Anime: Subbed or Dubbed

   In my opinion nothing is greater then a well crafted, well written, Japanese animated epic that I can zone out and watch for a week straight. Series's like Cowboy Bebop and Neon Genesis Evangelion and movies like Akira and Ghost in the Shell are master pieces that I can watch over and over and over again. But one thing that is ever debated(at least among me and my closest nerd friends) is whether to watch them subtitled with Japanese spoken or dubbed with English spoken and no subtitles.

  I believe, unlike many, that their is absolutely nothing wrong with dubbed and in fact dubbed is MORE respectful to the art that is Anime. Let me explain, In a live action foreign film it is disrespectful to the work of the actors to watch it dubbed, it also more often than not looks absolutely ridiculous. We've all made the Godzilla jokes so I don't think I'm over stepping when I say you can tell they weren't speaking that language originally. However, actors in live action movies are an immensely important aspect of the film and a movie is often successful because of their ability to properly portray the work of the writers and directors. Not to diminish the work of voice actors because I have certainly watched enough cartoons and played enough video games to know there are good ones and very very bad ones. But, the work of voice actors don't make or break an animated story, it's the animators and colorists that do. It's their work that shines in that medium and pulls everything together and a writers work can be read by anyone of any language so long as the translation is accurate without being absurd. "You have disrespected me harshly and now we will fight" works better in Japanese than it does in English. By watching anime dubbed we never have the neccesity of taking our eyes off the beautiful work of the artists to read text that is disrupting the screen and fluidity of the animation, we also aren't ruining the work of the actors because the actors are just animated characters moving their mouths up and down and when it's done right (which it isn't always) you would never know it was originally meant for japanese dialouge.

   Well animated and well written anime is good anime no matter what language you hear it in and the artists of these great works need their due credit and they get the most without subtitles. That being said I'm really glad I wasn't born deaf because otherwise this entire entry would be moot. (insert giant brow drop /sigh moment here)

I'm not a nerd, I'm a specialist.
Sousuke Sagara (Full Metal Panic!)