• Forum Moderator applications are now open! If you're interested in joining an active team of moderators for one of the biggest Pokémon forums on the internet, click here for info.

Interesting ANN Poll

Status
Not open for further replies.
M

Mozz

Golden Wang of Justice
Joined
Dec 30, 2002
Messages
2,114
Reaction score
24
Perhaps this will show why anime DVDs are so expensive, and how you're typically paying for stuff you don't use..:

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/poll.php?id=65

Would you buy an anime DVD if it did not include an English dub (just subtitles) ?

Hell Yeah, I never listen to dubs. 3464 (51.4%)
Sure, I'm pretty indifferent to subbed or dubbed, so I don't care either way. 1814 (26.9%)
I prefer dubs, but if subs are all there is, then so be it. 699 (10.4%)
Only if it was a title I really liked, and I wouldn't be happy about it. 447 (6.6%)
Nope, if it isn't dubbed I won't pay for it. 318 (4.7%)
 
Wow, a lot of anti-dubbies out there. Sad.

I've bought one track only DVDs before, in both dub and sub, and I wasn't happy about either, but they were inexpensive (one I won in a contest)
 
Subtitling has a flexibility that dubbing does not have - there is no need to worry about lip sync or time constraints. (Though I have read that for Princess Mononoke, they actually went about redrawing lip movements for English.) But I'm not saying anything about translation quality...

I am usually more annoyed by the casting in dubbing than the translation or edits - sometimes, the voices don't feel appropriate, other times, the acting is just not as good. And yet... for all the excellent voice actors Disney has, I can't help but feel disappointed by their dubs of Castle in the Sky, Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away. The lead characters in those were cast badly, I feel. Kiki's Delivery Service was mostly fine, except for the cat, uuuhhh, horrid, horrid... Anyway, I digress.
 
Blackjack Gabbiani said:
See, that's another thing, equating subs with instantly high standards.
Click to expand...

It's more equating the dubs with low standards. I'm less concerned with the quality of the translation, especially considering that the translations in the dub and sub will tend to match fairly closely anyway, and rather with how the dubs tend to mangle the characterizations with wrong tones of, and simply inappropriate, voices.
 
I'd probably like dubs a lot more if there were more variation. It kind of gets annoying to be watching an episode of Fullmetal Alchemist and keep thinking of Vash the Stampede whenever a certain character talks. Edward Elric's voice was nice and new to me, until he became Phantom Dark. And don't get me started on Crispin Freeman, it's Zelgadis in every other anime in the universe! Sure the same thing applies with Japanese voice actors after awhile, but it's not nearly as bad.

Yeah, I can appreciate the work that dub voice actors put in. And as far as the current world goes, anime is gonna be dubbed for TV. I'm cool with that. However, I'll take my subs any day of the week.
 
Quite a number. But from my wide experience with watching anime, I can tell you that the majority of their actors don't speak in the exact same voice and tone from series to series. They have a variation that you don't normally find in dub actors.
 
Joey said:
Sure the same thing applies with Japanese voice actors after awhile, but it's not nearly as bad.
Click to expand...
¬_¬

The difference is that I can watch Ranma or Pokemon without LINA INVERSE flashing through my brain everytime female Ranma or Musashi says something. The only Japanese voice actor that I can recognize instantly in any role is Yūji Ueda, and even then he's not nearly as bad as some dub actors in that regard.
 
I would've never known some of the Pokémon characters had the same voice actor unless you told me. Like Brock and James. And to a lesser extent, Misty and Jessie. (I say to a lesser extent because Jessie's voice has seemed unusually Misty-ish at points since Misty left. Usually when it's strained.)

Then again, I have a terrible ear for voices. One of the few I can recognize on the spot is Brad Swaile, and that's simply because I fangirl him.
 
I don't own any anime DVDs due to the cost ($30 for four or five episodes? No, thanks...), and because I don't really know of any series that I would want... sure, there are the anime versions of manga that I enjoy (Naruto, Shaman King, Hikaru no Go)... however, if they were released in uncut, subtitled format, I wouldn't want to buy them simply because they're 60+ episodes long, meaning that I'd have to pay a lot for a series when I can simply buy the manga instead. If I were to buy an anime on DVD, it'd have to be short, and I'd have to like it quite a bit.

>Perhaps this will show why anime DVDs are so expensive, and how you're typically paying for stuff you don't use..:

Humor me here, and enlighten the ignorant; anime DVDs are expensive because of the amount of money it takes to dub a series, right? (I don't know how much that would be, but your comment leads me to think that it's a decent amount of money) How much cheaper would an anime DVD be if it did not include a dub?
 
It's partially because of the amount of money it takes, partially because they don't have as large print runs as a mainstream movie, and partially because the market will gladly pay that price at the current point in time. A sub-only release could likely drop up to $10.

For the record....here in Australia, where our distributor only pays for the sub-licensing fees, and doesn't have to do their own translations or dubs, anime DVD's are sold for $30AUS. That's about $22US.
 
I see. Thanks for clearing that up.

So, $22 for a DVD with a subtitled version only? That's not bad. It's certainly better than $30 for four or five episodes.

Oddly enough, looking through some of the releases on Anime News Network, Viz is releasing Naruto and Zatch Bell DVDs with no original, subtitled episodes (just the dubbed episodes) for only $20. That just seems odd given the subject of discussion here.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom