Kyle Labriola

@kylelabriola

blogging (ashamedly)

he/him
blueberrylemonade.pika.page/

Hello! I'm an artist, writer, and game developer. I work for @7thBeatGames on "A Dance of Fire and Ice" and "Rhythm Doctor."

I run @IndieGamesofCohost where I share screenshots and spotlights of indie games. I also interview devs here on Cohost.

Kyle Labriola @kylelabriola12/10/2023, 8:23 PM

throwing a grenade into subs vs dubs

Something that fascinates me about the "subs vs dubs" debate for anime is that the common knowledge/reputation is that the subs are the one with the "better" writing.

And yet...over the past few years, when something has had a really high-quality dub, I've flipped back and forth between the sub and dub and I've noticed that the sub is usually:

quicker, shorter, simpler
designed to be quick enough to read
slightly more awkwardly worded or bland
more literal

and the dub is usually

more interesting, more nuanced
more natural to what an english-speaker would say
conveys the character's personality more
in a comedy, often funnier

People can watch whatever they prefer, and it's always best to have a choice, but I wonder if the reputation will ever start to shift. I like subs and dubs pretty much equally, but I've noticed that if a show has a REALLY good dub, that will do a lot more for me than the sub will. Obviously the dub's limitation is more in the realm of "matching the mouth animations" but tbh I'm surprised how rarely that ruins the writing nowadays, in the hands of a good localizer.

#Anime #blogofkylelab

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in reply to @kylelabriola's post:

Aura @MOOMANiBE12/10/2023, 8:29 PM

the fundamental problem for me will always be that dub performances for anime generally exist in a voice spectrum I find really irritating. Like I can't STAND the cliched "woman anime voice" that 90% of dubs seem to use, and the thing that'll make me switch is when they actually cast actors who are acting a character instead of just occupying the same Anime Woman Voice space as literally every other show.

Kyle Labriola @kylelabriola12/10/2023, 8:33 PM

This is huge for sure. It seems there's become a divide in approach between theater acting, film acting, American cartoon acting, and "anime" acting.

In fairness I feel like the Japanese actors are doing a very similar thing, but it just feels MUCH less cringe and annoying to watch.

I also, to be clear, am tired of hearing the same actors over and over again in American voice acting and I really love when someone shows up who has like NOTHING on their imdb and is doing something totally different than the usual voice archetypes. Would love a lot more of that going forward.

Kyle Labriola @kylelabriola12/10/2023, 8:34 PM

I've also noticed that if the writing is super embarrassing, I cringe way less by watching in Japanese than in English, because the language barrier kind of shields me from the embarrassment.

eggbug enthusiast @aidan12/12/2023, 12:47 AM

one of my favorite subs vs dubs factors is when there are characters that dont need their lipflap matched, i.e. narrators. I rewatched the entirety of Kaguya-sama dubbed because the narrator is basically a completely different character that was clearly localized in a way that fits the english VA's performance. it's really fun!

The other one i can think of is Thermae Romae Novae, which i chose to watch dubbed because it's about a roman guy getting isekai'd to modern japan; being able to pick out when characters are speaking "their default language" vs latin vs japanese was a much better experience IMO

Kyle Labriola @kylelabriola12/12/2023, 1:33 AM

Yeah, no mouths on-screen is always a godsend. My attention piques in every dub when their mouth isn't on camera or it's an establishing shot of the landscape or the character is wearing a full mask (like Spider-Man, etc.), you can tell how it really frees up the localizers.

Multi-language stuff always gets crazy hahaha. One type of scenario where I always need to switch to the sub is when it's an instance of a Japanese character [from Japan] speaking English in-universe, or interacting with an English speaker canonically. For example, I adore the K-ON dub, but it sadly doesn't work well for the K-ON Movie, which is all about the girls flying to England and language-barrier hijinks ensuing when the girls can't understand English. There's not really any foolproof way to localize scenes like that, except for trying to give the English-speakers thick accents or something.

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