Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Do Dubs Cast Men As Boy Characters, while Japan Casts Women?
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Crisha
Moderator
 Posts: 4290 |
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Me calling it bad is harsh. The voice acting quality wasn't bad for either English or Japanese. I just already had in mind what she sounded like after reading the entirety of the manga, and the pitch of her voice didn't match in either Japanese or English. I've never been a big fan of artificially higher-pitched voices, but it used to not bother me as much. Nowadays, it's another reason that I'm not enthusiastic about several anime with cute younger/teenage girls. Rosette is just one of the few that sticks out in my mind as an example of a voice pitch that turned me off right out of the gate (then again, almost everything about the anime turned me off right out of the gate - it's perhaps my one "the manga did everything better" show). |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4576 |
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I disagree that most of the series you mentioned are "amateurish." They are being adapted in a particular way for a particular target audience, and that may displease you personally, but there's professional intent behind them. All the shows you mentioned are what one would call "toyetic," solely designed to promote their own physical merchandise. Pokémon has spent several hundred episodes with the same 10-year-old protagonist doing the same exact things, so that kids his age can beg mom and dad to buy the latest game or booster packs. It's the Japanese equivalent of 80s cartoons like GI Joe and Transformers. The reason they still get dubbed in 4Kids style is because that's their raison d'etre. (Honestly, the original Pokémon dub was one of the things 4Kids did very well.) I mean, if you get some enjoyment out of shows like that, more power to you, but don't pretend they're anything other than what they are. And again, who's lying about what exactly? |
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Crisha
Moderator
Posts: 4290 |
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Okay, everyone, let's lay off on the whole "dubs vs. subs" / "Japanese vs. other language" debate since it's derailing the thread and starting to sound like soapboxing.
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Shiflan
 Posts: 418 |
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You're right that personal preferences don't really change the argument. However, neither does a small number of counterexamples. I got into anime in the 90's and I must say that my experience has been that the dubs of that time were, generally speaking, much worse than the dubs of today. Does that mean there weren't some great dubs back then and some awful dubs today? No, of course not. There are counterexamples on both sides of the fence. But generally speaking, talking about the majority of anime dubs, the industry has certainly gotten better as the market for anime has grown. But again, just because an industry has grown & improved doesn't mean it's necessarily up to par with other nations. Dubbing of any sort is still a niche industry in the US whereas it's much closer to the norm in many other countries. On American TV you'd be hard pressed to find a dubbed show being broadcast. In many other places dubs are half, or more, of everything that's on TV. Does that mean that American dubs are automatically "bad" or perhaps even "not as good"? Of course not. It is nothing more than a factual statement about the size of the industry. And it is especially irrelevant for something like dub preference which is going to be extremely subjective anyway. |
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Primus
 Posts: 2768 Location: Toronto |
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AICO was only a couple of months ago and you don't get more "widely-released" than Netflix ... |
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Stuart Smith
 Posts: 1298 |
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You would think so, but to be honest I rarely hear about the anime on Netflix in the community, at least in it's intended viewer model. People either watch their licenses via pirating while it's airing, such a Seven Deadly Sins, or if it's a true original, I rarely hear about it at all. Whether that's due to the 'binge watch' concept of dropping an entire season at once, the shows themselves being uninteresting, or the anime community in general ignores Netflix as a whole I'm not entirely sure. Weekly airing stuff on Japanese TV/streaming seems to dominate the discussions. -Stuart Smith |
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Jose Cruz
 Posts: 1773 Location: South America |
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It's true that my impression of English language anime dubs sounding amateurish is derived from watching older dubs since recently I only watched anime in Japanese. So I decided to check some new show in English to see how modern industry has improved the dubs. I watched the first episode of Violet Evergarden and the dub was still very "amateurish" sounding. That particular episode and English anime dubs in general sound more like an audio track for learning English that you might find in reproduced in a textbook rather than actual voice acting in dramatic fiction: the actors speak the dialogue mechanically and with monotone voices. For my ears this one episode sample appears to suggest that there was no obvious improvement since the 90s: English language anime dubs sounded like people were just reading the dialogue in monotone voice in the 90s and they still do today. To me feels like they are disfiguring the show by dubbing it, in fact I found it painful to watch Violet Evergarden English dub as it felt like a work of art being vandalized. I think this works as a visual metaphor to represent the difference I felt between the original and the English dubbed version of Violet Evergarden: 
There is absolutely no reason to watch anime dubbed in English. The quality of the show suffers significantly from the dub and reading subtitles should be easy enough for anybody that is properly literate. I know that for some people reading subtitles is hard but that's because they are not used to it, the effort to learn to read subtitles fast enough is more than compensated later by the higher quality of our entertainment by enjoying the expertly trained Japanese seiyuus performing their art. |
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Just Passing Through
Posts: 277 |
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should have been
It's all personal preference, and personal opinion. With 99% of anime releases offering the choice between sub and dub, on disc or streaming, the debate is just personalities. Everyone should be happy. I am not going to tell anyone else what to watch or how to watch it (except for those people who insist on stretching and distorting 4:3 content to fit a 16:9 frame. That bugs me big time). Me, personally. I'm a subtitle with Japanese fan. I want the experience to be as close to as originally broadcast as possible. But I'll take a dub if there is no alternative. That's how I got into anime in the first place. And when it came to Black Clover, I thanked the stars that there is an English dub. If I had to listen to the Japanese for more then ten minutes of Black Clover, I would have microwaved the discs. |
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Shiflan
Posts: 418 |
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Nonsense. While I prefer subs myself it is absurd to claim there is no reason to watch dubs. For many fans the dub of a given show might be the first one they saw, in which case the dubbing sets expectations for the character's voices. Many shows have a great deal of techspeak or otherwise lengthy dialogue that can be tricky to read when subbed, even if the viewer is a fast reader who is used to subs. I can't count how many times I've showed subbed anime to friends only to have them miss what was happening onscreen because they were distracted by the subs, or vice versa: the action onscreen distracts from the subs and they end up missing the dialogue instead. Another issue is the accessibility of understanding the underlying meaning in a character's voice. Those of us who have been watching subs for a long time (or actually speak some Japanese) have no difficulty picking up emotion, dialects, or inflections in a character's voice. However that is a learning curve: to a new viewer who has little experience hearing Japanese that content is completely lost. I can certainly see people preferring dubs where they can instantly appreciate the nuances of a character's voice beyond the literal words they speak. Yes, I've been frustrated with poorly done dubs before and I've ended up avoiding most dubs because of a few bad apples back in the day. Once bitten twice shy, I suppose. But to suggest that there is no reason to watch dubs is just plain absurd. There is a reason this is a hotly debated topic, and that is because fans feel strongly on both sides of the fence. |
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Crisha
Moderator
Posts: 4290 |
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Jose Cruz, lay off on the "English dubs suck" soapboxing. The way you argue sounds condescending and you've done it in other threads before. Continuing further in this thread or in other threads in the future on the subject will earn you a moderation warning.
As for everyone else, let the debate die. |
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jr240483
 Posts: 4378 Location: New York City,New York,USA |
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it also proves the point of the US dubbing studios starting to be more like their counterparts when it comes to younger boys. other than mignonga, grelle, papenbrook , bosch and lowenthall, there is rarely any known adult VAs that can voice those demographs without them sounding too old for their characters. however it seems that it kinda depends on the original casting too. if the japanese dub use a male VA, the english casting will probably use one as well. the same as if its the other way around and its a female instead like with the 2011 version of hunter x hunter! so while their are exceptions when they use those well known VAs, its more than likely that when they retired from voice acting, the US industry as a whole will be the same as their japanese counterparts when it comes to boy characters!!! |
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Dragonsandphoenix
 Posts: 82 Location: Malaysia |
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I'm not 100% sure but I think we're seeing that it's becoming more common to see male seiyuu for leads in shonen (Haikyuu, Attack on Titan, My Hero Academia, Black Clover to name a few). I'm not sure why this is, maybe there's now a larger talent pool of male seiyuu with more voice range. All the seiyuu of the shows I just listed have higher pitched voices compared to older anime where all the male characters sound the same to me imo. This is just a theory of mine but it's possible we'll see less anime where male characters are voiced by women unless they're meant to be more ambiguous in terms of gender or if they're really young like Gon from Hunter x Hunter.
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And the Japanese one sounds like....how I would think she sounds like too? 
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