I have a question, why does so much english dubbing Suck So Much? I mean, some of the translation in Ghost in the Shell sounded so stilted it made me cringe. It was a cool movie, but I think I would have rather bought the Japanese version with subtitles instead.
Honestly, I thought that your post was insightful, thought-provoking, and very well said.. Until you generalized English dubs as Sucking So Much.
If you want an actual reason, here one is: Voice acting is considered a respectable profession in Japan. People go to college and train for it, wanting to actually be a professional voice actor. On the other hand, in America, voice acting is generally considered to be for third-rate actors that can't get live-action roles. Now, there are exceptions to this; there are people that actually *want* to be voice actors, and enjoy doing it. Also, typically these few people perform exceedingly well -- American voice actors get piss-poor pay, so to willingly do the job, you have to *really* love it.
For a few examples, I would like to recommend to you Cowboy Bebop, the Tenchi Muyo OAV (the acting in the other Tenchi series was a bit more average), Trigun, and Princess Mononoke. There are people who will still get their panties in a not while screaming "the Japanese dub is soooo much better!" However, even if this is true -- and IMHO, it's not, in the above cases, but that's just MHO -- I would say anybody who still says the above "suck" simply can't judge acting, and the only reason they consider the Japanese dub so wonderful is because they can't understand it.
Granted, the majority of English dubs are worse than the Japanese ones, and if only can only play tapes, it's probably a better bet to buy subbed tapes. But I buy DVDs, and always listen to both voice tracks -- and in many cases I've been pleasantly surprised. There are some very good English dubs out there, if you just look for them. --
id Software did not create Hexen. Although the game was based upon a (very heavily modified) Doom engine, the game itself was developed by Raven Software, along with Heretic, Hexen II, and Heretic II. 'tis a shame that so few people are familiar with the Heretic/Hexen series... --
You're making a false analogy. A better analogy would be that your family uses Company B with a phone not made by Company B. However, you don't want to pay for Company B's services, so they don't let you call with your phone.
Of course, that's not entirely correct, since AIM doesn't cost a monthly fee; it does have banner ads, though. Maybe if GAIM and all those others incorporated banner ads into their clients and sent all the revenue to AOL, the guys over at AOL would be more cooperative? --
Nah, I think that's just 'cause of bad 'net code. It happens to me and my roommate, too -- I've got a Thunderbird 950 w/ 128 megs of RAM, and he's got a Pentium III 750 with 256. If you think Duriel's cave is bad, try the swarms of Oblivion Knights right before Diablo himself... Diablo is such a pansy compared to the normal enemies right in front of him... --
Find me an anime fan who thinks that all anime is good, and I'll make them watch Fist of the North Star. (I think it's fairly safe to say that is "bad" anime, since I've only ever met two people who liked it, and they saw a severely cut version)
There is indeed a lot of crap in anime; but as another person mentioned, the worst of the crap generally doesn't get brought over to America. Thus, while anime as a whole has just as much crap as any other medium, what we are exposed to has far less than American-born mediums.
There *is* a lot of really good stuff out there, though. If you thought Akira was "first-rate sci-fi," you should watch The Wings of Honneamise, Ghost in the Shell (although the manga is far better), Serial Experiments Lain, or Neon Genesis Evangelion. Well, the last two are a bit far-out enough that I hesitate in calling them sci-fi, but many people do simply because they're futuristic, so I won't argue. But they're quite excellent, nonetheless.
Along another vein of thought; perhaps you don't see anime fans talking about crap because people don't *like* to talk about crap. Given a choice, people will talk about things that they like. So just because every conversation you see involves people gushing over their favorite series doesn't mean they believe all anime is fantastic; take a moment sometime to ask them what they've seen that they didn't like. --
So submit some stories to Slashdot that have to do with comics. If there are as many comic book geeks as anime geeks, well, why aren't there any stories? Anime hasn't always had a category, you know; it got one after stories concerning it began appearing.
Bitching about a problem may be easy, but it won't change things. --
I mean, Apocalymon was from the end of the first season of Digimon, yet we're already a decent ways into the second season. And he says the guy appeared in a "recent episode." Pfft.
Um.. Not that I watch Digimon regularly or anything. --
Well, there are a lot of people that love Ninja Scroll, but frankly, I'm not one of them. The artwork and animation were both good, but just about everything else left something to desire, and I'm not a huge fan of needlessly gory stuff.
One that I would highly recommend, on the other hand, is Cowboy Bebop (be sure to get it on DVDs as opposed to VHS if you do) -- yeah, I was turned off by the title at first, but I've yet to meet a person who has watched more than five episodes and wasn't in love with it. I'll spare the description, because I've seen lots of other people describing it on/.;-) --
Actually, Honneamise was re-released in the US last November, I think. I know this because I have it. ^_^
Unfortunately, the video quality isn't quite as good as the Japanese re-release -- but it does come with lots of cool extras, such as a 5.1 English soundtrack, a previously cut scene, and the original Royal Space Force promotional short. --
Hell, why should I bother paying for 'net access so I can access warez sites, or even worry about hardware compatibility problems? I don't need to worry about even leeching an OS -- and I'll tell you why.
If you REALLY want games for free, just break into your local Wal-mart at night, steal a Dreamcast and a rack full of games -- go home and they all work perfectly. You don't even have to worry about how long it takes to leech some ISOs off of warez sites.
</sarcasm>
Sorry, I'd rather pay for my games -- I think that helping out a company that makes good games is the least I can do. And *paying* a warez site so you can have access is about the scummiest thing I can think of.
I've also yet to see a N64, PSX, or Dreamcast emulator that could even come *close* to properly emulating the system, and many emulators for other systems aren't fully functional (not supporting certain hardware, bad sound quality, etc.)
You can get a PSX and a handfull of games relatively cheap these days, even. Just because a game's graphics are dated doesn't mean the game isn't good.
You know, I used to be an active participant in the PC/console wars, when I discovered an interesting truth... Why not get both? Works for me. --
Well, I can understand that happening. Accidents caused by people talking on a cell phone while driving are just as common as drunk driving accidents. --
Forgive me wrong, but I'm going to assume that's an honest question -- nope, no relation at all. Cowboy Bebop is a sci-fi series set in the year 2071, and it's about a small group of misfit bounty hunters wandering around the solar system.
A short description like that really doesn't do the series justice -- it's one of the best anime series I've ever seen, really. It's got a mixture of serious science fiction and offbeat humor, plus a jazzy soundtrack by Yoko Kanno (Escaflowne, Macross Plus, etc.), and the best English dub I've ever heard. I highly recommend it.:-)
Well, both Shin Tenchi Muyo and Tenchi Muyo in Love 2 (aka Tenchi Forever) bombed in Japan, and I think AIC is a smart enough company to have learned their lesson. Also keep in mind this comes from one of the *original* creators of Tenchi Muyo -- much of the production cast was different in the Universe series, and almost all of it in Shin Tenchi.
As a short sidenote, supposedly the CB movie will occur inbetween episodes 22 and 23. ^_^
Pardon me, but have you ever seen anything of the Magical Girl Pretty Sammy series? It's a wonderful parody of the mahou shoujo genre, and quite funny, if you're a fan of parodies. MGPS originated in the Mihoshi Special, if you'll recall, which is part of the OAV.
I can't blame you for disliking Shin Tenchi Muyo or even Tenchi Muyo Universe (although many people did like that series), but please don't insult something you obviously haven't seen.
> Comic books do better, probably because they have plot and character development.
> Superman, Batman, and X-men have all been made into successful movies.
> Games don't have enough literary depth to carry over into film.
You haven't played many games, have you? Or if you have, I would imagine they're probably FPS/action games. The problem with games is the good ones have *too much* depth; I challenge anyone to make a movie of Planescape: Torment or Xenogears and have either one fit within a few hours.
Although I think the real problems with movies based off of games are the director tries to be as faithful to the game as possible and they always have to throw cheesy jokes in; for an example of a movie based on a game done right, watch the anime "Fatal Fury: the Motion Picture." It basically takes a few characters from the Fatal Fury game, forgets about the rest, and makes up its own plot. It's a pretty darn good action flick. And there's not a single bad joke (well, that isn't within a character's personality).
Well, the first time I used 3D Studio (in a Computer Applications class), one of the first models we made was a table with a wine glass on it.
Sure, that's probably completely unrelated, but I thought it was and interesting coincidence.;-)
According to the teachings of our Grand Poobah, nothing existed before he came into existance roughly two minutes ago. His Grand imagination created all of you and the collection of lies you call "history", including all other religions of the world. In other words, the Grand Poobah created religion itself, and he requests a patent on it to stop all of these infidel religions that also came into being. They are trying to take His intellectual property, and it must be stopped.
Once He has the patent, He will levy a tax of 25% of all donations given to all religions except His own, and they will only be allowed to have services from 4:00 to 6:00 AM on Mondays. All other times of the week are reserved for the Grand Poobah alone, and infringing upon His time will result in a cease and desist letter from our lawyers. We are currently in the process of printing billions of them to send to all the infidels that do not recognize our imminent patent.
By the subject "Napster Usage Quadruples," I was hoping it'd turn out to be something like "scientists have found that using Napster quadruples your processor speed," or something like that...
For good dubs, I'd recommend the Tenchi Muyo OAV (aka Tenchi Muyo: Ryo-ohki; disregard the other Tenchi series), Cowboy Bebop, Master of Mosquiton, and El Hazard: the Mysterious World. Those are some of my favorites. If you don't want to check out all of them, I'd recommend Cowboy Bebop.
Saying things like "dubs are always bad" simply implies to many people that you're either an "3l337 hardcore mega-otaku" who refuses to like good dubs simply on principle, or you've never actually looked for good dubs. There are a decent number of them out there, though.
Of course, I'm a bit strange; I'll take a decent dub over a good subtitle just so I can give my full attention to what's happening on-screen, rather than constantly giving part of my attention to the text going by.
Slashdot Mirror
I have a question, why does so much english dubbing Suck So Much? I mean, some of the translation in Ghost in the Shell sounded so stilted it made me cringe. It was a cool movie, but I think I would have rather bought the Japanese version with subtitles instead.
Honestly, I thought that your post was insightful, thought-provoking, and very well said.. Until you generalized English dubs as Sucking So Much.
If you want an actual reason, here one is: Voice acting is considered a respectable profession in Japan. People go to college and train for it, wanting to actually be a professional voice actor. On the other hand, in America, voice acting is generally considered to be for third-rate actors that can't get live-action roles. Now, there are exceptions to this; there are people that actually *want* to be voice actors, and enjoy doing it. Also, typically these few people perform exceedingly well -- American voice actors get piss-poor pay, so to willingly do the job, you have to *really* love it.
For a few examples, I would like to recommend to you Cowboy Bebop, the Tenchi Muyo OAV (the acting in the other Tenchi series was a bit more average), Trigun, and Princess Mononoke. There are people who will still get their panties in a not while screaming "the Japanese dub is soooo much better!" However, even if this is true -- and IMHO, it's not, in the above cases, but that's just MHO -- I would say anybody who still says the above "suck" simply can't judge acting, and the only reason they consider the Japanese dub so wonderful is because they can't understand it.
Granted, the majority of English dubs are worse than the Japanese ones, and if only can only play tapes, it's probably a better bet to buy subbed tapes. But I buy DVDs, and always listen to both voice tracks -- and in many cases I've been pleasantly surprised. There are some very good English dubs out there, if you just look for them.
--
Also, suggestions to use Netscape or Opera need not apply, as I can only get through my corporate proxy server with IE.
You do know Opera can identify itself as IE, right?
--
Please explain how it is possible to first kill yourself, then kill others.
Zombies, man. Zombies.
--
id Software did not create Hexen. Although the game was based upon a (very heavily modified) Doom engine, the game itself was developed by Raven Software, along with Heretic, Hexen II, and Heretic II. 'tis a shame that so few people are familiar with the Heretic/Hexen series...
--
You're making a false analogy. A better analogy would be that your family uses Company B with a phone not made by Company B. However, you don't want to pay for Company B's services, so they don't let you call with your phone.
Of course, that's not entirely correct, since AIM doesn't cost a monthly fee; it does have banner ads, though. Maybe if GAIM and all those others incorporated banner ads into their clients and sent all the revenue to AOL, the guys over at AOL would be more cooperative?
--
That was supposed to be in reply to the AC's message right below this.
--
Nah, I think that's just 'cause of bad 'net code. It happens to me and my roommate, too -- I've got a Thunderbird 950 w/ 128 megs of RAM, and he's got a Pentium III 750 with 256. If you think Duriel's cave is bad, try the swarms of Oblivion Knights right before Diablo himself... Diablo is such a pansy compared to the normal enemies right in front of him...
--
Find me an anime fan who thinks that all anime is good, and I'll make them watch Fist of the North Star. (I think it's fairly safe to say that is "bad" anime, since I've only ever met two people who liked it, and they saw a severely cut version)
There is indeed a lot of crap in anime; but as another person mentioned, the worst of the crap generally doesn't get brought over to America. Thus, while anime as a whole has just as much crap as any other medium, what we are exposed to has far less than American-born mediums.
There *is* a lot of really good stuff out there, though. If you thought Akira was "first-rate sci-fi," you should watch The Wings of Honneamise, Ghost in the Shell (although the manga is far better), Serial Experiments Lain, or Neon Genesis Evangelion. Well, the last two are a bit far-out enough that I hesitate in calling them sci-fi, but many people do simply because they're futuristic, so I won't argue. But they're quite excellent, nonetheless.
Along another vein of thought; perhaps you don't see anime fans talking about crap because people don't *like* to talk about crap. Given a choice, people will talk about things that they like. So just because every conversation you see involves people gushing over their favorite series doesn't mean they believe all anime is fantastic; take a moment sometime to ask them what they've seen that they didn't like.
--
So submit some stories to Slashdot that have to do with comics. If there are as many comic book geeks as anime geeks, well, why aren't there any stories? Anime hasn't always had a category, you know; it got one after stories concerning it began appearing.
Bitching about a problem may be easy, but it won't change things.
--
2001-03-20 15:31:34 . Nothin' else here. :-p
--
I mean, Apocalymon was from the end of the first season of Digimon, yet we're already a decent ways into the second season. And he says the guy appeared in a "recent episode." Pfft.
Um.. Not that I watch Digimon regularly or anything.
--
Whoops, I guess I didn't catch that -- I never knew it was released in theatres, though. But I agree, I would love to see it on the big screen...
And yes, the DVD is out.
--
Well, there are a lot of people that love Ninja Scroll, but frankly, I'm not one of them. The artwork and animation were both good, but just about everything else left something to desire, and I'm not a huge fan of needlessly gory stuff.
/. ;-)
One that I would highly recommend, on the other hand, is Cowboy Bebop (be sure to get it on DVDs as opposed to VHS if you do) -- yeah, I was turned off by the title at first, but I've yet to meet a person who has watched more than five episodes and wasn't in love with it. I'll spare the description, because I've seen lots of other people describing it on
--
Actually, Honneamise was re-released in the US last November, I think. I know this because I have it. ^_^
Unfortunately, the video quality isn't quite as good as the Japanese re-release -- but it does come with lots of cool extras, such as a 5.1 English soundtrack, a previously cut scene, and the original Royal Space Force promotional short.
--
Hell, why should I bother paying for 'net access so I can access warez sites, or even worry about hardware compatibility problems? I don't need to worry about even leeching an OS -- and I'll tell you why.
If you REALLY want games for free, just break into your local Wal-mart at night, steal a Dreamcast and a rack full of games -- go home and they all work perfectly. You don't even have to worry about how long it takes to leech some ISOs off of warez sites.
</sarcasm>
Sorry, I'd rather pay for my games -- I think that helping out a company that makes good games is the least I can do. And *paying* a warez site so you can have access is about the scummiest thing I can think of.
I've also yet to see a N64, PSX, or Dreamcast emulator that could even come *close* to properly emulating the system, and many emulators for other systems aren't fully functional (not supporting certain hardware, bad sound quality, etc.)
You can get a PSX and a handfull of games relatively cheap these days, even. Just because a game's graphics are dated doesn't mean the game isn't good.
You know, I used to be an active participant in the PC/console wars, when I discovered an interesting truth... Why not get both? Works for me.
--
Well, I can understand that happening. Accidents caused by people talking on a cell phone while driving are just as common as drunk driving accidents.
--
Please look back at the front page.
Anime *does* have its own section.
Open mouth, insert foot. Have a nice day.
Forgive me wrong, but I'm going to assume that's an honest question -- nope, no relation at all. Cowboy Bebop is a sci-fi series set in the year 2071, and it's about a small group of misfit bounty hunters wandering around the solar system.
:-)
A short description like that really doesn't do the series justice -- it's one of the best anime series I've ever seen, really. It's got a mixture of serious science fiction and offbeat humor, plus a jazzy soundtrack by Yoko Kanno (Escaflowne, Macross Plus, etc.), and the best English dub I've ever heard. I highly recommend it.
Well, both Shin Tenchi Muyo and Tenchi Muyo in Love 2 (aka Tenchi Forever) bombed in Japan, and I think AIC is a smart enough company to have learned their lesson. Also keep in mind this comes from one of the *original* creators of Tenchi Muyo -- much of the production cast was different in the Universe series, and almost all of it in Shin Tenchi.
As a short sidenote, supposedly the CB movie will occur inbetween episodes 22 and 23. ^_^
Pardon me, but have you ever seen anything of the Magical Girl Pretty Sammy series? It's a wonderful parody of the mahou shoujo genre, and quite funny, if you're a fan of parodies. MGPS originated in the Mihoshi Special, if you'll recall, which is part of the OAV.
I can't blame you for disliking Shin Tenchi Muyo or even Tenchi Muyo Universe (although many people did like that series), but please don't insult something you obviously haven't seen.
I agree with your post up to this point:
> Comic books do better, probably because they have plot and character development.
> Superman, Batman, and X-men have all been made into successful movies.
> Games don't have enough literary depth to carry over into film.
You haven't played many games, have you? Or if you have, I would imagine they're probably FPS/action games. The problem with games is the good ones have *too much* depth; I challenge anyone to make a movie of Planescape: Torment or Xenogears and have either one fit within a few hours.
Although I think the real problems with movies based off of games are the director tries to be as faithful to the game as possible and they always have to throw cheesy jokes in; for an example of a movie based on a game done right, watch the anime "Fatal Fury: the Motion Picture." It basically takes a few characters from the Fatal Fury game, forgets about the rest, and makes up its own plot. It's a pretty darn good action flick. And there's not a single bad joke (well, that isn't within a character's personality).
Well, the first time I used 3D Studio (in a Computer Applications class), one of the first models we made was a table with a wine glass on it. Sure, that's probably completely unrelated, but I thought it was and interesting coincidence. ;-)
According to the teachings of our Grand Poobah, nothing existed before he came into existance roughly two minutes ago. His Grand imagination created all of you and the collection of lies you call "history", including all other religions of the world. In other words, the Grand Poobah created religion itself, and he requests a patent on it to stop all of these infidel religions that also came into being. They are trying to take His intellectual property, and it must be stopped. Once He has the patent, He will levy a tax of 25% of all donations given to all religions except His own, and they will only be allowed to have services from 4:00 to 6:00 AM on Mondays. All other times of the week are reserved for the Grand Poobah alone, and infringing upon His time will result in a cease and desist letter from our lawyers. We are currently in the process of printing billions of them to send to all the infidels that do not recognize our imminent patent.
By the subject "Napster Usage Quadruples," I was hoping it'd turn out to be something like "scientists have found that using Napster quadruples your processor speed," or something like that...
For good dubs, I'd recommend the Tenchi Muyo OAV (aka Tenchi Muyo: Ryo-ohki; disregard the other Tenchi series), Cowboy Bebop, Master of Mosquiton, and El Hazard: the Mysterious World. Those are some of my favorites. If you don't want to check out all of them, I'd recommend Cowboy Bebop.
Saying things like "dubs are always bad" simply implies to many people that you're either an "3l337 hardcore mega-otaku" who refuses to like good dubs simply on principle, or you've never actually looked for good dubs. There are a decent number of them out there, though.
Of course, I'm a bit strange; I'll take a decent dub over a good subtitle just so I can give my full attention to what's happening on-screen, rather than constantly giving part of my attention to the text going by.