In fact, I find that Cantonese actually works very well for anime, at least based on the handful of series I've watched in that language. So, yes, count me among those who would always prefer to watch a foreign-language programme in its original language.īut, with respect to the OP, how about considering dubs in languages other than English? I would say without hesitation, for example, that the Cantonese dub for Neon Genesis Evangelion was surprisingly effective. And evil villains in anime are often bombastic and over-the-top in ways that are difficult to exactly replicate in other languages.Īnd then there are different speech and tonal cues in Japanese that hint at the difference in status between different characters, which, again, are difficult to convey in other languages.Īll this is even before we consider the challenge of matching a dubbed track with the "mouth flaps" on screen, let alone with the body language of the characters.
Ditto for mothers and grandmothers, fathers and grandfathers.
Japanese voice-acting for anime, I find, tend to fall within certain well-defined stereotypes: characters that are young girls and boys would sound and speak a certain way. The real issue, I believe, lies in the way different voice-acting traditions approach their art form. If American voice actors were that lousy, how would we account for the excellent voice cast of long-running cartoons like The Simpsons, for example? Soon, the student-turned-vigilante finds himself pursued by a famous detective known only by the alias L. Light decides to launch a secret crusade to rid the streets of criminals. But I find that to be both inaccurate and unfair. Light, a bright student who stumbles across a mystical notebook that has the power to kill any person whose name he writes in it. Western anime fans are often quick to blame the relative lack of voice-acting talent in, say, the United States. Indeed, and I've often wondered about this, why it's so hard for a dub to match the quality of the original voice track. (such as Japanese dubs of English shows/films).
Back to being mortal enemies." The scene was in essence the same in both languages, but the dub's dialogue was just considerably funnier.Īs a fluent, native speaker of both languages and almost four decades long anime watcher, I have not seen even one case of a foreign language dub being better than the original voice cast. For example I remember this scene where Harima and Eri were seeking refuge in a temple and Eri had fallen asleep and Harima was thinking to himself like "For just a moment, I thought maybe you weren't all that bad, you know?" and then Eri mutters an insult to him in her sleep and he just goes ".But only for a moment." How did the dub handle this? Pad out his first thought with a ton of insults that he figured might not apply to her anymore rather than just the general "not all that bad", and then after the insult, "Moment is over.
Plus the script seemed to know exactly when to spice up the dialogue without messing up the original meaning. I think the main thing was that Tenma in Japanese quite frankly sounded too mature considering her character. I dunno, I saw the first few episodes in English, and, unlike basically every other show where I started watching it in English, I just couldn't switch over to Japanese later on. I think the only example where I actively prefer the dub is School Rumble.