The Animation General

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Re: The Animation General

Post by Bunelody »

Cartoons is serious business
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Re: The Animation General

Post by Triert »

Wow okay, so you don't care that people think we still need some kind of anglo filter on what we watch?
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Re: The Animation General

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^Well, that "anglo filter" is referred to as localization, reworking a script for a new audience of a different language and culture, and it's not always bad, I honestly prefer a good localized dub over an awkward and clunky literal translation. Though the way you phrased it it seemed like that particular dub must have been bad regardless.
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Re: The Animation General

Post by EvilPinkamina »

Localization is a crime. They change the original dialogue and voice actors. It's ******** and everyone involved in a bad dub should be executed asap. /s

Nah fr tho, that kinda stuff happens in everything. Even in official subs, there's a bit of localization in it to prevent things from being clunky as hell. Every language has it's difficult to translate nuances.

Tho i agree Dragon Maid dub is ass. It tried too hard to be more than it was.
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Re: The Animation General

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Triert wrote:Wow okay, so you don't care that people think we still need some kind of anglo filter on what we watch?
Cartoon is serious business
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Re: The Animation General

Post by EvilPinkamina »

CARTOON.

IS.

SRS.

BIZNIZ.
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Re: The Animation General

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REPEAT TEXT
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Re: The Animation General

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did you just anglo-filter my comment???
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Re: The Animation General

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no, but i'm going to now
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Re: The Animation General

Post by Bunelody »

But for serious my reply wasn't directly towards you triert it was just over how everyone got all aggressive randomly
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Re: The Animation General

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Triert is bad anime dubbing me! Triert = 4Kids
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Re: The Animation General

Post by Jeffery Mewtamer »

Literal translation is seldom the most appropriate way of presenting a work in a language other than the original, and while localization can certainly go too far, some amount of localization is usually needed to make a translation make sense to anyone not bilingual enough to have consumed the original.

Not to mention that the purists often have little overlap with the target audience of a series or that standards of what's appropriate for a given audience can differ wildly between countries. Talking about anime specifically, this isn't much of a problem for the handful of seinen and josei series that get brought over, but for the multitude of shounen and shoujo series, it often means a choice between bumping up the age rating until its effectively illegal for the original target audience to watch it without parental approval to cater to the hardcore anime fans, or censor it to meet the US's more stringent definition of "child/family friendly" while alienating said hardcore fans.

Of course, some things are pretty much always unacceptable, such as giving an ethnically Japanese character who has a common Japanese name in the original a European name in the dub without very good reason, though I'd argue name changes to undo Japanization are not only acceptable, but preferred(could you imagine an English version of Fullmetal Alchemist that keeps all the names how they are distorted to fit Japanese's more limited phonetics?), and of course, the plot should be preserved as much as is possible.

And while voice changes are pretty much unavoidable in any translation involving spoken dialogue(after all, how many Japanese voice actors would be willing to reprise their roles for a dub, be fluent enough in English to do it, and have the time to spare? Multiplied by the entire original cast? Not to mention the logistics of such requiring more interaction across the pacific.), there have certainly been cases where an otherwise good performance felt off because the voice didn't match the character.
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Re: The Animation General

Post by Crazo3077 »

Hello I am Captain Dubtown, and the state of dubs is honestly way better than it has been.

Most of the dubbing we get these days fit into to what I'm going to call "Lite Cultural Adaptation", which is meant to indicate that most dubs maintain a level of purity, based on their source material, with occasional moments of cultural adapting, typically to avoid more difficult cultural references. For context, this is a balance between the extremes of "Pure Adaption", which can suffer from cultural or linguistic concepts that do not translate easily, and "Loose Adaptation" where the source material makes regular changes from the original, often to insert more humor or cultural references and invoke a sense of familiarity. Not all dubs get it perfect, but pretty much all of them have accepted that anime can be Japanese, unlike the English version of the Ace Attorney games.

A strong example of this in a classic sense is Star Blazers, the dub of Space Battleship Yamato. The cultural significance of the actual Japanese battleship Yamato that is canonically turned into a spaceship is practically incompatible with an American audience, so the dub chose to instead find chances to emphasize the sake of humanity. This is a moment where adaptation was key to invoking a comparable feeling, which is otherwise lost on the non-Japanese audience. (Admittedly this example comes with two obvious issues: 1. Star Blazers edited plenty, like sake into "spring water", and 2. U.S. submarines sunk the real world Yamato.)

Honestly I primarily look at what Funimation and Netflix are putting out as dubs, and anyone who says they're doing a bad job is a spoiled baby. (Unless it is a Saban dub. Glitter Force is an insult.) While I cannot speak for Netflix's standards, I know exactly what Funimation has been up to. Aside from editing the opening and closing credits for Dimension W, possibly due to legal rights to the opening and closing themes, Funimation hasn't been cutting any content. What you see from a Funimation dub is what you'd see on Crunchyroll, with the potential exception being if they wanted to bother to do convenient sign translation.

This leaves only two possible problems with Funimation dubs specifically:
1. The voice actors themselves are not the best.
2. You're uncomfortable realizing that the anime you loved when reading subtitles was actually garbage.

Of those two, I can only address the first, and I can comfortably say that Funimation doesn't have bad voice actors, but they don't always get appropriate roles. Funimation is still a company and employer, and likely wants to not leave any of their voice actors in the dark. This sometimes results in great voice casting, but other times can feel uncomfortable.

Another problem is the rise in SimulDubs, where Funimation has been trying to push out dubs on regular schedules. Most dubs start a month after an anime premieres, indicated by its upload to Crunchyroll, and some even get Same-Day Dubs, like My Hero Academia and I'm pretty sure Attack on Titan. This means that at the heart of an anime season you have voice actors working on a weekly basis. If this is a popular voice actor, who regularly appears at conventions, they may be less inclined to take on a Funimation dub role. (Though I have heard that sometimes episodes have some lines redubbed before home media release, similar to animation being refined after broadcast.)

For personal context, I've made a habit of watching subs and dubs simultaneously to look for visual and audio editing. I've sat through all of Digimon Adventure and Zero Two, as well as the first four films. Otherwise it has been comparing a few episodes of shows here and there when somethings stand out. I have an interest in how localization is handled.

---

A favorite habit of mine is to watch dubbed anime with the subtitles on. I took an interest in it from an Ultraman DVD that boasted revised, more accurate subtitles, but the dub was originally done by the Speed Racer voice team. They show this eerie world where the voices and text are saying different things, and how they relate to each other. Sometimes they're just different phrasings for the same concept, and other times they're vastly different. This is what I expect, and as long as nothing is being censored, I personally don't mind. Purity with dubbing is impossible, but dubbing is important to enjoying the animation without reading what you watch.

tl;dr
  • I'm an old man used to plenty of editing and censorship.
  • The voice acting these days is much better.
  • If you think a dub is bad, you probably have bad taste in anime and need to admit it.
EDIT:

I found a gem of a video where someone goes through every episode of Tokyo Mew Mew and Mew Mew Power and shows all of the editing. Like it genuinely is excessive how much 4Kids visually edited.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQrSljaVvvE
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Re: The Animation General

Post by Ivogoji »

I prefer dubbed anime because I feel subtitles distract from the action on-screen, and make it easier to miss dialogue you'd normally catch if listening, which isn't as big a deal if you're, say, watching a subbed movie that you might watch again sometime, but seems impractical if you're trying to watch a hundred episodes of one show that you'll probably never re-watch in full again.
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Re: The Animation General

Post by Triert »

Crazo, your opinions really are that of an old man who's become complacent.

"If you think a dub is bad, you must have a bad taste in anime and need to admit it."

I've seen two blistering examples of dubbing from funimation that took decisions that have nothing to do with the original and decided to inject someones personal idea of politics into it.

Unfaithful/Horrible dubbing has made people very nervous and even outright decrying the notion that their favorite anime's might be getting dubbed.

Wanna know what I mean by favorite? I mean stuff people watch during the season and grow to like instead of shows that people watch just to say they have a refined taste like some kind of art critic.

I'd heavily advise against bringing in such a notion to the discussion of anime, it's not something we should bring upon ourselves here. Half of this is because I might watch a lot of harem anime, the other half being because I know that what people here consider their favorite anime's versus what they would say what the best anime's ever are. You would have two lists.
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Re: The Animation General

Post by Jeffery Mewtamer »

I've got no real alternative to dubs since:
1. My Japanese is crap even though its my best human language after English.
2. I can't read subs or scanlations.
3. I know of no means of having a computer read softsubs along side playing the audio, and subtitle files aren't the most screenreader friendly of documents(not to mention that fansubbers don't always include character tags on individual lines).
4. I have no friends who'd be willing to read subs/scanlations aloud.

That said, as someone who's been watching anime and was aware of the fact it was imported since the late 90s, I'm of the opinion that, edited for Primetime Television and 4Kids dubs aside, the 00s saw massive improvement in the quality of most dubbed anime. Though, admittedly, I don't think I've listened to anything dubbed newer than Madoka Magica or whatever was airing on Toonami when I gave up on television, and I can't really say I was all that alert with Toonami near the end.

There's still the occasional truly horrible dub(The only good thing I've heard about Glitter Force is that Wolfran's dub name has the same "foreign pun most in the target audience won't get but some of their older siblings and parents will" quality his original name has in Japanese), but unless there's been massive regression in the American Anime Industry in recent years, I'm inclined to agree with Crazo's assessment that most cases of people complaining about dubs are either nitpicking or blaming the dub for flaws they didn't notice in a first viewing of the subs(and let's be honest, one's attention is less focused watching subs, even the most observant person usually picks up things on a second viewing they missed the first time around, serial media has a very different feel consumed all at once compared to in individual installments, hype goggles have similar effects to nostalgia goggles, and there are probably other relevant shortcomings of human perception at play here).

And while I'm not quite equipped to do serious sub/dub comparisons like Crazo, I wouldn't mind having more opportunities to compare multiple dubs. I'd like to give the Viz dub of Sailormoon a listen, but comparing it to the DiC/Cloverway Dubs would take forever, and if I ever marathon anything from Dragonball, I'm skipping Z in favor of Kai, and while Mew Mew Power wasn't nearly as cringe worthy as I expected when I marathoned it a year or two ago, I'm not a big enough One Piece fan to set through the 4Kids dub to compare it with Funi's dub.

Anyways, I'm up to episode 30 in my comparison of the Nelvana and Animax dubs of Cardcaptor Sakura. Can't think of any really significant differences since I last commented. For a 90s dub that aired on Saturday Mornings, the Nelvana dub actually holds up pretty well in my opinion(the Animax dub is better in most regards(I actually prefer the incantations the Nelvana dub gave Sakura even if the Animax dub is more faithful in that regard)).
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Re: The Animation General

Post by eblu »

say what you will but the only dub is ghost stories based on the youtube video i watched that was linked to me
all the rest are weeaboo garbage and if you're watching you really need to care more about your own culture than japan's whatever
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Re: The Animation General

Post by Triert »

"You need to care more about your own culture"

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Re: The Animation General

Post by EvilPinkamina »

most western animation either sucks or is made for kids and doesn't have the depth/go over the same concepts as some more mature anime. I love spongebob but they ain't bout to drop some Flip Flappers **** on me.
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Re: The Animation General

Post by Triert »

On the other end of entertainment there's a serious lack of effort in humor.

Most shows attempting to be funny just outright aren't trying or feel like their audience is full of ADHD ridden children.
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Re: The Animation General

Post by Jeffery Mewtamer »

In all fairness, most anime is targetted at a young audience, but at least the Japanese don't seem to assume all children are idiots that will be baffled by anything with an actual plot and properly developed characters or mentally scarred by anything even hinting at life's vices and don't have a mind set that entertainment for children and entertainment for adults must be mutually exclusive. So, while its fairly rare to find western animation targetted at children that has appeal to an older audience, there's plenty of anime marketted to kids that older siblings, babysitters, and parents will actually enjoy watching with the kids. And the sad part is that, while I'm sure American animators have always produced their fair share of crap that most have forgotten and don't care to remember, it seems the animators of yesteryear had a better track record of putting out gems along side the crap.

Though, speaking more generally, I'm usually too busy enjoying my media and toys to give a damn where in the world they come from. Reading through the list of Authors in my Library folder though, I think British authors are the plurality there, and I'm about 95% certain one of my favorite currently active authors is Canadian and I'm pretty sure I've read at least a few works by Australian authors. Not to mention stuff I've enjoyed via translation that wasn't originally Japanese.

I'm not really sure what "my own culture" means since the United States has never been a monocultural entity and I have no idea what mix of immigrants I'm descended from or the nationality of the Native American ancestor I supposedly have about 6 generations back, but whatever it is, life would be much more boring if I limited myself in such a way.
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Re: The Animation General

Post by Triert »

The USA's got plenty of contributions to animation that we can attribute to ourselves.

I mean hell, if it wasn't for Disney and the Duck comics that are popular everywhere else in the anglosphere (and south america) we probably wouldn't have had anime evolve the way it did.

Cut to the 70's, and well frankly the Hanna Barbera age of cartoons here is very predictable. But even with the rise of toy driven cartoons in the 80's, we finally got back on our feet with the help of Don Bluth and Disney coming in with a very heavy resurgence.

Our culture is great, but goes up and down and we're just in a bit of a down.
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Re: The Animation General

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Triert wrote:Crazo, your opinions really are that of an old man who's become complacent.

"If you think a dub is bad, you must have a bad taste in anime and need to admit it."

I've seen two blistering examples of dubbing from funimation that took decisions that have nothing to do with the original and decided to inject someones personal idea of politics into it.

Unfaithful/Horrible dubbing has made people very nervous and even outright decrying the notion that their favorite anime's might be getting dubbed.

Wanna know what I mean by favorite? I mean stuff people watch during the season and grow to like instead of shows that people watch just to say they have a refined taste like some kind of art critic.

I'd heavily advise against bringing in such a notion to the discussion of anime, it's not something we should bring upon ourselves here. Half of this is because I might watch a lot of harem anime, the other half being because I know that what people here consider their favorite anime's versus what they would say what the best anime's ever are. You would have two lists.
I'm gonna be a bit more loose in a response, but ultimately it isn't that I'm a complacent old man: it's that I've accepted that anime is trash, and I am a possum, or maybe, a racoon. Like from an animation perspective, anime is often poorly strung together from a visual perspective, and that is standard in the industry. That's how it thrives.

I check in on Funimation current dubs regularly. And again, the only times I've had active issues with their dubs, when comparing to the source material, is either when the source material is weak, or the voice actor's skill is weak. Nothing about their actual current dubbing techniques is bad, and any changes I notice tend to be ones that mind their audience will be from Western English speaking countries. But not like how 4Kids would Americanize their dubs. I have experienced no censorship from a Funimation dub, and at worst, phrasing that is used to off-hand explain something, rather than include a line of text saying "This is a Japanese food comprised of this and that."

If you want to fight over specific dubs by Funimation, that itself could be a fun discussion topic. But without specific titles, we don't have much to dispute over. Why not start an anime viewing club here? That could be plenty of fun!

What I think is more interesting than the boo-hoos of some folks who think dubbing an anime will somehow take away from the existence of the subtitled version (it won't), I'd rather look at when dubbing can IMPROVE a series, or when a dubbing feels so unnecessary.

I'll use two very inappropriate examples: Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt (PSG) vs. Shimoneta: A Boring World Where the Concept of Dirty Jokes Doesn't Exist. Both are Funimation dubs, but conceptually there are two great differences: PSG is clearly very America-inspired, and Shimoneta is conceptually VERY Japanese. I'd argue that someone could watch PSG without knowing it was originally done in Japanese, but even if it were done in a more traditional anime art style, people might think it was intended for an American audience. Where as Shimoneta, especially with how politics and social customs plays into the theme of the show, would be damaged by being given non-Japanese context.

I'd argue that this is a factor in what people consider good and bad in dubbing, regardless of actual dub quality. Does the dub improve the experience? If not, then either the dub will be forgotten or hated. This would explain why Cowboy Bebop and Fullmetal Alchemist, and even Ouran High School Host Club, which all have elements of a more western feel, are still enjoyed for their dubs, while many dubs are produced and then just ignored, or are solely the vehicle for those who don't have time or attention for subtitles.

I'm in the "trenches" and watch seasonal anime based on my own interests, too. I fall in love with series that don't maintain much attention after the season, like Kiznaiver, Amanchu!, and Sweetness and Lightning. And with services like Funimation, if I think it'll be more interesting in English, I'm only a month behind premiere dates before I can watch it in English. You can be part of the seasonal anime wave while still watching dubs, which should be something that gets people totally stoked!

But what I've learned in a world where I'm watching both subbed and dubbed is that the quality of something can be sobering revealed by a dub. When I watched it in Japanese, during its premiere, I loved Is This a Zombie?!, and thought it was brilliant. When I watched it dubbed, I realized that I was just hype over concepts. I've grown my critical while watching seasonal anime, and it honestly has improved my taste. I watched Fuuka during the Winter 2017 season, could tell it was bad while watching it subbed, checked out the dub, and it was just as bad. Same season I was watching Masamune-kun's Revenge, which is clever by concept, but ultimately flimsy, and the dub matched. I watched Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, thought it was great, and the dub was genuinely solid.

Sure, there are plenty of series where the dub is way worse, but those days have slowly but surely passed us. 4Kids and Saban understand what anime suits their intended age range now, and localizes accordingly. Funimation and Sentai Filmworks don't try to change the rating of a series when dubbing it. We don't live in a hellish landscape when it comes to dubs: we live in a much better world.
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Re: The Animation General

Post by Triert »

"and the dub was genuinely solid."

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My opinion on your terrible opinions can wait, how exactly would a viewing club work?
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Re: The Animation General

Post by Crazo3077 »

I think a viewing club would be a separate topic. I'd focus too much on schedules and accessibility when discussing it.

I'd much rather see what you think of my terrible opinions.
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