Forum - View topicThoughts on nostalgic English dubs?
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DomonX2
 Posts: 232 Location: Neo Toronto, Neo Canada |
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This topic is about those quote, unquote "Nostalgia dubs". Nostalgia dubs are usually only liked, because they were watched on Toonami, Fox Kids or Cartoon Network and most importantly from childhood.
These dubs usually suffer heavy edits to them or extremely inaccurate to their Japanese version or suffer from awkward voice acting or even all 3, yet they are usually left off, just because they were on Toonami/YTV/North American equivalent. Yet, people complain about actual good dubs like Death Note, which is very close to the Japanese subtitle script and has great voice acting. I don't care if dtm agrees with me or not. These include, but are not limited to Digimon, Pokemon, Dragon Ball(anything), Gundam Wing, G Gundam, Evangelion, Sailor Moon, Yu Yu Hakusho, the 1998 Gundam Movie trilogy dub, Inuyasha, Beyblade and Zoids. A lot of fans of these dubs generally say "these are the only good English of anime and all others suck" OR "Dubbing has gotten worse, compared to DBZ", when it's actually the other way round and most dubs ARE better than most of the ones listed, due to various factors. Cowboy Bebop and Big O/Big O II are also "Nostalgic English dubs" but they can be liked outside of nostalgia, because they are far above their time, well scripted and both have strong acting and they can hold their own against top tier dubs from even today, like Black Lagoon and Death Note. Outlaw Star's dub is dated, but it's pretty good for a nostalgic dub, due to it being uncut on home video and having SOME good voices. People complain about PUSA's Pokemon, without realizing PUSA's Pokemon is generally more accurate and closer to the original script than 4kids dub, even though that dub has it's own problems as well. So what are your thoughts on people, who only the nostalgic dubs, which don't hold up like DBZ? Last edited by DomonX2 on Thu Jan 17, 2013 5:22 pm; edited 5 times in total |
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DavidShallcross
 Posts: 1008 |
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I think this a perfectly natural phenomenon. Of course, when people first start watching foreign cartoons at a certain age, they will tend to see what form they appear in as "the way they should be". If they didn't like those forms, they probably wouldn't have become anime fans.
The first anime I ever saw was probably 8 Man. I was very young, however, and don't remember much about it. Slightly later the first version of Kimba the White Lion appeared, and I was, for a while, obsessed. But I was still too young to have a lasting opinion on the dub. I suppose I could get a copy now and see how it has held up. Then there was a lull in the importation of Japanese cartoons. When I was in college, Star Blazers arrived. Some of us would gather together in one of the common TV rooms and watch it. It was fun, although I would probably now prefer a subtitled version of the original Japanese show. It was years after that that I started actually seeking out anime. In summary, I don't have any particular affection for Nostalgia English dubs, but I can certainly see how it can happen, and I don't blame those who do. |
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Galap
Moderator
 Posts: 2354 |
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As the list of factors that influence my opinion of a show goes, the quality of acting is probably the lowest. I just really don't care about 'good' or 'bad' acting that much, or at least it ranks well below things like script, shot composition, animation, and event choice and pacing. It will bother me much more if I don't like something about one of these than if I don't like the voice acting.
In animation anyway, I consider the animators to be more the real actors than the voice actors, because they control the nuance of the characters' movements and body language, and I'm a fan of individual animators rather than individual VAs. That's not to say I don't care about acting AT ALL, just significantly less than other things. Anyway what I'm getting at is I don't really mind a lot of these old 'bad' dubs if the rest of the show is high quality. |
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kaydub
 Posts: 318 Location: Cincinnati, OH |
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Agree to disagree here, but I thought Outlaw Star had a great dub. In fact, I'd be willing to say it's one of my favorite English dubs, and is the ONLY series I've seen so far in which I prefer the dub over the subtitled Japanese track. Maybe part of that is due to nostalgia, but IMHO the English voices with the exception of Harry MacDougal were just as good or better than the Japanese voices. I will agree with you on the majority of the Toonami dubs though. I don't mind the script changes so much as the fact that the English voice actors were often lackluster in their delivery. Everything was either emotionless or ridiculously over the top, and often completely changed the "feel" of the character. I remember when Toonami was re-running all the "classic" shows for April Fools last year and being astounded by how unconvincing much of the English voice acting was. Obviously, it wasn't really noticeable when I was a kid as I was not familiar at all with the original Japanese tracks for those shows and I didn't really care anyways, but as an adult it was a glaring difference. After watching Gundam Wing numerous times in Japanese, it was hard to take it seriously in English. Every time I heard Heero say "I'll destroy you" in that completely overdramatic voice, I had to stifle my laughter. And don't even get me started on how I reacted to hearing the DBZ dub after more than a decade... I think the appeal for me with "nostalgic dubs" is just that, nostalgia. I don't think I could sit there and watch Gundam, Tenchi, or YuYu Hakusho in their entirety in English, but sometimes it's nice (and almost always funny) to go back and watch an episode or two in English and bask in the nostalgia. |
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Hypeathon
Posts: 1176 |
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I really want to know where specifically are you witnessing fans like the ones you described say things like that? I'm not implying that nobody anywhere says that out of pure nostalgia. What I am implying is that there must be a specific place a specific hub where certain people say stuff like that. When arguments like these happen, the people that talk about others who are nostalgic for something in a negative light don't seem to bother to specify where they see people like that from for some reason. For all I know, you could be talking about a band of people who subscribed to each other on youtube or some other forum I haven't heard of. |
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DomonX2
Posts: 232 Location: Neo Toronto, Neo Canada |
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@kaydub
Outlaw Star is high tier for a dub on it's own, but for a dub produced in association with Animaze, it's merely average. Also, Gundam W is hard to take seriously, irrespective of language, since Gundam W's "qualities" are not determined by language. The audio doesn't change the fact that Gundam W is pretty mediocre compared to some Gundam series, like Gundam X, but is still better than Gundam SEED, Gundam SEED Destiny Gundam 00, Gundam ZZ, Gundam AGE, Gundam F91 and Gundam 0083. Gundam W's main qualities are Ko Otani, Minami Takayama, Shiina Nagano, Zechs(kinda), Duo, Trieze and that's about it for now. You also said you liked the Outlaw Star, out of nostalgia, which is a bit hypocritical, if you ask me. [EDIT: Please try to refrain from quoting entire posts. Only quote relevant parts deemed important to your reply, or simply put "@user" at the top of it so that person knows whom you're referring to. Less quoting means less space taken on the page and less of a chance that someone else quotes your quote in a quote in quote and so on. Thanks. -TK] |
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kaydub
Posts: 318 Location: Cincinnati, OH |
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To be clear, I would probably place Outlaw Star somewhere in my top 5 favorite anime of all time. My reasons for liking that show are deeper than just nostalgia, and I personally believe that it is somewhat underrated due to being released in the shadow of the also excellent and much more popular Cowboy Bebop and Trigun. The nostalgia factor that I mentioned is the fact that my first experience with Outlaw Star was watching the English dub on Toonami. Obviously, I have some fond memories of that so I can't deny my nostalgic feelings. However, I have since watched both the original Japanese track and the English dub numerous times and while I like both, I simply feel that the English dub is more appealing to me personally. Also, whether or not Gundam Wing is a good title (either on its own or compared to the rest of the Gundam titles) is kind of outside the topic of discussion. I won't disagree that it's probably not the best Gundam title, but that is neither here nor there. |
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TitanXL
 Posts: 4036 |
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Like you said it's pretty much just nostalgia. Just look at all the people who swear by dubs like Cardcaptors, Pokemon, Sailor Moon, Digimon, One Piece, and Yu-Gi-Oh and think dubs that cut out dozens of episodes and change the entire plots and characters are somehow 'good'. If a lot of modern shows came to the US as edited and bad as those dubs were, people would throw a huge fit; people get pissy when you get things like 'uncut' dub-only releases like Persona 4 got, but because they're from their childhood they'll overlook the massive amount of alterations for nostalgia's sake and a momentary trip back to their childhood that they long for.
Or maybe not, since I see some people still praise certain butchered dubs like that to this day (Shin-chan, for example) I think the main problem with topics and questions like this is people always try to lump 'anime fans' together, as if it's some kind of equal label and there isn't tons of different levels and dedications to it. So I think anyone asking how 'anime fans' feel is asking a loaded question and why you can get so many polarizing answers. |
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marie-antoinette
 Posts: 4136 Location: Ottawa, Canada |
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I think we've seen a great look at this when it comes to the Digimon DVD releases, which have only featured the dub track. Some people are very upset by this while others, myself included, are just fine with it (I personally would probably not be interested in a sub-only release for that title, though I would have preferred a dual-track release).
And I honestly don't think the Digimon dub is all that bad, at least not most of the time. There are definitely some iffy moments and odd decisions that were made. But on a whole it was pretty good and is still very enjoyable and so, even if the release had the Japanese track on it, I would probably never listen to it, except for in the few rougher patches (mainly the episodes with Apocalymon, "Genesis of Evil," and " "His Master's Voice" specifically). |
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DomonX2
Posts: 232 Location: Neo Toronto, Neo Canada |
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@TitanXL
For once, I agree with you, but only to an extent. Shin-chan, while having a bad dub gets let off the hook, because it's not from the boom of Japanese anime in the USA and Canada from 1998-2004 timespan or the Toonami/Adult Swim/Cartoon Network/Fox Kids/YTV channels. I mean things the Pokemon dub. I can excuse the Pokemon name changes, since they're technically official everywhere, even Japan, but the show itself has a pretty bad dub and people love to bash the newer dub, even though it is the lesser of two evils, script and fidelity wise. It even has the Shinji Miyazaki OST consistently, unlike the 4kids dub. I have a lot of problems with even the Pokemon show, outside 4kids/PUSA, but 4kids is the worst of the 3 main versions. The Cardcaptors dub is bad in general, but it's only the "American" version, which is the worst version. The "Canadian" version(which has the same voices) had all the episodes and was not censored, in terms of storyline and characters, I believe. Fellow Canadians, correct me if I am wrong. Nobody likes the One Piece dub, not even 4kids fans. Sailor Moon has 2 dubs. One by Toei(or Cloverway, if you prefer) and one by Dic. The Dic dub, produced in association with Optimum Productions, is a dub, which first achieved popularity in Canada, but bombed in the states. This is the dub, which was messed up, out the ass, with high levels of censorship, bad VAing, educational segments, name changes and replaced music. Toei's dub has almost none of that, as it is faithful to the Japanese version and has the correct music, save the bad acting, name changes(although fewer) and a certain change, which is rather controversial. Digimon is done by Saban. Let's just leave it at that, shall we? Yu-Gi-Oh is in the same boat as One Piece and Pokemon, but the dub makes the show even worse than usual. But I find it weird that the dub of Yu-Gi-Oh is KINDA accurate in the beginning part. |
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marie-antoinette
Posts: 4136 Location: Ottawa, Canada |
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Pretty sure the American broadcast at least has just as much censorship as the Canadian one, though I admit I don't remember the latter enough to know for sure. Definitely the American broadcast erased body lines and skipped episodes, at least in the first season (admittedly on a re-watch of that season I ended up deciding to skip many of these episodes too, since they were generally nothing but pure filler). |
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penguintruth
 Posts: 8461 Location: Penguinopolis |
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Nostalgic or not, a bad dub is a bad dub. If it doesn't hold up to modern standards, it's not worth the disc space it takes up. DBZ's dub didn't even hold up to the standards from the period it was made.
Also, learn about paragraph breaks. |
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DomonX2
Posts: 232 Location: Neo Toronto, Neo Canada |
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@marie-antoinette
IIRC, the DiC dub is considered Canadian, due to CANCON rules and what not. That dub was heavily censored equally in all the English language countries it aired in, although it's worth noting Canada are significantly less lax, when it comes to censorship than most English using countries, outside the South Asia region like the Philippines. DBGT, Gundam SEED and I think Inuyasha were aired nigh, if not completely uncut, on YTV. Though SEED was on Bionix, but still. I don't remember Toei's dub being too edited in either country. It was lightly edited, save the controversy thing. @penguintruth Yeah, I know none of the DBZ dubs were too good. I've actually compared them to dubs like Mononoke and the Disney dub of Kiki's Delivery Service(the 1988 dub is one of those nostalgia dubs) and when you compare any DB dub to them, it just makes Funimation/AB Groupe look even worse. The Utena movie dub, from what I've researched was forced to be accurate to the Japanese version, which is what I like to hear. The director of Utena was similar to Miyazaki in a way and did NOT like change to his work. Then again, the Bandai/Pioneer/Funimation dubs of the first 3 movies was okay in terms of scripting. Why didn't they do that in the series? [EDIT: Also, remember to use the Edit button  . Consecutive posts are just more wasted space. -TK]
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Hitokiri Kenshin
Posts: 291 |
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Nostalgia factors can affect some guys. For example, a friend of mine who mainly watches modern anime subbed says he can't refer to the Inner Sailor Soldiers by their Japanese names.
On another note, while these shows pre-date Toonami, Superbook and Flying House both have dubs that have not aged as well by today's standards, as many dubs of the 1980s have. On the other hand, no one wants to see those shows subbed, due to their biblical nature. Even the most hardcore sub-only fans would rather watch a dub that's not so great over watching Superbook and Flying House subbed. |
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TitanXL
Posts: 4036 |
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I've seen plenty of people praise it. Back when Funi's dub started on Toonami there were loads of complaints how they changed the opening and voices on various forums and how Funi ruined the show. Just looking at the opening on YouTube I see a lot of people praising it and treating it as a nostalgic and how "anime on TV sucks these days in comparison". Everydub has fans somewhere. |
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