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SUBS

                                             July 31, 2011

  It's time I weigh in on one
  of the great controversies
  of the age: subs or dubs?            That is to say,
                                       "subtitles" or
                                       "dubbed".

                                                          MAPPING_THE_LOWLANDS
    I'm solidly on the side of
    "subs", though not to the
    point of fanaticism.
                                                   The temptation of subs
       The typical English anime dub is            fans like myself is to
       really horrible, frequently it's            sneer at the stupid,
       as though they got the cast of              low-brow illiteracy
       the Brady Bunch to do samurai               of the dubs fan...
       dialog.
                                                   But really, reading
       There is however, the strange case          fast (as I more or
       of "Cowboy Beebop", where the dubs          less do) isn't all
       are actually a slight improvement           that tightly
       on the original japanese.                   connected to
                                                   intelligence.
          And Viz Media, a company with
          one foot in San Francisco, seems            One of my favorite
          capabable of doing decent dubs.             writers is apparently
                                                      a quite slow reader:
                                                      Samuel R. Delany.

    A peeve:

    I'm the kind of person who
    will sometimes watch anime
    in "fan-sub" versions off
    bittorrent, but when the
    "official" DVDs are out I
    typically buy them.

    One of the supposed "value adds" of the
    DVD product is the addition of English
    dubs which I rarely care about-- and
    yet are always the default.

    A worse peeve:

    It's particuarly galling, when the
    offical "subs" are inferior to the
    fan sub versions.  Fan-subs can be
    clunky on occasion, but usually they
    really are done by "fanatics" who
    care about what they're doing.

           A simple example from "Ghost in the Shell:
           Standalone Complex":

           At one point in the story, everyone's
           communications have been jammed, and one of
           the characters muses that now "whoever has
           the best standalone strategy wins".

           The official version is a completely
           unmemorable line to the effect that it's
           all a crap-shoot now, and anyone might
           win.

           Just look at the title of the show.
           Which version works better?



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