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Worst anime dubs


ssjup81

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...Anime dubs. I know some people have viewed both versions of certain series and actually do prefer one over the other. Or course this will vary from person to person and if there is already a thread on this and I missed it somehow, please feel free to lock/close this one and redirect me there. Anywho, here's my list from over the years, even though some of these shows I'm about to mention I didn't see all the way through (either version and dropped them)...

 

Naruto: I pretty much only disliked this for the voices and the voice acting and I can't say anything regarding Shippuden. I've never seen anything dubbed of that. Anyway, since I've never seen enough of the dub to see if they changed story plots or characters, I'm being slightly superficial here and can only go by the voice acting I heard at the time when trying to give this show a chance. I just really really couldn't stand the voice acting for some reason, though. I can't put up with it at all. And Naruto's "believe it!" was a bit grating for some reason. I didn't mind the "dattebayo" that Naruto used in the original...Takeuchi Junko is a good voice actress in general and very energetic too (you should see the Hunter x Hunter musicals where the voice actors played the characters that they voiced for the 1999 series; she voiced Gon originally), but not for the dub.

 

Digimon Adventure 02: Ironic, another series where Takeuchi Junko does a voice role for it (as well as Frontier), but never mind that. I hated the character changes for this series and unnecessary name changes. I also hated the character bashing that wasn't there for the original version. Daisuke's character was heavily bashed for the dub. The rumor was that the main dub writer, Nimoy, didn't like his character much in a general sense, and had the other characters make snide remarks or take potshots at him. When even the most polite of characters of the series take shots at a character, you know something's wrong. Some of the voices were horrible too, like Wormmon. He sounded like a constipated old man. He's supposed to sound cute and adorable so that when he's hurt and abused, you feel more sorry for him. I also hated the jokes they tossed in (which Adventure was guilty of too) which really screwed up serious moments. Adventure had its dub issues, but 02 is what turned me off from dubs in a most general sense. One of my main character change gripes was Koushirou/Izzy. Koushirou is one of my fav characters of the series. Izzy, however, came across as arrogant because of his intelligence. It's like he was like, "I'm smart and I know it, and I want to make sure you know it too." That was my impression of Izzy for this series.

 

Sailor Moon: I've only seen seasons 1 and 2's dub all the way through, and I didn't mind it too much. Even the dub music was nice, and to be honest, I actually liked DiC's voice actresses for the girls. I hated the cuts made to the series though, especially the SMR movie. Unforgivable! They dropped one of the best Sailor Moon songs ever...Moon Revenge!! For the little of SMS's dub I saw, I couldn't take the voice acting and hated the fact that they did chance Michiru and Haruka's relationship to "cousins". So, incest is okay, but a lesbian relationship, call in the national guard! lol

 

Dragon Ball/Z/GT: In general, I felt that voice wise, this series was awful. Funimation's earlier version had too many cuts for it. And for DB's dub, Kuririn's pervertedness was close to nonexistent. lol I liked his perverted persona in the first series. lol In other words, the voices didn't feel that they suited the characters much....other than teen/adult Goku/Gohan/Goten (original). I know what they were going for, but it just didn't work.

 

Fushigi Yuugi: OMG this is awful!! The voices are horrible, the acting is horrible...give me the original any day...even though the series in general is annoying.. lol With FY, you just want to stab your ears.

 

Bleach: Most of the voices for this series difn't fit the characters, especially Hitsugaya. He was supposed to resemble like a 12-year-old kid. I liked him for the original (especially since he was voiced by Paku Romi, who I love), but the dub had to go. Hitsugaya was my favorite character too. The only character I didn't have too much of a problem with dub voice wise was Ichigo.

 

Gravitation: This series comes across as bad to me because of, once again, the voice acting, and the fact that Shuichi's character was toned down so much, imo. He's supposed to be a bundle of energy and Yuki's opposite. He just sounded uninterested in most anything for the dub, to me, which kind of took away from the character's personality (imo). It's like they liquified some Ritalin and injected him with it. I just hated that so much. What I liked about him for the original was stripped, imo, for the dub.

 

Okay, there goes my list, and as I pointed out, most of my dislikes are....superficial. Mostly voice acting/delivery and sound.

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Aren't they always faking it ;) lol (the cute voice is . . . )

 

Hajime no Ippo had a terrible dub , the voices weren't done well and even though the series is a little dated the "slang" and general language was ancient , they used terms like "Bub" and said things like "are you picking up what I'm throwing down?" and in general it felt like someone from the 1940's did the dub (forgive me if the year I referenced is wrong).

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I normally try not to hate dubs, but there are definitely some that are REALLY bad. The worst one? Garzey's Wing. The scripting is terrible, the dialogue is terrible, the voice acting is wretched! Really? "I must somehow make sense of our convoluted situation!" Uuuugh. Kill me.

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I agree that English voice actors can't access the same "cute" range that the Japanese seem to be able to achieve, it might be down to how they're recorded; Japan it's a group session, a performance, whilst American it's usually a box on your lonesome!

 

I have a soft spot for the old ADV dubs, well those probably around 2004, I could pretty much identify every voice actor in an anime, because they were that distinct; I joked that the voice actors weren't playing the characters, but the other way around ;)!

 

Worst dubs for me that springs to mind: Tsubasa: RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE and xxxHOLiC!

 

What annoys me about these dubs is their inability to get almost any of the characters' names right; it's SA-KU-RA, not Sockura, or Secura as Nevada had it in Cardcaptors!! It's not just Sakura they can't say get wrong, Syaoran becomes Syao-ron (he's not a Mahjong move), Kurogane becomes Kurow-gane (he's not a boat), Watanuki becomes Wata-nuki (is that Ewokese?) and Himawari becomes Hima-wari (combining two sounds together to make a new sound isn't hard)!

 

I also feel that Monica Rial was not a good choice for Sakura, or at least how she was voice acting at the time, if she was voicing as she did earlier in her career, when she was voicing quiet characters, I think I would have liked her performance better!

 

The problem is that dubs elongate words based on their own rules of language, the concept that if there's only one consonant between two vowels, the first vowel will be long sound! I feel that rules of language should not apply when the subject is not of the home language (-chan should not be -charn, etc.), although I can't really say that when we English have Anglo-ised some foreign words, but then "foreigners" have done the same to some English words!

 

You could perhaps say that we in the UK have a bit of good fortune, given the way the DVDs of one of our distributors (Kazé - French company that decided to set-up shop in the UK, but then before that we had Beez, also based in France) work, in that it locks you into either only watching the dub, or the sub, when you select "Play All", downside to this distributor is that they appear to not understand that "clean" opening/ending should not feature any text, so their "hardsubbing" of lyrics on the "clean" openings and endings are not really "clean"!

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When it comes to dubs, I'm easy to please; not even mispronounced character names are enough to get me to call a dub bad.

 

That said, the 4kids dub of One Piece was bad. From nonsensical accents to other issues, not even having a good voice cast saved it.

 

As one website put it, Sanji sounds like those lollipops gave him a bad case of smoker's lung. Poor guy...

 

Now if you excuse me, I must get someone with a springloaded showerhead...what?!

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When it comes to dubs, I'm easy to please; not even mispronounced character names are enough to get me to call a dub bad.

 

That said, the 4kids dub of One Piece was bad. From nonsensical accents to other issues, not even having a good voice cast saved it.

 

As one website put it, Sanji sounds like those lollipops gave him a bad case of smoker's lung. Poor guy...

 

Now if you excuse me, I must get someone with a springloaded showerhead...what?!

 

Oh 4Kids, how you put your foot in things, or opened yourself up for ridicule!

 

A friend told me how they removed an iceberg from One Piece, that would make a key appearance later on, and as for ridicule, I only need to cite the fact that for (I think) when something isn't backed up by the original version, Bulbapedia has a picture of Brock and some oni-giri, saying "Who wants a doughnut?", and Team Four Star with "Look I'm drinking beer" *ping - changes colour* "now it's orange juice"!

 

I didn't watch a lot of the abridged parodies, but I've seen some, like for Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Tea/Anzu being a kleptomaniac!

 

Danganronpa Dub... ugggghghghgh ~_~

 

You've just reminded me of Virtue's Last Reward, similar type of game, that has a dub, but well, only in America (and maybe Australia), however because the Europeans might complain, we in the UK got a sub-only version, alternatively it might have been that the European distributor didn't want to pay to buy the dub!

 

I'm not complaining, I mean I got to hear Yukari Tamura as Clover, Mamiko Noto as Luna and Atsuko Tanaka as Alice, so that was a win! Seen as Zero Time Dilemma is being localised along side its development, it's possible we'll end up with a dub track instead of sub this time, which will be interesting, as first game, no voices (although I did assign characters voices, like Clover, who I assigned the voice of "Tori Meadows" (Kotori Mizuki) in Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal dub, and I'd only listened to it, once or twice)

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I agree with you there, sometimes the dub is quite truthful, however they are tied down by the animation, as what they can say, so have to change things, and sometimes this means that they write something similar, but could infer other things that haven't been mentioned in the original, so may not be true!

 

Actually, on the subject of 4Kids goofs, didn't they kill off Brock's mother, only to have her comeback in a later series?

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Actually, on the subject of 4Kids goofs, didn't they kill off Brock's mother, only to have her comeback in a later series?
I think that the writers just assumed she was dead since she wasn't around, because I don't think it ever said one way or the other in the original ep where they first met Brock/Takeshi.
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I don't know, but then I've not watched the 4Kids dub, in a long while! I say 4Kids dub, as I have watched TPCi, although not for a while now, however if I could, I'd watch the original version, however the older series of Pokémon are harder to get, compared to Digimon!

 

The newer series of Pokémon aren't that hard to get, so I should really do that, before that changes, especially seen as I can now play 720p, which was what prevented me getting them before, because I'd have to take time to convert them into 480p before playing them!

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