Tried watching dubbed anime for a week and it totally changed my take on sub vs dub

I've always been a sub-only guy for the past 5 years, but last month I gave dubs a real shot with Attack on Titan. Watched the first 10 episodes in English and honestly, the voice acting was way better than I expected. The emotional scenes hit different when you're not reading subtitles the whole time. But then I switched back to Japanese for episode 11 and caught a bunch of nuances I missed in the dub. Now I'm torn on which way to go for new shows. Which side do you lean on and why? What's the one show that changed your mind about dubs or subs?

3 comments

3 Comments

murray.robert15d ago

Honestly bring up a good point about catching nuances. Which show made you realize you were missing stuff in the dub? Was it the way certain characters said their lines or more like cultural jokes and stuff that didn't translate? I'm curious if there's a specific scene or moment that really drove that home for you.

iris_schmidt15d ago

Piled onto that with Attack on Titan actually. There's this scene with Eren and Mikasa where in the dub she just sounds worried, but in the sub there's this tiny pause before she says his name that completely changes the tone. It goes from "oh no my friend is upset" to "I'm terrified because I know exactly what he's thinking right now." But the thing nobody talks about is how dubs lose the sound design. The raw vocal strain and breath control in the original language can tell you more about a character's mental state than any translation ever could. A dub actor can say the right words but unless they match that exact breath pattern, you're missing a whole layer of the performance.

lewis.brian15d ago

Nah, I gotta disagree a bit. I've watched AoT in both languages and the dub actually nails Mikasa's emotional restraint way better than the sub where she sounds a little too dramatic sometimes.