. When he shows me Your Name, I get into it. By the end of the movie, I am forever changed.

I actually had a roommate who liked anime the semester after that, which helped to get me thinking, "Yeah, maybe I should try watching some more anime." But I had a somewhat prejudiced notion in my head: "Hey, maybe my real problem with anime was the English dubs. After all, watching Your Name with subtitles was real fun. Maybe English acting just doesn't fit these stories as well for some reason?" My roommate was a big fan of Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, but I didn't really believe him when he said the dub was super good.¹ I was determined that whenever I tried watching another anime, it was going to be subbed.

Now do you see what's happening here? Yes, it seems that I decided to become a subs-only guy after liking a single anime movie.

Honestly, I don't think I would've taken interest in anime at that particular time if dubs had been my only option.

The Fun of Experiencing Something Different (And Perhaps Learning Stuff)

See, when I think back on it, it seems that, at some point, I got the idea in my head that watching a foreign show with subtitles was simply a cool and fun thing to do. Like "Ooh, look at this open-minded, cultured individual over there on their laptop watching Korean dramas." I mean, I'm always kind of curious when people have slightly niche hobbies. It's like, man, they know something most people don't. That's pretty cool.

You know what's cool about hearing another language? Hearing another language. Exposing yourself to something you normally wouldn't.

Sure, when you first start watching subbed anime (or anything not in your native language), the voices may perhaps be sounds your brain doesn't comprehend at all. Over time, though, you might start to notice things.

Then again, you might not, because sometimes I hear YouTubers severely mispronouncing characters' names, which absolutely baffles me. They read the subtitles but they don't actually listen to the audio, apparently.

That's never been me though. I try to listen.²

Usually, anime subtitles don't include honorifics. After a while, I started to notice the discrepancies between how the subtitles would refer to characters and what I would hear the characters actually saying. This led me to research my questions online to try to understand whatever little I could about Japanese... which eventually made me think about actually learning the language, but I never got serious about it. Regardless, in this way, subbed anime really appealed to my curiosity and offered a small glimpse at another language and culture.

Not that I was consciously thinking about any of that in the beginning. But today, after all these years, I'm at a point where I sometimes am able to learn random tiny things from watching subtitled stuff. (You almost certainly aren't going to be actually able to speak the language from that alone though. Maybe if you turn off the subtitles, eventually you might).

Dubs Good?

But let's go back to my mundane story. The year is 2018. I start getting into a couple anime series, and it's fun. But then, one day, I say "I wonder what it's like watching the dub." Well, watching dubs soon becomes something I do pretty often. Kind of a surprising turn in this story, I think.

But I mean, anime dubs are pretty much part of my generation's culture, if you think about it. A lot of my peers had Dragon Ball Z or Naruto as their first anime. Or Pokémon. Not me, obviously, but a lot of them!

The first anime series that I got into was My Hero Academia. I loved watching it with subtitles, but eventually I watched the dub out of curiosity. And honestly? I thought it was pretty good.

I was also aware that Toonami existed as a Saturday night block on Adult Swim, and so I figured it'd be fun to start watching that. This is actually how I found out about Black Clover and, strangely enough, Pop Team Epic.

Now, you kids may not remember this, but there used to be a company called Funimation, but it was bought by Sony, who decided, after like five years, to buy Crunchyroll and rebrand Funimation as Crunchyroll. Anyway, Funimation was a licensor of anime and a dubbing company, but it had its own streaming service as well. There was a time when Funimation said, "Hey, we'll give the subtitled versions of shows we license to Crunchyroll, and we'll have just the dubbed versions of those shows on our site." Now this was a conundrum for me because honestly I liked being able to watch both. But, you know, Funimation was cheaper, so for a good while, I had Funimation and not Crunchyroll.³

So that's why, for a relatively brief time, I was watching some shows dub-only. Like, Fruits Basket 2019. The first time I watched that first season, it was the dub.

So even though I had a bias against dubs initially, by this point, I had gotten over that. I'm not really sure how I gained it in the first place—I mean Attack on Titan's dub isn't particularly bad is it? (Actually I do have a bone to pick with the script—I feel like they should have tried to make it sound more fantasy, even if it's not faithful to the Japanese script, because the American ear expects that from a European-like setting).

Still, in time, subs would win out as my first choice.

I remember watching at least the first couple episodes of Steins;Gate in 2020 in dub even though I had the option for subs, so at that point I guess I still liked to pick and choose.

So what are the positives of watching a dub?

Well you know, during those early days of watching anime, I noticed that certain emotional scenes could connect with me even more powerfully when I heard them in my own language. There is definitely something to that.

Admittedly, I haven't experienced that contrast in more recent years, which I think is because I got better at actually listening to the acting when I watch the subtitled versions. But that says something, doesn't it? Getting the most out of the subtitles is something I had to learn over time. But with a dub, there's no barrier. You just watch it the same way you watch anything else.

With no subtitles, you don't have to read, so you can focus completely on the animation. This is actually more significant than I'd like to admit. I feel like sometimes with a really well-animated show, there's so much subtle stuff I don't even notice when I'm focused on the subtitles on the bottom of the screen. I followed this bot on Twitter that posted GIFs of Love Live Sunshine and there were so many funny animation moments I had never fully appreciated before. Now that I'm aware of this problem, I try to be better at actually looking at the whole screen, but it's a challenge.

Now, I don't exactly "watch" dubs nowadays, but I certainly listen to them. Because listening to stuff while playing video games is one of my favorite pastimes.

I have a lot of fun just seeing how the adaptation turns out. It's so interesting to see how writers find creative ways to communicate ideas across languages and to hear a whole new group of actors bringing the story to life.

So yeah, I'm glad dubs exist.

Layers of Adaptation

Like I said, I'm always subtitles-first these days.

I think one of the biggest reasons I am drawn to subtitled versions is that hearing the original audio feels like an experience that gets you a bit closer to the original creators' intentions than the dub does.

Don't get me wrong. Unless you master a language for yourself, your understanding of media in that language is always going to be filtered through at least one person: a translator. But one translator writing subtitles is fewer layers of adaptation than a dub.

You get a writer making an English script based off of the raw translation, and then you get directors and actors coming in to record. Everyone is going to have their own interpretation of the material. On top of that, there is often a bit of a time crunch, as dubs are trying to release close behind the original versions (some shows manage to even get a same-day dub premiere). With these factors, it's only natural that a few things will end up coming across a little differently. Does this ruin the shows? Of course not. You gotta remember that the original production companies are often involved in dubs; they're usually not giving the localizers full creative freedom and they may need to even sign off on certain changes to the material. From all that I've seen, I believe dubs usually do succeed in leaving audiences with the same feelings that people get from watching with subtitles, even if there are subtle differences here and there.

Here's the thing though: if you're a little nerd like me who really cares about the tiny details of words, it really is nice to go with the subtitled version. Because you simply don't have to worry about as many little changes.

Plus I remember a small amount of Japanese words, which basically makes me my own translator. 😎

Nah just kidding I already told you I don't speak the language. But I do find that knowing even a few things can let you in on a bit more nuance than you get from the English translation alone.

See, there's always going to be stuff that doesn't fully translate to English. For example: in English the way you refer to yourself is pretty much just "me" "myself" and "I," as they say. In Japanese there are more options. "Watashi," "boku," "ore," "watakushi," etc. Characters who are children or childish often will use their own name instead of a pronoun. A character who is particularly arrogant can add the honorific "sama" when referring to themselves (though this can be done in a tongue-in-cheek way). This stuff interests me. Now, do you actually need to know these things to understand a character? Not at all. Can they be useful shortcuts to understanding them? For sure.

On top of that, translators differ in how literal they're going to be, so it's always nice to be able to recognize some words just in case you want to have your own opinion about how you'd translate a line (but I mean, come on, those guys know better than me).

I don't deny that there are always going to be nuances I'll never get, at least not without a lot of serious study of the language and culture. But like I said before, I learn little things from hearing the original audio, and I love that.

Another Reason for Subs? I Just Like The Actors. It's Not That Deep

When I was a kid, I learned the names of some of the SpongeBob actors. I suppose that was the first time I got interested in voice actors. When I got into anime many years later and started watching dubs, I became interested in those actors. (And the English dubbing industry is seemingly not that big, especially if you're getting dubs from Texas where Crunchryoll is, so you certainly do become familiar with a bunch of voices). Over the years, however, as I watched subs more and more consistently, I became familiar with more and more Japanese voice actors. Because of that, nowadays when I see the Japanese cast list for something like, say, Metaphor: ReFantazio, I'm like, "Wow, Natsuki Hanae??? Saori Hayami??? Yoshino Nanjo?????? Bro, she's Eli Ayase!!!!" It gets to a point where I think, "Sure, it could be fun to hear the English performances... but do I really want to miss out on these actors I already love?"

So, honestly, I'm realizing what largely motivates me to pick JP audio, even in video games, is that I've just become a fanboy for a bunch of seiyuu. Like, I was going to play Persona 5 Tactica in English back in 2023, but when you put Rie Takahashi in there as one of the main characters, do I really have a choice anymore but to play it with JP audio?⁴

Seiyuu are just good at their jobs, man. It's a competitive field, and from what I understand, most of them don't even get into it until after they go to these special schools to train in the craft of anime acting.

Also, a lot of them kinda have to basically be idols nowadays, what with all the concerts. So that's rough if you just wanted to act, right?

These Bocchi the Rock girls learned the instruments in real life! That's pretty cool! I hope they've been having fun with that!

The extra stuff is wholly irrelevant to the experience of simply enjoying a story (but it does give you a lot more to enjoy if you're going to be a major fan). My point in bringing it up is not "HA! Japan better! Take that!" It just shows that it's a very different industry there. They have many ways to get hardcore fans even more invested.

Now, I can be a fanboy for English actors too, don't get me wrong, and if my decision was based solely on what actors I like, for some shows, choosing between sub or dub would be difficult. But obviously, there are other factors. I mean what have I been talking about this whole time?

Part 2: Fans Please Be Chill

I don’t want to miss out on an unknowable number of masterpiece shows that aren't dubbed

Here's one truth about anime: a lot of amazing shows are not going to get dubs.

There are fans who watch dubs if they have the option, but are willing to watch subtitled versions if not. Good for you.

But there are also fans who just won't watch shows if they're not dubbed. And I think that's kind of a tragedy.

Not much else to say about it beyond that. Moving on.

Why Fans Are Repulsed When They Hear a Different Voice

Has this ever happened to you?

You come across a clip of an anime you've already watched. The character opens their mouth, but you realize you're hearing an English dub. You want to say "EUGHHHHHHH!"

Hey, I try to be fair and reasonable, but I've found myself having this kneejerk reaction at times. But a kneejerk reaction should never be treated as an informed opinion! Can you fairly judge the quality of acting from two seconds of audio?

In the vast majority of cases, I don't think these negative reactions are because the acting is actually bad. For the true cause, I have a simple theory: When you're familiar with a character and know what their voice is supposed to sound like, but you now hear them with a different voice, your brain hates it. It sounds wrong.

I mean, imagine if your best friend appeared one day and had a completely different voice from before. It would freak you out, right?

That's all it is. If you actually watch a full episode of a dub, your brain will get more used to how the characters sound in this alternate version, and then you can actually judge the acting more fairly.

Sometimes I think dubs really nail the casting and get someone who gives off a very similar vibe to the original. Other times, it feels like the directors or whoever got a different impression of the character than I had (of course this can happen even in the initial adaptation from manga to anime, too). A dub voice doesn't actually have to have similar qualities to the original voice to be a good match; what matters is that the actor understands the character.

You know something that convinces me I'm correct with my theory that people dismiss dubs simply because they haven't given them any time? It's this comment I've seen quite a few times that'll say, "I don't watch dubs, they suck! Except for Dragon Ball!" I gotta say, it frustrates me that those people can't see what's happening. Buddy, it's not a coincidence that the one dub you enjoy is the one you grew up watching. You're used to those voices because you heard them long before you ever heard the Japanese cast. That's it.

Indeed, I've been talking about people rejecting dubs because they're used to the Japanese voices, but it can work the other way around too. In my experience, when it comes to anime, the voice cast people usually get attached to is whichever one they hear first.

So, fans are really lacking in self-awareness sometimes. The idea that the dubbing companies achieved an acceptable level of quality for you one time, over twenty years ago, but were never able to do so again is extremely silly. You realize that, right? I seriously don't ever want to see a sub-only person comment that crap again. And you guys know saiyan isn't even pronounced that way in Japanese right?

Acting Styles

I would say I watch a moderate level of anime—nothing compared to some people—but I feel I'm making an accurate statement when I say that anime—specifically the original Japanese performances—often tends to go for a melodramatic style as opposed to a naturalistic style.

So what do you do when you adapt these shows for English?

As Americans, generally we are used to acting being not super over-the-top. Captain America in Avengers: Endgame doesn't go screaming, "Avengers, assemble!" with all the energy he can muster (MUSTAAAAAAAAARD). Instead, he's kinda just cool when he says it. But not many people nearby would actually be able to hear him at that volume, I think. Doesn't that make it actually less realistic? Whatever. The point is, we think of Hollywood acting as not being super animated or exaggerated. I mean, my whole youth, I thought Luke Skywalker was kinda lame and funny with how he reacted when he found out the truth about his father—and actually, maybe that was just a me problem? Well, either way, I feel like we just don't get many movies where main characters are yelling "THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE!" nowadays.

So should English dubs of anime strive for the type of acting Americans are used to, or go more over-the-top?

Well, it probably depends.

First of all, if an anime in Japanese is already naturalistic, then obviously you match that in English. Easy decision.

But is there a situation where the original is melodramatic, but going more natural would work better in the dub? Hypothetically, yes. You're adapting a story for a certain audience, so it's ok to make a creative choice that will make the story hit harder for that audience. You go too campy, and people might get pulled out of the story.

Does this happen in reality? I have no idea, to be honest. I feel like with most stuff where I've heard both versions, the English dub tries to match the energy of the Japanese. What's surprising to me though, is that I've heard people stuff like say "English dubs have no energy" but that hasn't been my experience, generally. Maybe sometimes the actors don't go quite as wild with the screaming as the Japanese ones do in certain scenes, I'll give you that. But like, man, I remember watching Attack on Titan the Final Season Part 2 or whatever, and in the original, you had Ayane Sakura voicing Gabi. You may know Ayane Sakura for playing some cute girls like the childhood friend character in Your Lie In April, or that one girl in Oregairu, but at the moment when she's screaming "REINEERRRRRR," you will learn just how insanely intense she can be. And then when I watched the dub of that scene later, Gabi being played in this version by Lindsay Seidel, I remember specifically thinking "I bet her voice must've hurt after that one," so evidently she brought a lot of intensity as well! But hey, if there's an anime where the English is considerably more naturalistic in style than the Japanese, I'd definitely want to check that out.

All that aside, even though Hollywood movies seem to prefer a more grounded style of acting, the over-the-top style definitely works for a lot of anime. Many battle shounen series call for it. I mentioned My Hero Academia earlier. (I haven't watched this show in years, but whatever). This is a show where there are superheroes and villains with all sorts of weird powers just everywhere. It's fun. It's silly. You don't want to be too subtle with the acting here. For any battle shounen anime that isn't too grounded or serious, it's the perfect time to just aim for super-energetic, upbeat acting.

I think comedies can be some of the best dubs. First of all, you as the viewer are not taking things too seriously, so you expect neither subtlety nor melodrama. The actors can just have fun with it. And second, in many cases, you kind of have to take liberties to make a good portion of the jokes to actually work.

Now, was I majorly offended by the Kaguya-sama dub's decision to let the narrator (Ian Sinclair) do basically whatever he wanted? Yes. The reason the narrator was funny in the original was because he was taking mundane situations so incredibly seriously. That joke didn't actually need to be changed at all. However. Did the change lead to some moments that were really funny in their own way? Also yes. I mean, dude once did a SpongeBob French narrator voice just because he could.

I also liked the part where Ishigami (Austin Tindle) said "INSTAGRAAAAAAM!" And I think it's in episode 1 maybe (they dubbed season 2 first, by the way, so that makes it even harder for me to remember) but Shirogane (Aaron Dismuke) says "You LIAR" in a way that has forever cemented itself in my brain.

Yeah, comedies sure can be great in dub. (But the Japanese version of Kaguya-sama is still funnier and I cringe at some of those narrator lines like "Because she is best girl" I mean get that internet crap outta here).

The peak of intense comedic acting in an English dub is, uh, probably this one scene from Zombie Land Saga where a character played by Ricco Fajardo yells a lot.

Honestly I don't bring up this issue of acting styles to make any specific argument. I don't feel like I know enough to say one way or the other how things should be. Different directors are going to make different choices. Adapting a work of art into another language is, in and of itself, an art, not a science. (Even just writing subtitles is not a science, because language has so much nuance, and words have so many different cultural connotations, and idioms sometimes are so strange and would read as absolute nonsense if taken literally—but everyone who's not an idiot already understands these things).

Please Stop Commenting About Your Hatred of Dubs Whenever You Encounter a Dub

Did you know it's possible to just ignore things you don't like? It's true!

I'm just saying, if you go online and see a post talking about a dub, you are contributing absolutely nothing by commenting "Ewwwwww dub???" Actually you're just being annoying, so it's more like you're making the discussion worse rather than contributing nothing.

Are there contexts where you can discuss this issue? Well, I sure hope so, or else this post ought to be deleted.

If you want to express that you don't like watching dubs, I recommend you think about the context and about your approach. If there's a Reddit post of an article announcing a dub of a show, just because you have the thought, "I don't watch dubs," or "dubs suck," that doesn't mean you should type those thoughts into your computer and submit it for strangers to see. We already know some people don't watch dubs bro. You're not unique for saying that bro. Maybe people want to actually discuss the show bro.

You need to really ask yourself if anyone is going to gain anything from reading the 10,000th comment hating on the very concept of dubbed anime. Maybe strangers who are going to say "Hehehe yes so true dubs are bad epic win!" will enjoy it. But that's about it. You're probably not going to make dub fans switch sides into watching subtitles by being annoying about it.

I keep a distance from fandom in general these days, both anime and video games, because honestly I just don't have the patience to read the wild stuff that some fans say. When I was a bit more involved, sometimes I would see fans of the Yakuza video game series being super annoying about dubs. If you don't know, the series had an English dub for the first game on PS2, but abandoned dubs for every game afterward until 2019, when the spinoff Judgment released worldwide with in-game options for English and Japanese voices. With the exception of Like a Dragon Ishin, the series has had English audio for every new game since then. Because a lot of the English fanbase got into the series when it was subtitles-only, there's a lot of attachment to the Japanese voices. But there's also a mentality among some fans that if people are using the English dub then they're just... enjoying the game the wrong way?

I think this is just what happens when people get too absorbed in fandom and have no life outside it. They get too demanding and too opinionated about things that don't matter. It's ok if someone enjoys things in a different way from you.

Well, the good news for dub enjoyers is that, according to the streaming platforms, you make up the majority of viewers anyway, so you really don't have to give a crap about what some dork on the internet thinks. Neat!

Part 3: Getting Into Some Nitty-Gritty Stuff About Adaptations

Obligatory "TN: Keikaku Means Plan" Reference

If you've played Persona 3, 4, or 5 in English, you will notice that Japanese honorifics (san, kun, chan) are used. Among localizations, this is pretty unusual. When bringing Persona 3 into English, the translators decided they could use the game to introduce Western players to Japanese culture.

If you've been with me so far, you can probably guess what I think about that. I think it's a fun idea.

This gets at one of the great questions of localization: to what extent do you change things to be more familiar to the target audience, and when do you just leave something untouched?

If you've ever read a fan translation of a manga, boy do a lot of these guys like to not translate. They would rather explain a foreign concept to you in a translators note than find a way to communicate it in the text itself.

I actually like translators notes, because they can teach you all sorts of random stuff. The publisher Yen Press embraces them. Viz is not as big on them, but they do use the occasional asterisk with a tiny note in between panels. With unauthorized translations, of course, the quality can vary wildly (there's not as much demand for such translations as there used to be with how many manga get official weekly releases in English). I think some fan translators are probably a bit too reliant on notes—you gotta remember that the end product should be readable English, right?

I remember the first time I stumbled upon a fan-translated light novel and was very confused by the use of "Onii." Like bro I'm not enough of a weeb yet to immediately know what that means. Obviously now I am, but back then, no.

Then again, I've seen a professional translation on Crunchyroll do the same thing. I don't really get the point of not translating that one.

With these anime and manga companies, it really feels like there are no consistent rules for how they adapt this stuff. I remember watching Romantic Killer on Netflix and was surprised by the subtitles' frequent use of the term "ikemen." I didn't know that word back then. I learned, so that's cool. But it just makes me wonder why they felt the untranslated term worked better than an English alternative. I don't necessarily dislike the decision, but the inconsistency across titles is wild.

Let's go back to the issue of honorifics. I feel like if the Persona games can become as popular as they have, you might as well start throwing in some honorifics in all sorts of dubbed anime. And mind you, the way characters address each other in these games is still adjusted for the West. In English, the investigation team in Persona 4 calls each other by their first names, but in the Japanese version, they generally use last names, like you'd expect in Japan. But simply including the honorifics gives us more information than the names alone, ya know?

(By the way it's kinda interesting to me how Junpei calls Yukari Yuka-tan in the English version of Persona 3. Doesn't he call her Yukari-chi in the original? But I guess they figured it'd be simpler to get the idea across without introducing too many suffixes to people).

Sometimes in anime there are entire storylines centered around how someone refers to someone else. In English, these can be tough to write around if you've made the choice to forego honorifics. I'm just saying, if we use them all the time, it's like a cheat.

Love Live Sunshine in season 2 had an episode called "Don't Call Me Dia-san" where Dia starts wishing the younger girls would call her Dia-chan. There was no way to predict this storyline, since the series isn't a manga adaptation. The subtitles had it easy because they been using honorifics the whole time. This was not the case for the dub. Well, obviously you can't just go back and redo season 1 to now have honorifics. The writers' solution? Nicknames!! Wooooooooo! So the episode title became "Don't Be So Formal With Me" and Dia now hoped the girls would call her "girlfriend!" Yeah it's a stretch but what else can you do?

Now, in all seriousness, I don't think it's really necessary for every localization to include honorifics (I mean like I said before, if I'm watching with the original audio I can just hear them anyway), but on the other hand, it does seem like audiences can handle it without a problem if you do. Many people are curious and accepting of other cultures! Doesn't that make you feel a little better about your fellow human beings? Let's just ponder on that for a second.... Right then moving on—

The Impossible Expectations of an Obsessed Fan

Now I'm gonna be honest. This year, with some of these dubs I've tried, it's like for some reason, I'm not as nice as I used to be.

I don't really know why I felt so strongly about this, but when I tried the dub of Frieren, within the first minute I was like, "That's not how I imagined they'd sound. I give up." I'm not saying it was actually bad at all. I just didn't even want to give it a chance because, eh, I don't want to change how I imagine the characters' voices.

Then there was Apothecary Diaries. I like the casting for the main two characters, it's just... Well... In the first couple minutes of the show, there's a line from Maomao about eunuchs that was delivered without much emotion in the Japanese version. And yet that line was given a different emphasis in the English version! UNFORGIVABLE!!! (But is it possible I'm just an idiot who didn't pick up on some subtle acting in the Japanese version? Yes it certainly is possible... but Maomao does tend to keep a straight face until she's excited about something, so I don't know about that).

Now you'll notice something about these two shows: They're both good shows. And Aoi Yuuki, Atsumi Tanezaki—these are some of the best most talented seiyuu in the biz.

This brings me to Dandadan (or Dan Da Dan; same thing). Which is, oddly enough, kind of related to eunuchs, in a way. As I might've stated before, it's one of my favorite things ever. The manga is amazing, and the anime adaptation is everything you could ask for and more.

Shion Wakayama. Natsuki Hanae. Mayumi Tanaka. Nana Mizuki. Ayane Sakura. I mean I could keep dropping names here, because these actors are just insanely good in this show.

I read an interview with Yukinobo Tatsu, the creator of Dandadan, and Fuga Yamashiro, the director of season 1 of the anime, in a booklet that came with the Blu-Ray. Tatsu talked about hearing Natsuki Hanae's audition for Okarun. Other actors put emotion into Okarun's first line, but Hanae intentionally read it very stiffly, and that made Tatsu think "He's the one!" Me, I'm not an actor, and even if I was, I'm sure I wouldn't have thought to do that. But it's as if Hanae understood the character deeply enough to be able to say, "Ok, Okarun has thought of what he's going to say to Momo Ayase, and he's worked up the courage to say it, but he's very nervous while getting the words out because he almost never actually talks to anyone!" It tells you exactly who the character is—and on top of that, it's really funny.

Shion Wakayama's acting as Momo is really cute, but man, when the battles begin, she brings an insane amount of intensity.

Ayane Sakura has similarly played some super intense roles, but here, as Aira, she gets to be funny. And oh, what a treat it is when Ayane Sakura gets to be funny. In season 2, we see Aira switching rapidly between modes—one cutesy, the other determined to save the world from evil (she's the leader) (she is somewhat delusional but we love her).

And there are the two grannies. Those ladies are so weird and funny.

Now here's the thing about the English dub of Dandadan: it's pretty good.

But see, the problem is that I just feel like the standard set by the Japanese actors is so ridiculously high here that maybe the only way to meet it would be to have the entire English cast study the manga extensively for a couple weeks. Ok, I'm joking. Well, half joking. That's probably not the way, but I think it would probably result in something very cool.

I genuinely like the way Okarun (A.J. Beckles) sounds in the dub. It's a very energetic performance. Though to my ears, I think he could sound even closer to the original version just by being more stiff and insecure.

To be fair, the stiffness in how Okarun talks is not solely a matter of acting. It's also because in Japanese, he's always using keigo when he talks to Momo (Abby Trott) and most other people. Polite forms of speech are important in Japanese, but there's not an exact equivalent in English, so it's another one of those nuances you can't fully bring over.

You may have noticed that Momo, on the other hand, has a quite informal style of speech (it's part of her gyaru style). In the dub she kinda just says stuff like "ain't" and drops the g sound from the ends of words—which, hey, that's good enough for me. There's never a perfect answer for how to adapt dialects and that sort of stuff. I've seen an American southern accent used to convey a Kansai accent (the dub crew decided to not ignore it, because it was briefly relevant to the story) and I don't know how I feel about that.

There is one character in Dandadan I honestly do find a bit disappointing in the English dub: Seiko (Kari Wahlgren). This actress is a veteran who does great work, but man, I just feel like we are misunderstanding this character a bit. While Seiko is a tough lady who doesn't smile, she's actually quite funny. I simply don't think using that mean voice all the time is funny.

Yamashiro said of Seiko, in that same interview from before: "On the comedic side of things, she can give the impression of being rather sloppy, but she also gives the vibe that her guard is always up and she sees through everything. That dual nature came across really well, I'd say." Maybe confirmation bias is causing me to interpret his words in a way that agrees with my opinion. But I honestly feel that In English the performance is leaning too far into the tough side at the expense of the funny side.

I am nitpicking and biased, I know. But I will reiterate: it's a well-made dub and people are really gonna like it. The only thing I'm really proving with my complaining is that when you have an enthusiastic fan who's really attached to a certain cast, a dub will probably never fully please them.

And to further prove this... ok, I won't lie, I just want to take this opportunity to share some other things I noticed in a dub recently. The point doesn't actually need further proof. Everyone already knows a nerd can nitpick stuff excessively.

So without further ado..... Love Live Sunshine. Again.

The cast for the English version of Aqours was really well-chosen, I think. I don't remember ever feeling that someone didn't fit their role. And the acting is good.

I do think that while Dia (Morgan Garrett) is really good overall, she could go more unhinged at times to match Arisa Komiya's intensity—like seriously, if you were to anger Dia (Japanese voice) in real life, you might be slightly terrified of this crazy girl yelling at you, but in the show it's ok, because it's a cartoon and her being crazy is really funny. English Dia goes to like 65% of that intensity, I would say. But like, you also can't translate Dia saying "desu wa!!" to English, so that does make things tougher. Then again, we bring over Hanamaru's "zura" with no explanation, and no one panics. So maybe you can just start saying DESU WA! In season 2 there's an episode where Dia does the recap and she starts it off with DESU WA for no reason whatsoever. (Actually I guess maybe she was just adding it on to the "zenkai no Love Live Sunshine" part rather than saying it in isolation). The subtitles, of course, had been ignoring DESU WA the whole time, and I'm sure the translator was just like "Well I gotta put something there so they put "Here we go!" instead. "Here we go" was used for the dub as well. I'm not saying we needed the DESU WA, but it would've been really funny to hear English Dia go "HERE WE GO!" super intense for no reason. I know Dia is a refined lady, but... that's like the whole joke. She's elegant and poised, except for when she's overly intense, which is almost every day.

I do have a couple notes about the script. First of all, we use the word "ladies" too much, don't you think? Do high school girls actually call each other "ladies?"

The script overall is more snarky than the subtitles are, which can be funny. Though I feel like sometimes it slightly changes the characters. I think the snark particularly affected Kanan (Michelle Rojas). She takes crap from no one in this dub. Episode 9 as we all know is a pivotal episode, and at one point Mari (Jamie Marchi) expresses that Kanan is really annoying her, to which Kanan basically responds, "You're just getting annoyed all on your own." But in the dub, Kanan has a more aggressive response that's something like, "Oh yeah well the feeling's mutual." I mean, dang. She wants to fight. It's not a huge difference. But it is noticeable.

Oh and in that same episode, Dia says to Mari, "You're so selfish," when the line in the subtitles was just "Stop." This is the curse of changing lines to fit the timing of mouth movements, I'm afraid. I feel a little bad for Mari at this point!

I didn't like that Incredibles "If everyone's super...." reference in Chika's (Jad Saxton) dialogue in episode 1 either. My apologies to the writer. To be fair the subtitle there was kinda just like "and for a while I thought maybe there was something to [being super normal] too" so maybe the line felt like it needed more work, but "if everyone's special, no one is" is kind of getting a bit too much from that, isn't it?

It doesn't really bother me though.

I wish the script just said "mikan" instead of "mandarin oranges." It takes less time to say. And I dunno. It's ok to use a different word for something sometimes. I just feel like by season 2 the dub crew could have learned that Chika's call-and-response at lives uses the word "mikan," so obviously you would want to use "mikan" even in the dub right? But hey at least the casual viewer will know that the orange fruit Chika is referencing is, in fact, a mandarin orange. Yup. ............... "KAN KAN" "MI-KA-N"—

So anyway those are just some fun little things I noticed.

I sometimes imagine what a dub could be if you got a bunch of superfans together to do it. Except the reality is, acting isn't something you can just show up and do one day without practice, no matter how much you like a character. So you'd have to have people who are both trained actors and are serious weebs. And uh, you'd need unlimited time.

But really, you'll never please everyone. Hardcore fans don't all agree on how things should be. There are always going to be little things someone will take issue with.

The idea of bringing something from another language into my own language is always something that sparks my imagination. I get my own ideas about how things could sound, and it's fun to compare those with what the real dub ends up sounding like. It's nice bonus activity for any show I've already enjoyed in the original language.

I have my preferences, I am pretty darn enthusiastic about seiyuu, but I ain't gonna yell at you if you live different.

And now let's not talk of this topic for at least a year. I mean what, do you think there's going to be some new development in it before then, or should we just keep repeating ourselves forever?