Forum - View topicThoughts on nostalgic English dubs?
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Primus
 Posts: 2774 Location: Toronto |
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The amount of times I see "Medabots is racist" because Metabee likes watermelon, and Joe Motiki plays the character as an angry black man is : / Metabee likes watermelons because he's a beetle ...
The dub isn't all that bad in terms of adapting the script and all, though the voice acting can be very low budget, and rough. I'm fairly certain Nelvana pulls a 4Kids and digitally erased a gun in an episode Damashii though. Damashii sucks so I won't hold it against them. |
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vashna
Posts: 1313 |
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I don't mean this at all to be rude, so please don't misconstrue my statement. I'm not attempting to speak from the point of view of a racist. Nevertheless I was under the impression that Joe Motiki was black in real life so I never had any issue with his voice. It seems sort of insensitive to say that he is an 'angry black man' since I just assumed that he was trying to give Metabee character.
As for the watermelon bit, I never thought it was racial especially considering that I assume that sort of thing couldn't have been an issue in Japan. He is supposed to be, like you said, a beetle and as a former farm hand I can attest to the way that beetles chew up melons. |
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TitanXL
 Posts: 4036 |
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Metabee being black in the dub was a... random choice. And the whole melon obsession was a hilariously unfortunate coincidence with that decision which led to some unfortunate implications.
In the original he was voiced by Junko Takeuchi aka Uzumaki Naruto and is more of a slacker/hothead. Metabee even sings the first theme song of the original. |
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vashna
Posts: 1313 |
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I never actually watched the Japanese opening to Metabots before, so that was pretty interesting. I had no idea that Junko Takeuchi sang the original intro. I'm not sure if I like this one better or if I like the really funky North America release. At the risk of getting off topic, I'm surprised that a video that was posted way back in 2005 has only under a half million views.
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 7580 Location: Wales |
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Is there something inherently racist about watermelons that I am unaware of?
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Polycell
 Posts: 4623 |
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Apparently some time ago, a few people defended slavery by claiming that blacks could be kept happy with a big, juicy watermelon or something along those lines. As far as I can tell, this never really blossomed into a racist stereotype(it wasn't that common an argument), but rather mostly into the impression it was a racist stereotype; I personally can't speak of any occasions where I've seen black characters and watermelons with any deeper connection than "folks eating watermelon".
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yotsubafanfan
 Posts: 653 |
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I didn't watch a lot of anime growing up (in fact I didn't even get into it until Middle school) but I do remember watching the Streamline Dub for "My Neighbor Totoro" before the Disney dub and I liked it a lot more than the Disney Dub (Especially when the cat bus sounds like an actual bus telling you what your next stop was, I thought that was so cute!)
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EricJ
 Posts: 876 |
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Also that watermelons were grown in the southern states, and thus South/blacks/watermelon became a staple of minstrel-show iconography, where whites imitated "happy" slavery-era stereotypes. (I know the UK had "The Black and White Minstrel Show" running for years, but that's something you wouldn't dare show in the US, and in fact can't.)
That was to translate the kanji "Bus stop" sign changing in his head for the no-subtitle Fox/Troma theatrical version, but yes, cute. The Disney disk had subtitles, of course, and didn't have to. |
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vashna
Posts: 1313 |
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For what it's worth I used to work in an antique shop before I went to college. There were a number of booths in the antique store that sold old advertising memorabilia. A good deal of the stuff from the early 20th century or so actually did have paintings that depicted black American farmers eating watermelons and spitting out the seeds.
There were also numerous depictions of middle-aged black men as domestic servants. That being said, I never really associated watermelon and Metabee's character in the English dub of Metabots with racism in any way until the mentions in this thread. I think that to do so is to be a bit too sensitive. |
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TurnerJ
Posts: 481 Location: Highland Park, NJ |
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At the risk of bumping up this thread, I can name a dub from the '90s that I am still enjoy unreservedly, and that is Record of Lodoss War OVA. It's by no means a perfect dub, being from 1996; there are a fair amount of dodgy-sounding lines and incidental roles that sound rushed. But in my personal opinion, the principal characters are all well cast and play their parts generally well (aside from the occasional missed line). Lisa Ortiz is especially good as Deedlit, but I thought Bill Timoney did a great job too as Parn, as did John Knox, Bruce Winant, Simone Grant, Al Muscari, and Greg Wolfe. I've never really understood why this dub receives a lot of flak today; even if I recognize that there are a few less than perfect lines, it still holds up well to my ears today. I've seen some fans call it one of the worst dubs of all time, but in my opinion, it's nowhere near that quailty. The TV-spinoff Chronicles of the Heroic Knight (or Lodoss TV), was VERY flawed, but I still give Crispin Freeman and Angora Deb points for their performances as Spark and Leaf.
Then there's Oh My Goddess the OVA. It too is an example of excellent dubbing. Scott Simpson and Juliet Cesario are impeccably cast as the leads, and the chemistry between them is terrific. Slayers I always watch in English. Nadia is another show I love watching in English, the ADV one that is. That one isn't so nostalgic, as it was dubbed in 2001-2002; as far as I'm concerned it's one of the most underrated dubs of all time, it's really well cast and excellently performed -- it's not often you get children to do the voices of the lead characters, even though one has the difficult task of speaking with a sometimes shaky French accent. Still, the energy he put into his performance more than made up for that. I've made no secret about how much I love the Disney Miyazaki dubs; all of them, as far as I'm concerned, are excellent at best, and even at their least excellent, still quite good. But I will echo agreement on Streamline's Totoro. I DID enjoy that dub a lot, although I gotta say I also liked the Fannings in the Disney version. Both versions tie IMO, although I think the older dub's OP/ED edges out the Disney one. Still, I like both. Kiki also had a rather good older dub (by the same staff who did the Totoro 80s dub), even though I'm fond of Disney's more. IMO, Kiki and Totoro were the only Streamline-era Miyazaki dubs that really excelled. Nausicaa, Laputa, and Porco Rosso were all quite terrible in their initial dubs; in that case there is no question to me over which one is better: the Disney versions of all three of these titles are, hands down, superior. Akira I don't particularly like as a film, but I personally prefer the Pioneer dub; the Streamline version sounded very harsh on my ears and it was rather confusing as well. That turned me off from the film. One dub that I used to like but grew out of was Vampire Hunter D by Streamline. At the time I thought it didn't sound TOO bad, but the more dubs I listened to, the more it sounded quite lifeless to my ears. The laughable Transylvanian accents didn't do much either. |
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vashna
Posts: 1313 |
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I don't feel that your post was a bump at all. It was logical, on topic and this thread really isn't that old in my opinion any way. I hope you don't mind if I actually say that I liked the Streamline dubs of Akira and Vampire Hunter D. As for Akira, I admit that I have never actually heard the other Pioneer dub, so I'm not sure what I have to compare it to. Nevertheless, I actually thought the voice actors did a good job with it. For that matter, there's an electronic dance music producer who sampled the Streamline dub of Akira for a trance techno track. I heard the track before watching the movie, so that's kind of stuck with me.
As for Vampire Hunter D, I didn't find the accents to be too grating but they were a bit silly at times I'll admit. Out of the Streamline dubs, have you seen any others? I've actually watched their old dub of the Fist of the North Star Movie. Ironically I've seen a critic's review of it from that time period. They trashed it, but not because of the quality of the dub. Rather they trashed it because it was anime. |
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TurnerJ
Posts: 481 Location: Highland Park, NJ |
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Aside from Akira and Vampire Hunter D (and the aforementioned pre-Disney Ghibli dubs), the only other dubs I've seen from Streamline are Wicked City, Great Conquest, Windaria, and parts of Nadia.
Wicked City I didn't care for, mostly because I found the movie subject absolutely detestable. I don't like ultra violent/sexy content just for the sake of it. Especially since it left me with a sick stomach. The dub sounded more or less OK right there, but I really don't remember it. Great Conquest I honestly liked mostly because of Pat Morita as the narrator. I don't remember having a problem with it. Windaria I initially thought was well done until I learned that there were edits done to the source material, and that really put a damper on it. That's a title that REALLY needs to be redubbed. What ruined Vampire Hunter D for me wasn't just the accents, but the often stilted, robotic acting from members of the cast. And Dan's VA was just plain annoying. If you really want to know my view on the dub, here's my link: http://animeenglishdubreviews.blogspot.com/2010/10/vampire-hunter-d.html As far as Streamline's Nadia goes, it's not the worst I've ever heard, but I prefer the ADV dub. The problem with the Streamline dub is that the two leads are badly miscast and are nowhere nearly as effective as the kids on ADV's dub. The Grandis gang sounded good in their own right, and Electra tied with Jennifer Stuart, but Gargoyle sounded too stereotypical a villain; David Jones handled him much better. Bob Bergen was OK as Ayerton and Jeff Winkless' Nemo was one of the few roles of his I had seen to date where I thought he did pretty good at (the other two I heard him in, as Muska in the older Laputa and Count Magnus Lee in VHD, were both HIDEOUSLY dull and laughable, at least to my ears). All in all, though, I just liked the ADV dub better partially because that's the version I saw first, but also because as good as some of the VAs are in the older dub, I think others could have done much better. |
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HoshiNoMiko
 Posts: 27 Location: Canada |
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I read through a thread like this (and I read through almost every post) and I feel like I am going to be the most hated member of the forums ^^; I am an unreserved dub fan, always have been, likely always will be. For me it boils down to voices and the acting work, things like editing have only really hit me with shows like Yuugioh, Pokemon, and Digimon... basically things 4Kids got their hands on. When I saw the list of "Nostalgia dubs" on the first page my mind went, "... but, but... those are all most of my favourite dubs O.O" I adored the Gundam Wing dub and one of my ultimate goals when I was a huge fan of it was to get one of the art books I had signed by each and every one of the "Gundam Pilots" (I've only got Ted Cole left to go LOL).
Ahem, being serious though I saw a lot of comments regarding the editing of the Yu Yu Hakusho dub, and I actually didn't know it was as bad as all that. I remember watching the dub with some of the Japanese subtitles on it back in the day and from what I could tell of what Funimation did they slipped a few more jokes in there, but it looked like they tried to translate the original Japanese script as closely as possible. When and where did it get screwed up? I mean, I do see what certain poster (name escapes me forgive me) meant in regards to them changing Yusuke's personality, he was a little more of a smart ass in the English version, but I am legitimately trying to think of the other things they stretched and skewed. I don't really know what else to say, if a voice fits for me in English I like it, and a dub really has to have voices that make me want to rip my ears off before I'll switch it over to the Japanese track. Perhaps we can just chalk it up to lousy hearing for me... hell, I'm even a fan of the Black Butler and Hetalia dubs, and I've heard fans ripping into those like absolute crazy for the piss poor accents they each have. I just tend not to notice ^^; |
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vashna
Posts: 1313 |
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Funimation has a habit of slipping a few more jokes into the English translation and subsequent dubbings of things, but they're not alone in that. I remember that Viz Media slipped a joke about being the "Fifth Beatle" into Flame of Recca, for instance. To be honest as long as they don't go crazy like ADV did with Ghost Stories I really don't mind. Now, I realize that has additionally put me at odds with some people around here but I actually don't care for that dubbing.
Ghost Stories was really over the top. As for Yu Yu Hakusho, though, I actually liked the way that they depicted Yusuke. I'm starting to watch some of my DVDs over again in Japanese, and I really like both versions. While I have a strong preference for the Japanese in some series, and admittedly a strong preference for the English dub in a few shows, I really appreciated both the Japanese and English versions of Yu Yu Hakusho. I'm still going to stand by the Streamline dubs, by the way, but I should say that I liked Robotech. If you like Robotech, you'll hear a lot of voices that you probably remember from that particular dub as well. If you don't care for Robotech, though, you'll attach some of the problems with the Robotech dub to the Streamline dub in turn. |
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Animegomaniac
Posts: 4089 |
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And it was awesome. The original show was bland and not just inoffensive, it was unremarkable. The only reason Ghost Stories still gets mentioned and remembered today is because of the dub. If you don't like it, don't talk about it. Otherwise, you're falling right into Foster's hands! I'd like to see more dubs go crazy like that with the "sick and the lame" shows but there are dubs which do it to a more limited extent in comedy shows like Excel Saga, Sgt. Frog and {now} High School D x D. I think some fans just don't want to acknowledge that a lot of Japanese humor just isn't funny. This isn't just in general, I don't think Japanese people find it that funny as well. Yeah, some of these dub writers are "tots" not as funny as they think they are {I'd say they know who they are but maybe they don't...} but they can score the occasional solid hit. |
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