"I like anime I can watch without having to read some stupid text at the bottom of the screen all the time. Dubs might have a coupla problems but they're better 'cos you can just enjoy them without much effort, and jokes are better when they apply to an American audience."

"Subtitled anime's the only way to go. That way, you can understand the thing and you don't lose anything. Dubs suck because they use bad voice acting and they change things. This way, the talent of the original VAs are harnessed, and it's great."

"Subtitles interfere with the beautiful pictures, and dubs just ruin the whole thing. Real fans should learn the language - and if you can't, well, you can still pick up bits and pieces, right? - and watch it raw."

Those are the three main viewpoints.

As for me, I can like any of the three, but I guess subs are my medium of choice. I can't understand enough when it's raw, and I really do love Japanese voice acting. Somehow, lines seem better when you don't understand the language. I don't know why that is. But I think their acting fits the characters better than English adaptations ever could, and it's just great. Also, I like the Japanese music.

Some of the more cheesy anime you can watch raw, 'cos they use so many English words, like for attack phrases, and communicate mostly in cliched phrases ("makenai!" "ganbaru!" "yurusenai!") that you can follow it without needing subtitles. Well, I exaggerate, but you know... ^_^.

Still, dubbed anime has its place. For series on TV, I quite prefer dubbed. I tend to watch these in my room on a portable TV, and the screen's so small it'd be a trifle awkward to handle subtitles. And anime series play early in the morning; the last thing I want is to have to strain my brain when I got up five seconds ago. ^_^.

I am not the type who cares much if Japanese names are changed for an American audience (provided the names aren't changed to something truly awful, like, I dunno, Jigglypuff ^_^.), but if it keeps Japanese names in the dub, I really think they SHOULD be pronounced rightly.

One thing I do like about the Japanese language is that it seems to be fairly easy, upon reading it, to pronounce. Japanese words that've become incorporated into our language, like kamikaze and karaoke... ugh, I cringe at their pronounciation now that I know a little more about Japanese language.

(I say a -little more- carefully. I don't want to be confused with those newbies who toss around Japanese phrases - wrongly half the time! - and think they know lots about the language. I don't profess to be anything resembling an expert. I read some things that talk about the language in a lot of depth and I sorta cringe and realise how little I actually know. But I have studied a few elements of Japanese language in a shallow depth. Basically, I understand some aspects of it, while others are totally beyond me. Let's stick with that. ^_^.)

I'm also not against editing, in moderation. While I'm generally not at all in favour of censorship, I must admit that I do not like nudity in anime (one must get used to it if one wants to be an anime fan ^_^;;), nor do I like references to demons and things like that, I guess. So I don't mind such things being edited at all.

Cultural references being meddled with? Well, that depends. Think of Sailor Moon; if you didn't know, and you weren't particularly observant, you mightn't even realise they were IN Tokyo for half of the series. I'm not quite so enamoured with this, but all aspects of Sailor Moon were made a bit more American. Names were changed, music changed, very American accents were provided as voices - thus it would seem a bit strange to keep all the cultural elements of it existing.

DiC is a controversial topic; the company that dubbed Sailor Moon, and many people say, ruined it. Well, they did edit and they did change things. I think they could have left some of the violence, like at the end of the first season - it wasn't terribly graphic, although yes, it could be a bit disturbing for young children. Besides that, a lot of things WERE kept the same, and many episodes barely tinkered with at all. I don't dislike the dubbed Sailor Moon by any means, although I really wish they hadn't changed the music, or at least kept MOST of the original score. What I really think ruined the dub, if anything did, was the voices.

Some dub voices for Sailor Moon are okay. Some are grating, and some are just bad. As far as I'm concerned, any voice that RUINS a sad scene by getting on your nerves, is a voice actor that should reconsider their position. If the voices displayed great acting and kept in character with their characters, I think fans mightn't even care quite so much about all the edits and cuts.

The other Very Edited Dub commonly known is Dragonball Z. Well, I've not seen the original of this, but it seems to me that a series with its foundation in fighting, and thus issues like blood and violence and death, should not be picked up if the people who wanted to release it wanted to make it "suitable for children".

I have to say, the funniest scenes in that DBZ dub are around the time Vegeta and Nappa arrive on Earth. The way they tapdance around humans being killed... pretending a destroyed city was abandoned (why would a city be abandoned?) when there are PEOPLE ON THE STREETS. Pretending people jumped out of a helicopter, with parachutes, when it exploded in about half a second. And so on and so forth. Even I, who is usually cheerfully oblivious to cuts and editing, noticed the stupidity in that. ^_^;

Anyway, it becomes increasingly obvious that I am seemingly incapable of writing an orderly article that progresses logically and has my points carefully arranged. Nope, instead I whack whatever paragraphs I feel like wherever I like. So I don't have a conclusion really, except to summarise...

I like dubs and subs, and occasionally raw. Mostly I like raw if I can't get subs, but I want to check out the Japanese version of a dub I'm a fan of. (For example, Pokemon. I couldn't get any subbed Pocket Monsters, but raw was sufficient to give me an idea of the original music, voices and characters.)

I don't like censorship where it's unnecessary, but mostly it doesn't bug me, so long as important things are not neglected.

A dub should go one way or the other. It should either try to maintain as much of its original form as possible, and thus translate as accurately as possible, keep original names, original music, etcetera - and do all these things. A dub trying to pass itself off as American and supposedly appeal to a wider audience, if it has to have things like names and music changed, then the speech should also be a bit more American-sounding, and possibly cultural references taken out. Lots of people would disagree with that, and I do think it's a shame that good anime should be 'butchered', but if it is, then it should be done properly, I think.

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