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Answerman - Might Makes Rights

Even so, Americans only consume anime as their choice of foreign media. It's not like we watch French films or whatever. Only anime has a chance int the US.

Wait, are you saying there isn't a foreign film market here? That's completely untrue.

@Agent555 Americans by and large do not watch foreign media, so how can said citizens disapprove of said foreign content, if said content is never shown? It's not that Americans hate subs, it's just that they never experience them and why should they? The Netherlands and Walloon do not produce enough of their own content and thus need US content to fill in gaps. Since dubbing is not viable, they use subs. The US however produces virtually everything that is shown on its TV and thus does not need to air foreign shows, let alone sub them, since tha,t is more money compared to producing your own stuff.

Secondly, what parts of "Europe" sub? Like the US, Europe is no monolithic block. The French, Italians, Spanish and Germanic countries by and large reject subtitles and dub almost everything they receive. In Spain, that is exacerbated due to its many non-Castillian languages. Poland and Russia have this weird thing called "lektors" where the original version's volume is reduced and a person speaks over the original recording.

Thirdly, there are examples of sub only content having more success than the dub in the US. ... Hell, even for live action, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon did insanely well in the US and was acclaimed in virtually all fronts, despite being subbed, whilst the movie did meh in Taiwan/Hong Kong/PRC due to horrible accents and poor Mandarin from a native Cantonese speaker, apparently. That stuff annoys the Chinese.

Even so, Americans only consume anime as their choice of foreign media. It's not like we watch French films or whatever. Only anime has a chance in the US.

Look out how many foreign films the Criterion Collection has released. (Not one is an anime, unfortunately)

leafy sea dragon wrote:

So if I wanted to enjoy novels by Vladimir Nobokov, to watch movies by Federico Fellini, and to read and understand the Bible, I'd have to learn Russian, Italian, ancient Hebrew, and Latin? Are you saying it's impossible to have a well-rounded knowledge base without also being an omniglot?

Sometimes things get lost in translation though. So yes, if one really did want to understand a work completely, they'd have to understand the language first to get all the implicit meanings, idioms, etc that would normally be lost in translation.

Yeah, I pointed out earlier that France has a law requiring a certain amount of French programming on their TV. Dubs count, so you will can see lots of French dubbed American TV and anime in Paris.