[Lynk Former]

Well, it is. ._. English dubs will never be as good as the Japanese, imho. They have to time their speech according to lip movements, so they can't really say it how it would sound good in English, so a lot of the time the speech is just... blah. There's also the big part about English in general, about how we don't have a formal way of speaking like almost every other language, so a lot easily gets lost in translation!

I believe English dubs will never be the SAME as the original, never be as good? That's another thing entirely because I've heard one or two English audios that are very much better than the Japanese and it's because they weren't the same as the original that allowed them to be better.

The English and Japanese audios are recorded the same way (almost), the full animation is done first and then the actors come in to record from that. The big difference is that the Japanese do it the radio drama way where they all get in a big recording room together while the English actors do things separately unless there is an exchange between two characters that needs two of them to be there at the same time. I don't understand this thing you have about timing because I've seen plenty of animes where the Japanese cast has made some blatent timing errors which were left in. Card Captor Sakura being one of them XD

But I do agree on one thing, English as a language doesn't sound as good as Japanese, just as I find that Hindi to me doesn't sound as good as English.

Furthermore, words are not timed to lip movements. In older animes, yes, they attempted to flatly redub something in another language. now the actual frames are extended, shortened and digitally altered to math the english voice more correctly. However, I have seen some anime's where even Japanese does not fit the mouth movements. it's as though the mouth was drawn to fit a hybid of timing between English an japanese.

Actually they don't do that anymore, altering the frames I mean. They did it for the VHS releases of animes and mainstream animes such as Pokemon still do it, but that's because there isn't any Japanese version included in Pokemon DVDs. All animes with a English and Japanese version included in the DVD remain untouched, everything is done the oldfashioned way... retakes.

Then look at every other dub in history... Momiji went from absolutely CUTE in Furuba to... sounding like a 15-year-old girl. A lot of the time, I feel like maybe the English voice directors don't *get* the character, or maybe there isn't a wide enough range of voice actors out there to find that 'perfect' fit for roles. But, yeah, I've never really heard a dub I liked. Chi in Chobits sounds like a -retard- in the dub, not a cute little girl. Like, she just sounds plain stupid, like IQ -10.

I find it surprising that you're picking out Fruits Basket of all things as an example of a bad English audio. I've heard from those who are very critical of English audios that it's actually got a very good English version. As for Chobits, I have no complaints about either the Japanese or English, in fact both were done wonderfully. The performance that Rie Tanaka gave and the performance that Michelle Ruff gave were different, there's no doubting that. But when I look at it, I find that they're both just interpretations of this character that originally doesn't have a voice, but does have a created personality. These two voices are both Chii, but they are at different levels of her personality.

Actually, I think one dub voice I semi-liked was the one picked out for Kero-chan in the second Cardcaptor Sakura movie. That was pretty right on, but like I mentioned with the language barrier stuff.. when Kero-chan can't say "Wai! Wai!" like a little kid whenever food is involved, I weep inside.

And for kid voice actors... rofl. Look at the voice actors casted for Syaoran and Sakura by KidsWB. I believe they were like 12 or 13 at the time...

http://v1.nelvana.com/cardcaptors/ht...s/CC_14_T1.mov
Mind you, that isn't the Kero-chan I was talking about earlier

And as for mentioning KidsWB, Nelvana, 4Kids and Saban... NO ONE likes the English audios created by those companies. They shouldn't even be allowed to breath near those animes let alone touch them.

I know the child voice actors for Cardcaptors sucked badly, but I have to ask, have you actually listened to the English audio of ROD the TV and heard Aaron Dismuke in Fullmetal Alchemist?

And please, just refrain from watching KidsWB. It will in the end fry your brain.

Listen to Rebel, he'll save your life one day lol

I try to listen to dub voices on DVDs, but they're never up to par with the original Japanese.. I guess most of this 'prejudice', if you want to call it that, is in the fact that I'm really familiar with the mannerisms and um... language xD so it just doesn't get better than that for me!

In the end I really do understand where you're coming from since I agree that the English audios will never sound the same as the Japanese and I totally agree with you on that level. On the other hand, I don't agree when someone says so simply that all English audios will never be good simply because it's never going to sound the same.

I have a feeling this thread will cause a holy war one day.

You should've been there when the geeks in LF were arguing over whether Anakin Skywalker actually brought balance to the Force or not.... This on the other hand must be done simply because there are a lot of talented people out there being taken for granted.