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Answerman - When Is It OK To Adapt An Anime Dub Script?

Marakutanay wrote:

Good luck changing sub for dub or viceversa for Highschool DxD. The changes in dialogue are everywhere.

Funimation and Jamie Marchi's script botched it from the very first season. They certainly couldn't explain things now with DxD Hero when those mistakes in the first season messes with the plot in Hero. Should have spent more time paying attention to what was being said in the sub and not worrying about all of those ecchi cliches that they had Isse say.

Greed1914 wrote:

The story I've heard from Greg Ayers is that the gag dub for Ghost Stories came about because the production committee knew it had such a bad show on its hands that the only way anyone would license it at all was if it came with permission to do whatever they wanted with the dub.

Keep in mind this excuse was made back in the early 2000s at a convention panel back when people didn't have access to much Japanese-side information. Everything we've learned since then points to Greg Ayers lying and basically defending the studio's work for the sake of it was his job. From the show's high ratings in Japan (out performing other shows at the time like Great Teacher Onizuka) to it's numerous reruns in Japan every few years even to this day, to the fact every other country got a normal dub for Gakkō no Kaidan yet strangely only America went with a gag dub (as is the case for all these kinds of dubs, another example being Shin-chan and Keroro Gunsou)

The Answerman just perfectly exemplified my two reasons for never chosing dubs over subs. First, I never believe American voices talking about Japanese attitudes and situations and place and things. Sounds like a tourist pretending to act like a native.

Second, I LOVE Japan, or at least the idea of it, and most of its culture, and lots of its standard expressions, like the often-deprecated "It can't be helped." The closer the sub is to what the Japanese character said, the better I like it. I feel like I'm experiencing at least a bit of immersion in that fascinating land's way of life. And I don't care at all if it sounds clumsy evaluated as American English dialog.

closer the sub is to what the Japanese character said, the better I like it. I feel like I'm experiencing at least a bit of immersion in that fascinating land's way of life. And I don't care at all if it sounds clumsy evaluated as American English dialog.

And I enjoy it when they say "I said too much". They are in a society that emphasizes never being a burden on others, including forcing your emotions on them. We are in a society that emphasizes making everyone listen to your every self-assertion and complaint. Our current politics reflects that.

Japan is my refuge from here. I don't want it remade into something that disturbs none of "here's" assumptions about the world.

Impossible to evoke the same feelings. The understandings of the world are very different. The places where an easy, smooth translation is not found highlight those places of dicontinuity between their and our culture. I look for those in the subs, and especially in manga, where there's time to muse over the reason for the translator's difficulty.

Above all, I dote on the DIFFERENCES. I love that the Japanese so often say, "It can't be helped". Americans seldom say anything like that. We think everything is fixable. They are in a society one of whose religions emphasizes the degree to which suffering, including disappointment, quite often cannot be escaped. Indeed, it can't be helped.

And I enjoy it when they say "I said too much". They are in a society that emphasizes never being a burden on others, including forcing your emotions on them. We are in a society that emphasizes making everyone listen to your every self-assertion and complaint. Our current politics reflects that.

Japan is my refuge from here. I don't want it remade into something that disturbs none of "here's" assumptions about the world.

The story I've heard from Greg Ayers is that the gag dub for Ghost Stories came about because the production committee knew it had such a bad show on its hands that the only way anyone would license it at all was if it came with permission to do whatever they wanted with the dub.

Greed1914 wrote:

The story I've heard from Greg Ayers is that the gag dub for Ghost Stories came about because the production committee knew it had such a bad show on its hands that the only way anyone would license it at all was if it came with permission to do whatever they wanted with the dub.

The way Matt Greenfield told it an anime convention several years ago was that Ghost Stories was bundled with another show that ADV had really wanted. Both ADV and the production committee expected Ghost Stories to do poorly in the US, so they were given permission to do whatever they thought would help it sell. Apparently it worked to a degree, because John Ledford later mentioned it in a interview with Forbes magazine.

Ah... he was talking about that American version of Milk-chan that didn't air on Adult Swim or the Anime Network that had those cringey live-action sequences...

Good for Justin to make the point that there is no one most accurate translation

If you get like 10 translators looking at the same thing, you'll get 10 different, y'know, translations, each with its own spin on it.

Greed1914 wrote:

The story I've heard from Greg Ayers is that the gag dub for Ghost Stories came about because the production committee knew it had such a bad show on its hands that the only way anyone would license it at all was if it came with permission to do whatever they wanted with the dub.

Keep in mind this excuse was made back in the early 2000s at a convention panel back when people didn't have access to much Japanese-side information. Everything we've learned since then points to Greg Ayers lying and basically defending the studio's work for the sake of it was his job. From the show's high ratings in Japan (out performing other shows at the time like Great Teacher Onizuka) to it's numerous reruns in Japan every few years even to this day, to the fact every other country got a normal dub for Gakkō no Kaidan yet strangely only America went with a gag dub (as is the case for all these kinds of dubs, another example being Shin-chan and Keroro Gunsou)

dragonrider_cody wrote:

The way Matt Greenfield told it an anime convention several years ago was that Ghost Stories was bundled with another show that ADV had really wanted. Both ADV and the production committee expected Ghost Stories to do poorly in the US, so they were given permission to do whatever they thought would help it sell. Apparently it worked to a degree, because John Ledford later mentioned it in a interview with Forbes magazine.

This is a likelier truth than what fans and voice actors tend to parrot around. Ghost Stories is more or less a children's show in its original form. Unless it landed a TV partner (which likely wasn't going to happen given it still might've been too much for most of the big players), a faithful dub would've been doomed to obscurity in the U.S. as kids weren't a huge market for low profile direct-to-video discs from specialty distributors.

Yet on the flip side, with the exception of a few disgruntled Sgt. Frog fans, modifying a show for an older audience to better fit DVD seemed to be less poorly received in comparison. I see a lot of genuine love for ADV's Ghost Stories and Funimation's Shinchan. Love that isn't given towards kid dubs that aren't nostalgia fuel like Yu-Gi-Oh! or something.

Many people don't really care that changes were made to Samurai Pizza Cats or Ghost Stories because they don't care for the originals.

The edits themselves are funny and enjoyable, but I don't see why they couldn't have created new shows and establish new identities for them instead of latching on to an established work - which I do find rather disrespectful to the original, especially if people have not seen the original or are not aware of it.