Overheard a guy in a Gundam shirt arguing that dubs ruin the 'soul' of a show

He was going off about how voice actors in Japan put way more emotion into it because its their actual job, not just a side gig. I kinda get it but I was watching Golden Boy dubbed last night and the English va was hilarious. Does watching a show in a language you dont understand really make it more genuine or is that just gatekeeping?

2 comments

2 Comments

hollyg5918d ago

Laughing at the guy in the Gundam shirt while picturing him trying to explain the "soul" of a show about giant robots fighting in space... I watched the original Gundam dub back in the 90s and it was a glorious train wreck of bad voice acting and mispronounced names. The Golden Boy English dub is legendary for a reason, it's basically a comedy masterpiece with how over the top it is. Gatekeeping like that always cracks me up because most people watching subs can't even tell if the Japanese voice actor is phoning it in or not.

jake_owens18d ago

Exactly this. The "soul of the show" argument is just a fancy way of saying "I'm used to hearing it in Japanese" lol. I've been in the hobby since the early 2000s and I've noticed people get SUPER attached to their FIRST experience with an anime. That first version becomes the "correct" one and anything else feels wrong to them. It's like how everyone swears their childhood pizza joint had the best slices even though it was probably just frozen dough and hormel pepperoni. At the end of the day dub or sub both get the same story across, one just has fewer pop cultural references that made sense 20 years ago.