Forum - View topicAnswerman - Might Makes Rights
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Ojamajo LimePie
 Posts: 769 |
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Dubbed tapes were usually about $10 cheaper than subbed tapes. It was also easier to find dubbed tapes on store shelves (most anime was purchased retail back then.) |
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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In the old days of VHS, the AnimEigo Index Cards (literally that, with filing tabs), like the ones that explained the cultural pop-refs on UY along with the lyrics, were considered the height of proactive in-fandom for a fan-friendly company. Viz tried the same thing with their "special edition" subbed Ranma 1/2 VHS's, but there aren't quite as many cultural references to explain, and that just left the inserts to exploit some running-gag in-jokes and serve absolutely no purpose whatsoever. AnimEigo had the same problem with a more mainstream show like You're Under Arrest, where they could only put in one card for the theme lyrics. By the time we got DVD, seemed like there was no reason to keep spending money on paper, when you could put any info on a bonus screen in the menu. (Which AE eventually did with the later half of their UY DVD run.) As for dubs, they're nice, in that they increase a show's exposure, but the 90's days, when we worried that a show had to have a dub to make its Big Mainstream Cable-Deal Breakout into cultural validation, have pretty much disappeared in Cartoon Network's purple haze. Nowadays, now that Streaming Is Where You Find It, dubs just make a show more accessible to first timers, and it's more a matter of taste and commerciality for those who buy the disk releases. A big Funi acquisition seems a bit "naked" if it doesn't have a dub, but if Sentai or Discotek can't afford a dub to bring out a long-awaited acquisition, we don't hold it against them. It's not like the old days, when you couldn't show first-time subtitle-unfriendly friends UY, Card Captor Sakura or the "real" Sailor Moon, just because of the language barrier. |
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KutovoiAnton
 Posts: 943 Location: Vladimir, Russia |
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If we're talking about more casual anime fans, who comes to the shop and buy BD/DVD, for the most part they prefer dub and xpect it, just like with the foreign movies.
Well, obviously they prefer their native dub. Chances of finding English-dub lover in non-English speaking countries are almost zero. |
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GDMaid Man
Posts: 71 |
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Now back in the VHS day you could get a bunch of stuff in with a tape. Like the Pioneer Tenchi and Moldiver tapes I have, that came with postcards, posters, and character sheets. Of course they were over $20 for one episode.
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Just-another-face
Posts: 324 |
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Speaking of the last topic, you gotta love those ignorant saps who, still to this day, think a series will actually sell by suggesting their famous idiotic solution for everything Japanese: "Just slap some subs on and don't dub it!"
Haha, no, please pull your heads out of your asses and get some damn oxygen in your skulls. Anime as a medium has grown to the point that excluding a dub is detrimental to sales numbers. Plus those first release subtitled DVD/Blu-Ray releases from Japan are absolutely horrendous since, as usual, they never get the English right. |
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Tuor_of_Gondolin
 Posts: 3524 Location: Bellevue, WA |
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I usually prefer dubbed to subbed, and I rarely buy any anime that isn't dubbed. The main reason for this is that if a show is subbed, I'm am forced to focus most of my attention on the subs themselves and I miss big chunks of the visual aspect of the anime. I do admit that the *emotion* conveyed is often better with Japanese VAs, but it being in a different language tends to reduce the impact for me. Also, on those rare occasions when they speak English, it is usually pretty jarring (F/UBW is an example when Archer speaks certain words in English).
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katscradle
Posts: 469 |
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I have totally avoided buying some anime that did not have a foreign dub or put off purchase until they did. It's why I don't have Eva 3.33 yet since Funimation's release is caught in some ring of hell. I haven't bought the first season of Free! because it's sub-only. I don't have Silver Spoon (though I would like a BD release anyway too). A more faithful English dub is the only reason I'm buying the new classic Sailor Moon release too. I could be fine without and I do watch and own Japanese-only or sub-only stuff too (among a few English dub-only). (Now live-action is different though. I prefer subtitles.) But, I see and like the added value of getting titles in as many languages as I and people I know understand. Some people I know have real trouble reading subtitles on top of it.
I like booklets and inserts with extra info too. Especially if they are episode guides for boxsets because I'll forget where I stopped watching. |
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Cptn_Taylor
Posts: 925 |
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Japan dubs everything like Germany, Italy, Spain, France, the whole of Latin America etc... You're most likely to find a Japanese that watches a film dubbed in Japanese (foreign films, american cartoons that air on tv, american serials etc...) than one that watches it subbed. |
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Spoofer
 Posts: 356 Location: NY |
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As someone who buys a ton of used anime on eBay, I hardly ever find anime DVDs up for sale that are missing their inserts. The majority of the time that I find something missing, it's because the distributor cut the printed materials to cut costs at some point during the run (like PurpleWarrior mentioned in regards to the Dragon Ball series DVDs).
As a collector, I love inserts. Again I agree with PurpleWarrior in that I have a ton of items in my collection with really nice booklets that I have always taken the time to browse through. IIRC both Bandai and Pioneer/Geneon in particular even used to have valuable background info about the shows on simple single-page inserts during various series' singles run, which would rarely be included once the shows did their Complete Collection run. Certainly there are a ton of anime inserts that contain nothing significant, and exist just to exist, but I miss them all the same. For all those that bash NISA for not including dubs, there are probably just as many that praise them for recognizing that in this day and age, catering to the collector and sweetening the deal with significant and noteworthy physical extras (usually in the way of fanbooks littered with background info) still has its appeal. |
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5871 Location: Virginia, United States |
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I have always prefered dubs to subs. Maybe it was growing up on a steady diet of dubbed Japanese monster movies and science fiction movies. I still remember the one where the aliens were shrinking humans down to bottle size to fit them in a briefcase.
The biggest problem in showing anime to friends and family (besides content) is subtitles. Most people, who aren't deeply into anime, do not like subtitles. Subtitles obscure the screen, and they have to be read. That means those eye have to be on screen, and they can't drift off. I do believe that there should always be subtitles available, but dubs are important too. |
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DmonHiro
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I remember hearing about this. Does anyone know why dubbed tapes were cheaper? Shouldn't they have been more expensive considering it took money to make a dub? |
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Wingbeats
 Posts: 272 Location: Boise, Idaho |
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I'm a bit ADD and I have trouble focusing on just watching something. ANYTHING. Be it a TV show, a movie, or an anime.
A dub allows me to also do stuff with my hands while watching, and I don't miss important visual stuff. So I've been watching dubs whenever possible! I keep missing chunks of episodes while I'm watching recent sub streaming, so I keep having to rewind. This happens ESPECIALLY with fast and visual-heavy shows....like BBB. I LOVE BBB but that's a show I have to rewind a ton in order to not miss anything. I am really hoping for a dub so I can rewatch and finally catch everything I'm missing with all of the quick action. |
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SpacemanHardy
Posts: 2509 |
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You're in luck. BBB was recently selected as part of this season's broadcast dubs, and will premiere next Wednesday. 
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rizuchan
 Posts: 976 Location: Kansas |
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Supply and demand. Dubbed stuff was made for the masses and put on store shelves in video stores. Subbed stuff was made to appease the hardcore fans and often had to be special ordered. Makes sense from a marketing standpoint, not a production cost one. |
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EricJ2
Posts: 4016 |
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Back when Amazon didn't even EXIST. If you had an anime-friendly comic-book store, you haunted it day and night looking for AnimEigo and Viz subtitled (and yes, $10 more than the dub, + full-price indie-store markup), while all the cheap Ranma 1/2 dubs were at Suncoast. |
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