This Week in Anime
I Can't Believe They Dubbed This (Like This)!

by Christopher Farris & Lucas DeRuyter,

Chris and Lucas explore the weird world of streaming dubs looking for wonderful and terrible surprises.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.
Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.

Crunchyroll streams Pop Team Epic and Tojima Wants to Be a Kamen Rider
YouTube streams Pretty Cure (dub) and Digimon (dub)
HIDIVE streams Bad Girl.
OceanVeil streams Ren the Fairy Princess and Game World Reincarnation.

@RiderStrike @BWProwl @LucasDeRuyter @vestenet

Lucas
Chris, last summer it was my responsibility (and occasional privilege) to review the yuri romcom Bad Girl for Anime News Network weekly. While the show definitely had its charms, it was clear from the outset that it was never going to pop off with folks who weren't already fans of these kinds of cozy queer romps. Which is why I was absolutely floored when HIDIVE announced that it was going to release a dub of Bad Girl!

Moreover, after watching the trailer, it seems like they got the tone and casting exactly right!?? I am so used to these kinds of anime wallowing in obscurity that I can't believe that Bad Girl is getting a genuinely elevating English dub, and that got me thinking about all of the other anime that I can't believe have English dubs!

Do you care to join me and venture down this audacious, audiovisual rabbit hole together?

Chris
We've still got a couple of days of Halloween season left, so why not indulge in a topic that scares so many anime fans?
chris01
© 肉丸・芳文社／ばっどがーる製作委員会
It's like the polar opposite of regular Western watchers who can't overcome the inch-high barrier of subtitles.

Regardless, I agree that Bad Girl is a hoot that deserves to be seen by broader audiences, and also that it's kind of a left-field pick for a dub. It's especially apparent when you put it against the other seasonal shows that HIDIVE picked for this treatment. They're all LitRPG or isekai-adjacent—as Coop and I covered last week, the exact kind of seasonal packing peanuts that the likes of Crunchyroll regularly roll out the dub treatment for.

chris02
© 九頭七尾/アース・スター エンターテイメント/無職の英雄製作委員会
So it's nice to see HIDIVE throwing the Bad Girl bone to an audience besides the type that leave something like Hero Without a Class running in the background while they do whatever.
While dubs are an art form in their own right, from a business perspective, they're basically just a means to help an anime reach a wider audience and hopefully inspire people to subscribe to more. This is why only shows that are broadly palatable or already have a high viewership tend to get the dub treatment. We can see this replicated with Crunchyroll's own offering of dubbed anime this season largely falling to isekai series and mega-hits like My Hero Academia and SPY x FAMILY.

Though, as my friend and anime peer Maddie Morrow pointed out to me, Crunchyroll has a surprise English dub offering as well this season with Tojima Wants to Be a Kamen Rider getting the dub treatment! As far as I can tell, CR isn't promoting this dub widely, but it's still cool and surprising to see.

Mostly it's a trip to hear English-language voice acting referencing so much Rider-related material. We've only barely started getting Kamen Rider stuff over here in recent years, and it's almost universally been sub-only. I remember some scuttlebutt about FUUTO PI getting an English dub, which would've been surreal on its own, but that never came to pass.
chris03
© 柴田ヨクサル／ヒーローズ・Tojima Rider Project ©石森プロ・東映
I feel like I say this every time the English-speaking weeb world gets a new whiff of Rider, but maybe Tojima getting a dub could move the needle as far as popularity and exposure go. I'm not counting on it, but this is still pretty cool on its own!

Of course, this naturally puts me into the mind of some of my other favorite Toei superheroes, and their own unusual dabbling in dubbing.

There have been scattered attempts at getting Pretty Cure in localized English versions, some we've talked about before. But the ol' "Canadian" dub of the original Futari wa Precure really was the stuff of legend there for a bit.

Why did we, as a society, stop creating custom English openings for dub releases? I mean, I know the reason is because they're a lot of work and that rights holders would rather people just buy the original song/soundtrack, but they're usually fun and weird enough that they're more than worth the effort and cost!
It's the kind of adaptational weirdness mostly reserved for shitposts these days. Nagisa and Honoka are renamed "Natalie Blackstone" and "Hannah Whitehouse;" it's incredible.
Jesus Christ, I forgot about older anime having "localized" names for characters! But, to your main point, Pretty Cure is so huge in Japan and influential to so much of the anime space that it's wild that we don't have dubs for every installment of the series! Get in there, Canadians! Between Death Note, Black Lagoon, and most of the anime that aired on early Toonami, y'all are great at anime dubs!
It is wild (and frustrating) that Toei hasn't made a bigger push to put Pretty Cure out in a language for its target age bracket here, beyond the failed experiment of Glitter Force. Never forget.
chris04
chris05
More to the point, that Ocean-Production-dubbed version of Futari wa was a white(house) whale of a production itself for a while. That is, until Toei themselves rolled it out on their YouTube channel as part of their "Summer Weekend Splash" streaming event. You can still watch these as of this writing, and it's kind of nuts to see the adventures of Natalie, Hannah, and the gang just out for everyone to see now.

This is at least a cooler way to watch this show for free than that crusty upload on Tubi, anyway.

Speaking of dubs that are less than conventional, I'm on the record saying that I think the dub of Pop Team Epic is on par with masterclasses in the form like Cowboy Bebop.

For as much guff as we (rightfully) give Crunchryoll, the platform has an absolutely incredible talent pool, and Pop Team Epic's short format and bizarre humor give some of the best voice actors in the game an excuse to go absolutely insane mode for twelve minutes with each new episode. This dub had to be a logistical nightmare to record, but I'm so glad they made it!

It also means that Popuko and Pipimi almost certainly hold the record for the number of voice actors who have played them.
chris06
That's just one snippet of a list that kinda...goes on for a while.

Also, dubbing something like Pop Team Epic means winding up committing to weird indulgences like dubbing over the entirety of the live-action Season 2 finale starring Shōta Aoi, but 1) it's fun, and 2) I'll take anything that exposes more audiences to Kōichi Sakamoto-directed tokusatsu.

chris07
© 大川ぶくぶ/竹書房・キングレコード
chris08
© 大川ぶくぶ/竹書房・キングレコード
chris09
© 大川ぶくぶ/竹書房・キングレコード
chris10
© 大川ぶくぶ/竹書房・キングレコード
We're already back to Kamen Rider on this subject. I'll step back before Lynzee confiscates my bugmen like parents going through their kids' Halloween candy at the end of the night.

Bug out all you want, because this ridiculously stacked voice cast has me bugging! PTE has Christopher Sabat, Ian Sinclair, Jamie Marchi, Monica Rial, Erica Mendez, Sean Schemmel, Johnny Yong Bosch, Colleen Clinkenbeard, and so many more! Much like the tokusatsu-inspired season two finale, the entire production feels like a crossover event involving some of the people most responsible for giving English-dubbed anime its distinctive voice.
It's an appropriate parallel to the Japanese PTE's voice-acting VS crossover, and just like in that version, I'm sure there are a ton of in-jokes I'm missing in the casting and delivery. Pop Team Epic is already a show where you watch every episode twice by default, and the addition of everything the dub does makes an argument for watching them at least four times. It's in the trollish tradition of the show itself, anyway.
chris11
© 大川ぶくぶ/竹書房・キングレコード
Anyway, as long as I am allowed a few more personal indulgences here on All Hallows' Eve-eve, I'll circle back to Toei's kids' shows for one more second.

They've been only slightly more consistent about dubbing their Digimon anime as their Precure stuff these days, but what set their years-late treatment of 2020's Adventure: reboot apart was its unique play toward legacy. It's a whole new cast of voice actors (generally doing a great job, by the way), but they're utilizing the old "nicknames" for the characters from the classic Saban dub...and they actually get explained in dialogue this time!

God, there has been some phenomenal and incredibly fun localization work in the Digimon franchise since day one, and I love that this new dub of the 2020 Digimon Adventure reboot/reflection is paying homage to the tonal perfection found the original series and Digimon: The Movie.

That being said, I'm not sure I love that Agumon sounds like a toddler who's been smoking a pack a day since birth in this new dub, but I can still appreciate what they're trying to go for here.

It's a really interesting move that, annoyingly, is currently removed from Hulu as of this writing (a recurring curse with anime streaming there). Still, maybe that's a blessing in disguise, as Digimon Adventure (2020) definitely falls into the unenviable category of "good dubs of crap shows." You're probably better off revisiting the original, which is readily available. To say nothing of the new English dub Discotek produced for the uncut versions of the first three movies.

This was its own "Holy crap, I can't believe they dubbed this (like this)!" moment.

I am so glad you framed your point that way, because I had a similar moment recently thanks to Anime Herald's own Samantha Ferreira! Turns out one of the classic OVAs Coop and I discussed last week has an absolutely UNHINGED English dub!

Turns out Ren the Fairy Princess (or Elf Princess Rane if you know it by the localized title) has a brilliant English dub that feeds into my theory that the work is intended to be a parody of popular 90s anime tropes and storytelling conventions.

Love Hair Guy dropping the "ba weep grana weep nini bong" from The Transformers: The Movie there at the end, I'm such a mark. The one and only Mike Toole chimed in on this conversation, confirming that the voice actor for Hair Guy, Michael Brady, wrote the rap featured in his scene himself. This was borne out of a hallmark of the style of the Dubbing Studio, Coastal Carolina Sound Studios, which had the cast watching the anime before dubbing so they could get a feel for the lines and tweak them themselves.

It lent them their own specific cadence among so much of those unique, earlier-years, regional-studio dubs, as also heard in Coastal's treatment of You're Under Arrest. They just don't make 'em like this anymore.

Hey readers, if you're scrolling through a column centering on weird anime dubs, do yourselves a favor and go follow Mike Toole on Bluesky! And, god, these Coastal Carolina dubs are so irreverent and jovial that they nearly sound like an abridged series, and I have to imagine they planted the seeds of that internet phenomenon.

While we've shared a lot of really interesting dubs of anime so far in this column, there might be a reason why they don't make 'em like these anymore! Turns out Coastal Carolina did the Rane dub for Media Blasters, and I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about their adult-oriented imprint Kitty Media and their forays into dubbing hentai.

Yes, I know I'm incredibly basic for bringing up the Bible Black dub in a conversation about series that we can't believe were dubbed, but it really is as bad as what people say, and I think these kinds of efforts flopping are why we're only now starting to see dubs of adult anime again via platforms like OceanVeil. TL;DR: early attempts at hentai dubs were such a bust that they poisoned that media well for nearly two decades!

I understand there's an argument that the regular dialogue portions of hentai aren't what people are coming to that material for, but then it begs the question of how much that audience really is asking for hentai to be dubbed into their native language at all! Still, it is a fascinating sidebar subject of the time, and poking around our encyclopedia pages for the likes of Kitty or Critical Mass can be a fascinating rabbit hole of voice actor pseudonyms. Even as you realize that a name like "Hentai Mona" has gotta be one of the least search engine optimized names on today's adult animation internet.
chris12
© 2004 GIGA / GP • GATE
I appreciate Discotek revisiting the hentai pseudonym tradition in their recent release of Urotsukidoji, but as you alluded to with OceanVeil, I can see the just-barely more respectful attempts at dubbing that material letting studios and actors be fully open about their participation. Even if it brings its own amusing moments.
chris13
© Re:mimu／Suiseisha Inc
Yes, that is Bradley "the dub voice of Coach in Gunbuster" Gareth showing up in the dub of Game World Reincarnation on OceanVeil.
First off, get that paycheck, Bradley! Second, in a world where ASMR audios and lewd side hustles have never been more popular, quite frankly, I'm surprised that there haven't been more attempts to dub new or popular hentai already! I know this is never going to be a huge slice of the dubbing scene, but, as a very sex positive person with big opinions on smut, I hope that this can become a way for people enthusiastic about this kind of material to build up their portfolio and make some money in the process.
We'll see if OceanVeil building up their catalog and presence begets that at all. It definitely feels like we're getting further compared to one of my personal favorite stories of "I can't believe they...almost...dubbed this!" in Koe de Oshigoto!, which the aforementioned Media Blasters had picked up for a release with a dub in 2013...
chris14
...before confirming like half a year later that this wouldn't be the case.
chris15
If you know Koe de Oshigoto!, you know why the initial announcement raised some eyebrows, and why the subsequent cancellation of the dub ultimately wasn't surprising. Being a whole OVA about erotic voice acting, the ASMR appeal that might've sold this one wasn't totally established yet.
chris16
© 紺野あずれ・ワニブックス／PC
This column is rapidly revealing to me that, for as much as we like to think that which series get dubbed and how is settled ground in the US, a lot of this is still getting figured out! Building on what happened with Koe de Oshigoto!, I remember when Funimation licensed Interspecies Reviewers and even released a dub of the first episode, before canceling their release for being hornier than they expected!

That's so Funimation.
chris17
© Disney / 20th Century Television
chris18
© Disney / 20th Century Television
From what I can tell, Sony also scrubbed that dub from every corner of the internet that they could find, and I'd be very interested to have a hard copy of that now-lost media if anyone out there has a hookup!
The partials and almosts will always be the most fascinating examples of this dub dissertation. An easy go-to for me is my beloved BanG Dream!, which saw Sentai produce an English dub of the second season...and only the second season, out of the original three and multiple movies.

It's such a compelling "What If" consideration. Could we have been staring down versions of the Film Live movies where the characters had minimal English banter in-between licensor-obligated Japanese-only recordings of the songs? Might we have found out how an English VA could have handled playing as Mutsumi and Mortis in Ave Mujica? The world will never know, but it's fun to think about.

As a nerd who enjoys both incredibly niche art and comparing different presentations of the same text, I desperately hope that we get to see more of these "What If" situations play out as anime gets bigger globally. After all, there are only so many new releases every quarter for companies to pick up, but a far deeper well of old and weird IP that are begging for the fresh coat of paint that a new dub release can provide!
Thankfully, it looks like companies still have some dedication to plumbing that well. I mean, GKIDS just announced that their new theatrical release of Angel's Egg will include an English dub!
chris19
Nothing says "I can't believe they dubbed this!" like bothering to do it for a total of, like, five lines.
Hey, I was already set to watch this movie twice in theaters, but they somehow found a way to get me to watch it a third time!

I know we (rightfully) fuss a lot over the state of the anime industry and how it's changed over time, but stuff like a theatrical release for Angel's Egg, let alone a DUBBED theatrical release for Angel's Egg, really makes me feel like this is such an exciting time to be into anime.

It can still feel esoteric what qualifies to get a dub, unless it's an isekai/LitRPG seasonal, but that means we've got the room for the likes of Angel's Egg or Bad Girl to feel like a pleasant surprise.
chris20
© 肉丸・芳文社／ばっどがーる製作委員会
It seems like a trick, but it feels like a treat.
If these announcements are any indication, people in this biz are cooking up plenty more treats and I can't wait to find out what they are!
lucas_01.png
© 肉丸・芳文社／ばっどがーる製作委員会
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