English Dubs

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I notice that most people out there would shrug off English dubs as unnecessary and always inferior to listen to than the original Japanese audio for a show. While I find that such logic may hold true for some shows, I have seen my fair share of both dubbed and subbed versions of anime, and I have judged for myself that there are a good number of English dubs that can make watching an anime in your native language quite enjoyable without having to deal with reading subtitles while you're watching a show. Its not out of laziness that I'm not too keen on reading subtitles, and I will watch an anime subbed if I find it to sound superior with Japanese audio, but I prefer the English dub when it is handled professionally, and done well. There are also the bad English dubs, which may have the distinct quality of sounding so bad to the point of being hilarious, or just being gratingly bad. Often times people may prefer the form of voice acting that they heard first and have a strong bias towards the other version of a show (and this also works vice versa in terms of watching the dub of a show first before being exposed to the Japanese audio), but I try to look passed pre-conceived bias to judge a show by its own merits.

Some examples of English dubs that I absolutely love are:

Yu Yu Hakusho- It does take some noticeable deviations form the original script for its own good, and some people might be bothered by that, but to me its still completely accurate when it comes to the voice actors getting across the same general message, tone, and emotions that match up with the original Japanese script and audio of the show. Out of all of the dubs that I have listened to, while this is far from the most professional one, it is in fact the most entertaining one that I have ever heard, and I will honestly say that it sounds far more natural than almost any other dub that I have seen, including the ones which I deem the best from a technical standpoint.

Full Metal Panic! (All series)- While I have equal respect for the Japanese VAs (and admittedly some of the Japanese VAs are better than the English ones), I still find this to be the most professional sounding dub that I have heard when not counting the Disney dubs of Miyazaki films, or any other dubs for big-budget Japanese films that get big-name celebrities to voice for those roles.

Black Lagoon- Now this is an interesting case. I mentioned earlier how one could be bias towards the version that they were exposed to first. In my case, I watched the series with subtitles before it was even licensed by Geneon, and immediately loved it, and forgave its horrendous use of "Engrish" on the basis that it was actually hilarious to listen to, even though it made it kind of hard for me to take the series seriously whenever a character would speak entire sentences in the most awkward English accent that I have ever heard. I wasn't honestly expecting much from a dub, but color me surprised when the dub downright blew me away. The voice actors nailed each of their characters for the most part: everyone sounds like thugs and gangsters, use abusive language and have bad grammar and improper speech, and that's exactly how it should sound. Its not from bad voice-acting, but from accurate voice-acting. At times it feels like film-quality the way the voice actors portray some of their characters with some pretty gritty-realism in their tone. I have to be honest and say that while the Japanese voice acting is fine, I just can't go back to it after being impressed so much by the dub, personally. Its also worth mentioning that I found that I'm not alone on this opinion. To my surprise, even a few anime fans who I know to almost exclusively stick to subs actually admit to Black Lagoon being the exception for them. You just know that there is some good quality in a dub when even borderline sub-elitists find much to love about it.

Cowboy Bebop- Personally, while I don't find it to be the "best dub of all-time" any longer (to me, voice actors like Wendy Lee, among various others, including Blum himself, have noticeably improved since their early days working on shows like CB), that doesn't mean that I don't still find it to be a spectacular dub that is still "among" the best ever. Its worth noting that its the 2nd most "natural" sounding dub that I've heard, next to Yu Yu Hakusho (GTO would probably 3rd if there were a top 3).

My guilty pleasure dub of choice would probably be Digimon Adventure.

Of course, there are the horrendous dubs which I mentioned earlier. But do you know what type of voice acting royally pisses me off more than just regular bad voice-acting? Its the type of voice-acting in which you find that the VAs clearly aren't even trying. There are dubs that have VAs who you get the sense actually could at least do decent jobs if they gave at least gave a shit about trying, but they just sound so bland and non-emotive in delivering every single line that you just want to punch their faces off, whether you even like the show that they are voice acting for or not (and its especially worse if you actually like the show). Thankfully, though, I've mostly only seen this type of voice acting in shows that are already bad to begin with, but that still doesn't excuse it. Two for the worst culprits that I have seen of this type of voice acting are Transformers: Armada and Zoids: Fuzors, among many others.

[Foggle]

The only thing I recall hearing Wendee Lee in since Cowboy Bebop and Fear Effect 2 (both of which she was great in) is The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. I'm sure she actually has improved, as you say, but Jesus fucking Christ was she obnoxious in that.

Baccano!'s dub is almost flawless.

Gauron is nowhere near as badass in the Japanese version of FMP. Likewise, Mr. Gates is nowhere near as hilarious.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Wendee Lee has done a ton of roles, here is a list. A good number of those were dubbed after Cowboy Bebop. Granted that, a lot of them aren't necessarily good anime series, but her voice acting quality was still top notch in their dubs, IMO.

Gauron is nowhere near as badass in the Japanese version of FMP.

Actually, I find his character to be bad-ass in general. Mike's brilliant English voice-acting just added to that.

Likewise, Mr. Gates is nowhere near as hilarious.

I don't know. I personally didn't find him hilarious at all....

[Foggle]

Good lord, she was in Disgaea... If you want to talk about bad English dubs, just play any game made by fucking Nippon Ichi. Goddamn.

Seems like she has an aversion to being in shit I would actually want to watch or play, so I guess I'll never know if she's actually improved or not.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Well, she has improved as a voice actress, whether what she's in is shit or not. Most people would confirm that.

The same goes for the a lot of voice actors who started out about 10 years ago and are still voice acting now. There is a lot of shit that they act in, but it doesn't change the fact that they themselves have improved as VAs. Take Haruhi Suzumiya for example. I don't like or care for that anime at all, but I'd be lying if I said the English voice acting wasn't good, and the English dub for it is well-received for a reason.

[Angus]

What's fun is hearing Wendee Lee voicing Scorpina in Power Rangers back in the days, not like that show required strong voice acting. But I still remember her when she took over as Kiyone in the Tenchi series, and Urd in the Adventures of Mini-Goddess. She was okay in Chobits, although Crispin Freeman voices a much funnier rom com guy.

I'm assuming Brad Swaile and the Ocean voice actors have improved since the Ranma 1/2 and Inuyasha days. As I have mentioned before, Black Lagoon was the first dub where, until the second season where they introduced yakuza and samurai, I didn't think I was watching an anime, and where swearing totally fit with the show instead of trying to make it more adult than it really was.

I do like Slayers, probably one of the better dubs to come out of New York. Also liked Kare Kano and Ah My Goddess, except for how they turned Skuld's personality into a really bratty kid.

Out of LA, I liked the original Tenchi Muyo cast, and some related series.

The Dallas and Houston voice actors have been in a ton of series so chances are they usually make the dub worth tuning in, even stuff that doesn't have a chance to be anything more than average like Shuffle or Ragnarok the Animation, turns out to be decent.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

As I've been re-watching Death Note purely in its English dubbed form, this time, I have realized how it, just like a lot of other dubbed anime, had a tendency to start out with some mediocre to weak voice-acting in certain main character roles in the beginning only to gradually build-up and improve in quality later on as the voice actors get better acquainted with out to voice act for their characters. Personally I have grown to like Light's English voice more than his Japanese one (mainly because his Japanese VA has a tendency to make it all-to-obvious when Light is "playing" the role of a good guy, even though the audience already knows that he's just acting). My opinion is still the reverse of JO's in this regard, though, as well as with L's, in which I honestly still find that his Japanese VA captures the character better. The English voice actor does a commendable job in his own right, but at the same time I don't think that JO seems to get that L is supposed to speak in a monotone with a few quirks to his voice. And, its not as if the English VA strays away from trying to do that, but the problem is just that it comes off as obvious that he's trying too hard. I don't know a better way to explain it, but to perfectly voice act for L, it has to sound like the voice coming from him naturally just sounds that way, and not like he's purposely "trying" to speak that way. Anyways, that's just my opinion on the dub so far, but its still one of the best dubs out there, IMO.

[Foggle]

I love the Death Note dub. Helps that L's VA was in BSG.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I was just curious and wanted to ask this question.

Now aside from a few exceptions of people who have both done voices for both dubs of anime as well as Western cartoons (such as Steven J. Blum, who is the most prominent example), there is a clear rift in VAs between ones who you would associate with doing Western cartoons and those who dub Japanese cartoons. Now, this isn't really about which voice actors are better than others; I mean, we all already know that Western cartoons has a much broader selection of voice talent from more experienced voice actors, many of who are now veterans in the field. However, I felt that the great voice actors among those who do English dubs often never get the amount of praise that they deserve, as their are many great English dub VAs themselves, and I would argue that the best of the best in that field of voice acting should be just as highly regarded as some of the best for modern Western cartoons, since they can do just as magnificent a job in the right types of roles.

I'm one of those few people who disagrees that any dub is immediately inferior to the original Japanese voice acting, no matter how high-quality the voice acting may be. There are many dubs which I feel downright surpass the voice acting of the original Japanese cast (Black Lagoon is the perfect example of this, IMO). As such, there are some dubs which I feel had such great voice acting to the point that the dub actually made an already good or great series even more enjoyable than it already was. You also have to consider that voice actors who do dubs have a hard time having to match lip-flaps/movements and what not, which only makes it more amazing when they pull of a roll of theirs perfectly (especially since prelay voice actors don't really have this one disadvantage to deal with).

To me, while the voice actors who do prelay work still have a wider variety of great talent, I do feel that there are many notably good English dub voice actors who could stack up to them, besides just Steve Blum. Anyone ever hear Mike McRae's voice as Gauron in FMP? Its pretty fucking brilliant. Or what about Robert McCollum's voice as Shinobu Sensui in YYH? Simply amazing. Brad Swaile's voice as Light Yagami in Death Note easily tops his Japanese VA counterpart in that respective role in every single way, and on top of that its a downright memorable performance by the end of the series. And, while I'm honestly not too big a fan of the guy's work, I have to say that Vic Mignogna's voice as Tamaki is the perfect fit and suitably hilarious. Also, just about anything that Chuck Huber does is pure gold, especially when it comes to his voice for Hiei (and while it may not be for all of the right reasons, I absolutely LOVE Justin Cook's voice for Yusuke).

Those are just a few examples of great English dub VAs who I think are the few who are honestly good enough to stand toe-to-toe with many great regulars who do pre-lay work for Western cartoons. Sure, they aren't quite at the level of Keith David or Kevin Conroy, but they are still damn good VAs in their own right. Its just that a lot of people who aren't too big on anime kind of neglect their efforts in comparison to the VAs for Western cartoons even though they can do just as great of a job in their respective line of voice-acting, IMO.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Well, it might be because for western animation, the characters aren't yet defined and it's up to the VA to "sound out" the character's personality, which takes more effort and talent. For dubs, the character is already there and has a voice, so aside from making your own voice (which DOES take talent, but few pull it off) it simply doesn't take as much of a talented VA to make the character. There are exceptions, though.

Though he gets a lot of guff, I think Jeff Nimoy as Wolfwood is a phenomenal performance and it's an utter shame they didn't get him back for the Trigun movie. He nails the dual sides of the character, and his final moments are handled with great emotion.

Also, I still think JYB's best performance to date was Vash. I'm not sure if it's just the roles he's getting aren't as strong, or the voice directors just aren't as strong, but that one role makes it hard for me to criticize the guy on any crap he might do now.

If a dub VA can outdo the original performance, then that to me proves they undeniably have talent. Because to outdo the original "voice" of a character would mean you must be really skilled in order to do it and create your own one. It's a balancing act, but I think it's just perfect when it can be done.

One VA I think gets too much work is the 'Nolan North' of anime, Yuri Lowenthal. Nothing against the guy, but while he's decent, he has yet to do anything to blow me away.

[Angus]

I agree Trigun is still JYB's best role, helps that Trigun's showing on Funimation on Demand this month, although he surprised me in Last Exile. I thought for sure he was Dio but that was someone else, and he ended up voicing Claus.

[Angus]

It's fun to see both versions:

(Japanese dub)
Sanji: Walk steady.
Usopp: Ahh....well listen...I'm coming down with "if I walk more, I'll die" disease.
Zoro: Then stay there.
Usopp: What?! Well, w-wait! Whoa! Hey! Hey! Hey! Why are you pulling on my foot?

(Funimation dub)
Sanji: Come on, Usopp. I know you're hurt, but keep up.
Usopp: I wish I could, but I'm coming down with "if I walk anymore, I'll die" disease.
Zoro: I'll drag you then.
Usopp: Wait! Ah! Let me go, or I could come down with "if I get dragged anymore, I'll die" disease!

[gunswordfist]

One VA I think gets too much work is the 'Nolan North' of anime, Yuri Lowenthal. Nothing against the guy, but while he's decent, he has yet to do anything to blow me away.

Fuck you. Superman X rocks.

Anyway, EK knows exactly how  feel about Englishs dubs.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Actually that sold Nolan North short. I meant "Nolan North" in the way that he appears in like everything. Nolan North is actually a really good voice actor who has proven himself.

Yuri Lowenthal is in everything and he's never impressed me.

[Angus]

So what do people think of the Americanizing going on in Case Closed? Not the character names and such, but when Richard does things like "I'm glad I took that course in Japanese."