Tried watching Dub and Sub back to back for a new show and Sub won by a mile

So last week I decided to do a little experiment with that new fantasy anime everyone's talking about, The Celestial Forge. I watched episode 1 dubbed on Crunchyroll and then immediately watched episode 2 subbed. The difference was honestly shocking. The English voice actor for the main character sounded like he was reading a grocery list, all flat and bored. But the Japanese voice actress brought so much emotion to the fight scene, I actually got chills during the big betrayal moment at 12 minutes in. I think the problem is the English version tried to match the lip flaps too closely and lost all the natural pauses in dialogue. Has anyone else tried doing side by side comparisons like this and seen a huge gap in quality?

3 comments

3 Comments

jamie9401mo ago

Right? So I did the exact same thing with that one last season, The Frost Monarch, and the sub was just on another level entirely. The English VA for the villain sounded like he was trying too hard to be deep and menacing, but the Japanese actor had this quiet, scary calm that made my skin crawl. I swear the dub directors just don't care about matching the emotion of the original performance, they just want the words out fast. It really makes me wonder how many shows I've been missing out on by just sticking with dubs out of habit.

oscarc121mo ago

...and get this, my buddy Mark did the exact same thing with an older show. He watched the first three seasons of some fantasy series dubbed because that's just what he always did. Then he decided to try the sub for season four on a whim and called me up almost mad about it. He said the main character in the dub sounded like a generic action hero, but in the sub you could hear the actual pain and sarcasm in his voice. Now he won't even look at a dub unless he's half asleep or doing dishes at the same time. Have you completely switched over now or do you still keep a few shows on dub for background noise?

oscarc121mo ago

@jamie940 nailed it about dub directors rushing through lines. I actually read a interview with a voice actor who said they're given zero context for scenes sometimes, just the script and told to match the timing.