Dub and DVD reviews

[Sugami]

As a change of pace thought I'd "review" how well the Americans are able to bring our favourites to the western audiences These will basically assume you've seen the original Japanese and essentially concentrate on how good or bad the dubs are and whether it comes with cool DVD extras.

I know there are "anime snobs" that will only listen to the original Japanese regardless of how good or bad the dub is, there are also idiots who are too stupid to read subtitles and call those that do "weaboos" (news flash, you're watching anime numbnuts!). I sit on the fence, I am not pro sub or pro dub, I'm pro good dub. I enjoy a good dub but I'm too lazy to watch subs over dubs as long as the dubs are passable With that in mind I think I'm able to judge dubs quite fairly

Sengoku Basara - Samurai Kings - Got this for my birthday (yesterday, thanks for remembering ), I've seen both season prior to this and I gotta say I was curious as to how well they'd pull it off and to how they'd interpret certain stuff. One of the most iconic scenes in the first episode is Yukimura and Shingen shouting at each other, "Oyakata-sama!", "Yukimura!", "Oyakata-sama!", "Yukimura!", "Oyakata-sama" is translated to "My lordship", which works as both a translation and fitting the mouth flaps. Ontop of which the mighty Johnny Yong Bosch voices Yukimura and pulls it off wonderfully. Those of you who've seen the original (and if you haven't, for shame!) will be well acquainted with Date Masamune's hilarious Engrish, "Get your guns on, yay!" Gotta admit I miss it in the English version
Onto the good news; the voice cast is awesome and they do a pretty darn good job. I mentioned previously Johnny Yong Bosch (Black ranger, Ichigo, Vash, etc. etc.) voices Yukimura, Reuban Langdon (DMC 3+4 Dante, SF4 Ken, accomplished martial artist and stuntman) is Date Masamune, Vic Mignogna (Edward Elric, Tamaki Suou, Ikkaku Madarame, etc.) as Akechi Mitsuhide and Greg Ayres (Kaoru Hitachiin, Kouta (voyeur), etc.) as Kenshin. Actually an interesting choice is the voice for Sasuke, it's a pretty different take on the character that seems to change his personality a little too. Vic does an excellent job, he usually voices heroes and he's stuck with a real douche of a character to voice
The bad news; this is pretty annoying to me but names are mispronounced pretty badly. Come on guys, this isn't the year 2005, or even 2000, how long have you been in the business now? VAs actually listen to the originals now so why are you pronouncing "Yu-ki-mu-ra" as "Yu-ki-mor-ra" and "Ma-sa-mu-ne" as "Ma-sa-MOO-ne"? I don't expect pronunciations to perfect, just mostly accurate. Despite the annoyances it's still a real joy to watch (and listen).

As for extras there isn't an awful lot but the entire season did only cost me £12.50 (13 episodes on 2 discs). There's a small mini-series on it and textless opening and ending and that's it. I'm one of those people that really like listening to commentaries, not any commentaries just good funny ones. Futurama got me into them, it's like another episode that's informative as well as being funny. So if anime have the odd commentary where the VA have a good chat and share a laugh with each other I like to watch that, sadly this one doesn't have that

Edit: I was wrong, not Reuban Langdon, he must have done the voice for the games prior

[Sugami]

Baka and Test - One of my all time favourite comedies. Comedies are possibly both the easiest and hardest things to dub well. So how does Baka and Test fair? Well unsurprisingly FUNimation does a pretty good job all round with this one, and there's very few recognisable names (that I'm aware of), meaning they're not seasoned veterans as such. So does the comedy still come across well? Yes, yes it does. It's still as hilarious as I remembered it originally Of course after watching two seasons in Japanese first I had to get used to the English voice cast, most of them are good fits and the others you can let slide.
Now to talk a little about the bad points, fans of the series know that Kouta is known primarily as "voyeur" for obvious reasons but sadly he's never referred to as such in the dub, in fact in the sub they don't even translate "Mutsurini-kun", if I didn't know about it I'd have thought that was his name. Also "A-ki-hi-sa" isn't quite pronounced right, in Japanese it sounds more like "a-ki-i-sa" and is a bit faster too, the 'h' is almost silent.

There isn't much in the way of extras, there's a few little extra mini-episodes but they're only subbed, not dubbing them makes the production seem a little lazy to me. No commentaries either The price is pretty good though so can't really complain since it's the whole series plus extras on 3 discs.

[Tivia]

I am on the fence as well..a Good dub, is a good dub and some dubs are better than the original japanese. Lets be honest, some of the japanese voices can get really irritating.

However a Bad dub can utterly Ruin a great anime, examples? 4kids dub/editing of One piece. One of the worst Dubs Ever.

[Sugami]

4Kids ruins everything they touch, that's partly because they have to butcher the original to make it appropriate for a younger audience. Remember invisible guns in Yu-Gi-Oh?

Doesn't really matter the language, there's always going to be a certain voice tone you'll find annoying. If you aren't all that familiar with one language it'll probably pop up more often

[Tivia]

Right.

I meant to add that I appreciate a good Dub, but generally prefer the Sub. too much gets lost in Dub translation most of the time. Not to mention a large portion of the english voice actors they tend to hire are utterly terrible.

[Sugami]

Dubs have got much better over the past few years or so, I remember when FUNimation was pretty sh*t but now they do mostly quality dubs. The good thing about FUNimation these days is the ADR is also a VA and quite often a VA in the anime (be it a large or small role) so they have a better grounding in the field, so to speak. They also generally care about the anime they're dubbing most of the time, so they really put the effort in to make it the best they can.

Quite a lot will get lost in translation for sub too, stuff like puns, regional jokes and references to Japanese culture. Not many DVDs will have "translator's notes", Excel Saga is one of the exceptions but that's a discussion for another time

[Sugami]

Ah! My Goddess TV

I'm in a bit of an odd place "reviewing" this one since there has been a few previous English adaptations to compare to with the original OAV, the movie and the Adventures of Mini-Goddess (last two both done by Pioneer and share mostly the same cast).

All the cast sound fitting, Eileen Stevens does a great job with Belldandy. Urd sounds like they're forcing her to sound sexy a little but not nearly as much as the original English Urd, I still think Wendee Lee's Urd is the best so far (from Mini-Goddess). Skuld's voice sounds a little strained, she gets a bit too squeaky and high pitched at times but otherwise passable. Keiichi pulls off being goofy and sincere without being annoying (original English voice got on my nerves a bit). And something pretty awesome is the original English Belldandy, Juliet Cesario, gets to voice another goddess in the second series, Peorth, and does a great job. And honourable mention to Dan Green, may recognise him from voicing Yugi Moto/Yami in Yu-Gi-Oh, gets to play the odd side part and Urd's old love interest in one episode.

The dub commits a couple of cardinal sins IMO; one of which is changing the currency from yen to dollars (always referred to as "bucks"). The other is the mispronunciation of names, when most dubs fail at pronunciation it's on Japanese names but this one fails at Norse names (and the odd Japanese one). Yggdrasil not Yargdrosel and Skuld doesn't sound like "skull" with a D.

It does do something above and beyond and that's translating and performing Belldandy's song. Although for Dan Green's character they use the original Japanese, guess Dan Green doesn't have a good singing voice

Verdict: Overall it's good but not great. The faults aren't really distracting enough and overall it's a good performance all round.

As for extras the first season has a video with Japanese seiyuu Kikoku Inoue, voice of Belldandy, singer of the themes and producer I think and also a bunch of production art. Second season has commentaries with the English voice cast (one episode per disk), which I usually find interesting