"Glass Half Empty" corner - What don't you like about the dub

[Ryu Taylor]

As you can tell by my signature (which I'll repeat if I've changed it since I opened this thread), I am a "lonely advocate for the English dub." And that's what I am. However, I am not its bodyguard. Despite that I prefer the dub (the reasons why I do you'd know considering the last thread I started; by the way, go there if you want to praise the dub), I admit it has problems. To reiterate (and by that I mean copypaste) from the other thread:

- I don't care about music changing. Yes, the reason is greedy (charging royalties from all non-Asian territories), but the music itself is what I like.
- I don't care about name changing.
- I don't care about paint edits. Sure, I'll be seen mocking some of the most ridiculous ones, though. One won't need to be a weeaboo to laugh at that.
- I don't care about minor dialogue edits.

On the other hand:

- I do care about plot changing. Although I think the dub of the first Pokemon movie is a guilty pleasure, I agree that it's an unfaithful dub.
- I do care about when character changing goes very dramatically far. Existential crisis Mewtwo > Vengeful Mewtwo.
- I do care about major dialogue edits (technically, this could be a subsidiary of either criterion listed above).

So, by my own criteria, although I still contest that it's a good dub, it's not great. As I said in the list, the first two movies were unfaithful dubs because of changes to the former's antagonist and to the latter's plot. Also, whenever a pun is especially bad, I can't let that slide (even though that's a criterion I have for anything I watch). And what's with the blank signs?

Again, I'm not out to change any minds. This is just an area of disclosure. Sheesh, I sound like such a shrink.

But anyway, although I still and always will prefer the dub, I know it's made lots of mistakes (4kids and TPCi both). Now that I've laid out my problems, let's hear yours.

 

[Umbreon Freak]

I really don't like the way the TPCI dub handles Team Rocket. Their rhyming dialogue makes me want to bang my head against a wall.

 

[Hidden Mew]

Yeah, Team Rocket's dialogue in the TPCI dub can come off as wooden and unnatural at least partly due to how often they rhyme. 4Kids had them rhyming outside of when they did their mottos too, but not as often as I think that TPCI does.

 

[MizuTaipu]

The acting is stiff and forced, the a lot of the voices do not suit the characters at all (like having young boys sound like they're 35, Meowth's Brooklyn accent, etc), the Japanese culture and on-screen text erasure, and the music replacement.

The last one is the dub's biggest problem for me as the original music really enhances the emotion of a scene whereas the dub's replacement stuff waters it down. A good example is Hikari's goodbye scene in the last DP episode. They used music from the Giratina film to make it seem so sweeping and truly like a farewell, whereas the dub was all like "we'll see each other again kthxbai." I mean, if they're going to waste money and brain cells creating new music they shouldn't half ass it for big scenes like that

 

[Ryu Taylor]

When it comes to writing Team Rocket, there really have been some hits and misses. After all, the same Team Rocket that said this great exchange:

Meowth: "I'm starvin'..."
Jessie: "I can cook something."
Meowth: "Thanks, but the last time you cooked, you wiped out eight of my nine lives."

Also said this lame line:

James: "I'd settle for a taste of that Pika-chow."

 

[ii kanji]

Also said this lame line:

James: "I'd settle for a taste of that Pika-chow."

Actually that was so bad it made me laugh out loud when I got it just now

 

[Ryu Taylor]

In the other thread, I noted how removing the narrator from the Pikachu's Rescue Adventure short was a stroke of genius, since they remembered that children are smarter than they think they are. When 4kids had scenes added to the fourth movie to make absolutely clear that Sammy was Professor Oak, it was like they went back to thinking that children are stupid.

 

[Umbreon Freak]

Speaking of 4Kids thinking that kids are stupid, the lengths they went to censor Japanese culture truly are hilarious. Brock's donut line in the Primeape episodes never fooled me, not even as a kid. I imagine most kids realized those things weren't donuts.

 

[Ryu Taylor]

Speaking of 4Kids thinking that kids are stupid, the lengths they went to censor Japanese culture truly are hilarious. Brock's donut line in the Primeape episodes never fooled me, not even as a kid. I imagine most kids realized those things weren't donuts.

Well, I knew that would be brought up sooner or later. I concur with you, by the way.

 

[Osprey]

It'd be shorter to just say what I do like about the dub. Which I already have in another thread.

 

[KrspaceT]

I feel they could polish it a bit more: Pokemon and YuGiOh dubs also suffered from the fall of 4Kids. Say what you will about 4Kids, but they had some pretty devoted and emotive voice actors, and the dub changes both suffered hurt that.

That, and some actors moving or retiring.

 

[Jimmy 3 People 0]

Dub voice actors, to me, aren't good at all. Ash's TPCI voice, in particular, sounds completely emotionless at times and just bores me to death - at least his 4Kids voice had personality. And that's not even getting into the crappy dialogue. Serena's voice is pleasant, though.

 

[Almonds]

Re: "Glass Half Empty" corner - What don't you like about the dub

Paint edits and lame translations

Also, for the dub in my country; over-recycling of voice actors/actresses. Serena's voice actress had been recycled over and over for nearly 70% of the female characters ever since DP.

 

[Ryu Taylor]

Re: "Glass Half Empty" corner - What don't you like about the dub

Paint edits and lame translations

Also, for the dub in my country; over-recycling of voice actors/actresses. Serena's voice actress had been recycled over and over for nearly 70% of the female characters ever since DP.

Wow, that's lazy. And it's nice to hear some input about a non-English dub.

 

[Almonds]

Re: "Glass Half Empty" corner - What don't you like about the dub

Paint edits and lame translations

Also, for the dub in my country; over-recycling of voice actors/actresses. Serena's voice actress had been recycled over and over for nearly 70% of the female characters ever since DP.

Wow, that's lazy. And it's nice to hear some input about a non-English dub.

ikr. She's voiced Bel, Roxie, Cabernet, Dawn, May, Officer Jenny, Serena... I wouldn't be complaining if she was recycled just for CotD's/pokemons or at least hadn't overlapped in the same series, but for majorly appearing characters and the heroines... :/

 

[Alola]

Re: "Glass Half Empty" corner - What don't you like about the dub

Paint edits and lame translations

Also, for the dub in my country; over-recycling of voice actors/actresses. Serena's voice actress had been recycled over and over for nearly 70% of the female characters ever since DP.

Wow, that's lazy. And it's nice to hear some input about a non-English dub.

ikr. She's voiced Bel, Roxie, Cabernet, Dawn, May, Officer Jenny, Serena... I wouldn't be complaining if she was recycled just for CotD's/pokemons or at least hadn't overlapped in the same series, but for majorly appearing characters and the heroines... :/

That must be horrible D:
Do they at least try to make the different characters sound different?

 

[Idon'tcare]

Re: "Glass Half Empty" corner - What don't you like about the dub

^That reminds of 4Kids' constant use of Lisa Ortiz to voice girls, it's bothersome because all her human speaking voices sound exactly the same. The only time Ortiz actually attempted to make her voice sound different is when she voiced the Oshawott line. I am glad TPCI doesn't use her much, but having Lisa voice Mars was a bad choice.

Anyway, there is plenty I do not like about the Pokémon anime dub (both the 4kids and the TPCI dub):

Changing the background music; Pokémon has such a great score, I can't see why the dubs would change it.

Giving Pokémon who have the same name in English and Japanese a dub voice when they do not need them.

When replacing a lyrical Japanese music in an episode, they don't use the right kind of music to fit the mood.

4kids' unnecessary edits, the biggest being removing any traces of Japan by changing onigiri into sandwiches.

Voices not giving out the same result as the original (e.g; Numera has a cute voice, Goomy has a dumb one).

Having the same species of Pokémon voiced by the same person, when varying the VAs would separate them.

I stopped watching the 4kids dub during the Hoenn series:- it seems like they were trying to make the show more childish than usual, James' voice became way too goofy and that's when those sandwiches came in. With the TPCI dub I stopped watching at the XY series; their background music has become terrible, it's all boring now and they completely ruin an exciting scene with it (the only good music I heard from them was an emotional piece). But the biggest reason was when TPCI had replaced the music in the 17th Pokémon movie (and the mini movie that came with it) I could not believe it, after keeping the Japanese score for so long, I was always like " at least I have the movies to watch a dub that's close to the original". But now? That's completely gone, even if they do continue to stick fully to the original script for the movies, it is not sticking fully to the original if you replace the majority of the background music. What TPCI is basically doing is a reverse 4kids with the BG music for the Pokémon movies.

So yeah, that was the final straw for me, I no longer watch the dub version of the Pokémon anime. Unless TPCI goes back to how the handle the music during the Diamond & Pearl show (there were episodes where they kept the entire original background music) and if that replacing music in movies ends up as one-off. But I don't have my hopes up for any of this, so I gave up and now I only check out the dub to listen for how they do the voices.

 

[Almonds]

Re: "Glass Half Empty" corner - What don't you like about the dub

Paint edits and lame translations

Also, for the dub in my country; over-recycling of voice actors/actresses. Serena's voice actress had been recycled over and over for nearly 70% of the female characters ever since DP.

Wow, that's lazy. And it's nice to hear some input about a non-English dub.

ikr. She's voiced Bel, Roxie, Cabernet, Dawn, May, Officer Jenny, Serena... I wouldn't be complaining if she was recycled just for CotD's/pokemons or at least hadn't overlapped in the same series, but for majorly appearing characters and the heroines... :/

That must be horrible D:
Do they at least try to make the different characters sound different?

They probably are trying, but with the girls all being similar teenage trainers and such, there's hardly any difference imo... Bel sounds like a busy/panicky Serena

 

[ArvAl]

Re: "Glass Half Empty" corner - What don't you like about the dub

-They should improve their voice acting. When they spoke, it was almost like reading a static script. But hey, it's Pokemon on CN not FOX so I let that slide for now.
-Creative team who doesn't have much....creativity. I mean in example, Pokemon's episode titles these days are sadly lazier than before. Plus, they don't even bother to do some funny dub edits now.

"Prior to AG"

-Horrible text edits and too much replacement just to get rid some Japanese element stuff. Good thing both dubs present times had their own made-up language now (But still confuses me most to reading [emoji14]).

 

[technickal]

I like the dub, but am upset they haven't changed the title cards to Serena's new design or changed Be a Hero to use Mad-Paced Getter clips instead of the outdated Mega V ones. It makes it seem like they just don't care.