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Hey, Answerman! [2007-03-09]

I guess I don't understand why I would do that.

As a general rule though I think the subs are slightly better if the setting is more explicitly Japanese/Asian: Kenshin, Basilisk, Peacemaker, Samurai7, etc. If the setting is something more familiar to Americans like Trigun or Ghost in the Shell: SAC it tends to reflect in the dub a little better.

Also, bringing up cinema isn't necessarily the best argument here, because people watch movies differently from the way they watch TV. When you go to a movie, you expect an immersive experience, ideally with no distractions, so you can keep your eyes glued to the screen the entire time (this is the ideal, not necessarily the actual experience). TV isn't like that; many people watch TV while doing something else, and the chances of something interrupting you are much greater. Movies are something you go out of your way to see; TV is something you turn on to have in the background. In short, TV is a more passive medium, and dubs are much easier to watch passively than subs.

Haha, that just reminded me of something I once saw on Just for Laughs. I wish I could remember the exact quote or the man who said it, but instead I will paraphrase: The right to bear arms was enshrined in the American constitution at a time when the new nation faced constant threat of re-invasion by the British. But it has been 200 years, and what the NRA don't want you to know is that the British re-invasion plan... has been cancelled.

Plus, for some, the original dialogue track can lose meaning to those who don't understand Japanese enough to fully appreciate it. Can they detect the Osakan accent or any other little things like that? What's the point? That will hamper MY experience, so my native language is the way to go. Subtitles can take away from an experience.

I just thought I'd comment on the statement that manga under $10 is "a steal." I've been studying Japanese for several years now, and am spending a year in Japan at the moment, and I have to say that, as expensive as things in Japan are in general - manga is dirt cheap.

New tankobon are often $3-$8. For a specific example, the FMA manga goes for less than $5 a volume. And then there's the huge secondhand market. Just go to Book Off or any number of other used book stores, and the manga is typically in the $1-$5 range.

Of course, I understand the American companies have license fees and translation costs as well, so I can understand why their prices are higher. But after seeing the manga market in Japan, I just can't think of $10 a volume as cheap.

Have you even tried paying attention to FMA?

Simliar in the Japanese version, and pretty darn insulting if you haven't even payed attention to the story in FMA to know why they sound the way they do.

Can you name any other examples, though? It looks more like three films with subtitles have been successful over a period of 15 or so years, and of those, one is only 25% non-English, one is tied into a major religion, and all three are what William Goldman calls a "non-recurring phenomenon": a film that's successful for reasons that can't be easily explained and whose success can't be easily cashed in on. How many other Westerns, religious films or even martial arts films have done big business since then, even without subtitles? The question isn't whether broad audiences can watch subtitles; it's how often they want to.

As someone who reads a lot of American comics, I can. A typical manga volume released in the U.S. is roughly equivalent in content to eight normal-length American comics. With an average American comic now running around $3, that $9.99 or $10.99 for a manga volume is still looking like a bargain even with the lack of color factored in.