I used to be a subs purist, but over the time I've softened.
Most dubs are horrible, its true, but there's genuinely a lot of great dubs.
Black Lagoon and Spice & Wolf have dubs which I consider to be the definitive experience, for example.
Of course you always have the pro dub staples like Cowboy Bepop, FMA, and Dragonball, where the dub is genuinely very good and few can argue it not being simply preference.
There are also a lot of divisive dubs, I remember the OG Evangelion dub having a lot of mixed opinions, though I generally consider it quite good (the Netflix one is horrible, though.)
That being said, the majority are horrible. This was the case back when dubbing was an afterthought sort of industry, and this is still the case now that dubbing has become an extremely tight knit cabal of failed actors & actresses. (I think the only modern dub I can think of that I enjoyed was Dungeon Meshi.) In that case, watching the dub just robs you of the experience you could be having.
Though I understand the forbidden fruit situation with dubs, sometimes you want to watch an anime and not have to read subs, maybe your screen is too far away or you're just too tired. Nothing wrong with that, its really the industry that needs to cater with better VAs and translators now that anime has become so mainstream.
In the past, you could excuse the poor quality of dubs on the basis of it being a very small, not very profitable industry. They could only really afford amateur or budding talent 99% of the time.
But this is no longer the case, and the people who went in as amateur actors and got carried to the big leagues as anime exploded onto the mainstream can no longer be held to those same amateur expectations.
Most dubs are horrible, its true, but there's genuinely a lot of great dubs.
Black Lagoon and Spice & Wolf have dubs which I consider to be the definitive experience, for example.
Of course you always have the pro dub staples like Cowboy Bepop, FMA, and Dragonball, where the dub is genuinely very good and few can argue it not being simply preference.
There are also a lot of divisive dubs, I remember the OG Evangelion dub having a lot of mixed opinions, though I generally consider it quite good (the Netflix one is horrible, though.)
That being said, the majority are horrible. This was the case back when dubbing was an afterthought sort of industry, and this is still the case now that dubbing has become an extremely tight knit cabal of failed actors & actresses. (I think the only modern dub I can think of that I enjoyed was Dungeon Meshi.) In that case, watching the dub just robs you of the experience you could be having.
Though I understand the forbidden fruit situation with dubs, sometimes you want to watch an anime and not have to read subs, maybe your screen is too far away or you're just too tired. Nothing wrong with that, its really the industry that needs to cater with better VAs and translators now that anime has become so mainstream.
In the past, you could excuse the poor quality of dubs on the basis of it being a very small, not very profitable industry. They could only really afford amateur or budding talent 99% of the time.
But this is no longer the case, and the people who went in as amateur actors and got carried to the big leagues as anime exploded onto the mainstream can no longer be held to those same amateur expectations.
