Some people in America tend to dislike American voice actors who dub for anime. Is the reverse true for Japanese dubs of American shows?

9 comments

1. The Japanese dub of SpongeBob was pretty bad

2. I remember way back when The Simpsons was on Wowow and they did a Japanese VO. Because of all the American cultural references it was butchered in Japanese and wasn’t funny at all. Just looked like an abusive father lol.

3. More like most. As for the japanese side of things I’ve heard that the original language for king of the hill is preferred but who knows if it’s true.

4. My wife doesn’t understand English and she listens/watches Netflix in the background while working so she always has it dubbed. It’s terrible. It sounds like theater rather than a movie. All very unnatural and exaggerated.

5. Yes. There was a YouTube video where the did small interviews and played both the dubbed and original audio for american shows….the original audio usually was prefered cause it was more “american” so yeah.

   Also I think when it comes to dubs (in any language, cause japanese anime is still technically a dub, cause it’s anime) there is a sorta sense of cringe when you hear someone butcher the language/poor skills or bad fit for a role etc.

6. Dubbing usually sucks whatever the source & target languages, but they suck exponentially more when the two languages are very far away and/or the two cultures are very far away. A french dub for an italian movie might be fine-ish, or a korean dub over a japanese drama, but japanese and english share nothing and it’s crystal clear with every word pronounced and it feels super unnatural both ways and ruins the experience.

7. I recall the cast of critical role was pretty happy with their Japanese dub of Vox Machina… no idea how actual Japanese people received it though

8. My wife absolutely dislikes the voice actor for Tom Holland’s Spider-Man. Every time we watch him, we have to watch in English.

9. I think dubbing loses a lot of nuances, regardless of what language to what. Some worse than others.