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Best English dubbed anime?

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I'm not much of a dub guy so I don't have much to add, but I always watch FLCL and Bebop dubbed, they're just really well done. And of course I feel Ghibli movies deserve a shout out, if only because they have that Disney backing to really give them some professionalism and access to voice actors that other anime doesn't get. Fruits Basket also has the dubious honor of the dub irking me less than the subbed voices back when I watched it. IIRC I felt Japanese Yuki got hit a little too hard by the "voice actress playing a male character but not really sounding male at all" thing.

Also, since it got brought up a couple of times a part of me has to mention... I really, really don't like the Ranma dub. It sounds awful to me, and I've tried showing it to other people with similar results. I just can't take it, and it's probably my least favorite dub.

Oh, and special shout out for a dub with a weird issue for me: Light in Death Note being played by the same guy they had do Lan in the Mega Man Battle Network anime ruined that dub for me. I watched way too much of the latter back when it was airing over here, and hearing Lan's voice come out of Light just isn't right.
 
UberTag said:
I can't stand the dub of Evangelion TV.
Whereas I think the dub of the Evangelion Rebuild movies is amazeballs despite bringing back almost the entirety of the original cast.
Just goes to show what a change in voice direction can do.
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actually i think they just brought back the voices for Shinji, Misato, and Asuka.
 
Fullmetal Alchemist/Brotherhood

Pretty much anything done by Funimation in the last 10 years ranges from totally fine to pretty great.
 
MikeMyers said:
I must be the only one who watched FMA in Japanese.
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Not only did I watch only in Japanese my first series run, I watched it as a kid back when new episodes were still coming out every week. Then I rewatched it in English. Vic Mignogna as Ed does not have the same impact as Romi Park, no matter what anyone says.
 
Secret Fawful said:
Not only did I watch only in Japanese my first series run, I watched it as a kid back when new episodes were still coming out every week. Then I rewatched it in English. Vic Mignogna as Ed does not have the same impact as Romi Park, no matter what anyone says.
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Well I can watch either just fine so I think they're both pretty good, but I'd probably give a slight edge to the Japanese VA work for maintaining consistency.
 
InfiniteNine said:
Well I can watch either just fine so I think they're both pretty good, but I'd probably give a slight edge to the Japanese VA work for maintaining consistency.
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There are moments where Edward has to scream, like the moment when
Scar makes the transmutation circle in Lior and Edward screams for the military to escape because they will all die
that left me with chills when Romi Park did it. Then when I had to rewatch it for the first time with English dub, I would literally wait for all those moments where the Japanese VAs floored me to be delivered in English, hoping that they would be just as powerful, and often times I just had a reaction of "well, that was good enough, but not quite the same" instead. I would also go back and rewatch the scenes in Japanese and it would be just as powerful as before.
 
Secret Fawful said:
There are moments where Edward has to scream, like the moment when
Scar makes the transmutation circle in Lior and Edward screams for the military to escape because they will all die
that left me with chills when Romi Park did it. Then when I had to rewatch it for the first time with English dub, I would literally wait for all those moments where the Japanese VAs floored me to be delivered in English, hoping that they would be just as powerful, and often times I just had a reaction of "well, that was good enough, but not quite the same" instead. I would also go back and rewatch the scenes in Japanese and it would be just as powerful as before.
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Well that is fair I just personally found them both to be adequate! I usually nitpick over this stuff too which is why I don't watch most dubs.
 
Yu Yu Hakusho
Dragon Ball Z
Fullmetal Alchemist
 
The Slayers - Lisa Ortiz as Lina is fantastic even if slightly below Megumi.
Ranma 1/2 (except seasons 4-7)
Revolution Girl Utena - mainly for Crispin Freeman's excellent Touga.
Irresponsible Captain Tylor - Hey look, Crispin Freeman again.
Cowboy Bebop
 
I've enjoyed:

Soul Eater
Yu-Gi-Oh
DBZ
Death Note
Deadman Wonderland
Angel Beats


For starters. I noticed you did list a couple of them though :)
 
Baccano.

I watch most of my anime in English unless there's a good reason not to, and I'd say Baccano takes it. Aside from the cast being very good at what they do, the accents make it. It takes place in 1930's Chicago, so japanesebusinessman.mp3 just isn't going to fit. Ladd Russo was particularly great, as well as Isaac and Miria. Too bad they didn't get the original VAs for Isaac and Miria's cameo in
Durarara
.
 
Those that come to mind are:

- Cowboy Bebop
- Welcome to the NHK
- Golden Boy
- Paranoia Agent (for the most part)

On the opposite spectrum, I've often seen people cite FLCL as having a great dub but it's one of the worst I've ever listened to. It's odd how my opinion on that particular show goes against what most people think; doesn't often happen with my tastes.
 
TheBatman said:
He's a Steelers fan.
He's a friend of mine, love giving him crap about their 0-4 start this year :)
Click to expand...

I'm not surprised, except I actually thought it would turn out that he's a GAFer, and then I'd have been eating some crow, as I always seem to piss well-known people off by accident with my criticism at some point on the internet, and I've had to apologize to people before.
 
I prefer to watch anime in Japanese because for the most part it's better acted.
Some I outright despise in English, they shall go unnamed. You know who you are.

One I prefer in English is Outlaw Star. Very fun.
 
Best (Using that word very lightly here.): Tiger and Bunny fits the cheesy American comic book style.
FMA has some really good casting and the main characters (with the exception of Roy) are all acted reasonably well, though, every side character is pretty terrible.
I also would say DBZ, but that's mainly just because that dub is so ingrained in my nostalgia for the series itself.
Persona 4 Anime, mainly because they just got the cast of the game... Never forget good Chie.

The Worst: Gurren Lagann totally loses all impact because of the lack of power behind the acting. Yuri Lowenthal tonally fits Simon, but he really botches the yelling segments.
One Piece Funi is unwatchable, the casting makes very little sense and seems to be just a recycling of DBZ actors, but mainly it's just that the English actors cannot properly do all the extremely Japanese slapstick in OP.
Hellsing is honestly kind of terrible. I haven't watched Ultimate dubbed, but the original had such horribly inconsistent accents. I mean, half the English characters didn't have accents and the other half was straight up stereotypically English. Then the acting/translation was generally really poor.

Quick aside about Hellsing vs. Ultimate, the one and only thing OG has is the soundtrack. The dark smooth jazz was far better than the standard music is Ultimate.
 
Fullmetal Alchemist, both of them. Exceedingly well acted and the casting is great.

Steins;Gate: Also very well done, Michael J Tatum's turn as Okabe is one of my favourite dub performances.

Hellsing/Hellsing Ultimate: For Crispin Freeman's Alucard alone, though the rest are also very good.

Black Lagoon: Just awesome. Revy is perfect. Very sweary, but that's part of the charm.

There are loads more, but those are the ones that come to mind.
 
Between Bebop and FLCL for me.

Black Lagoon has good performances but the translation bugs me, such a hilarious amount of swearing added.
 
Ghost in the Shell gets my vote, big points for staying with the same cast over different projects spanning many years. I wouldn't really say they're great performances, per se, but the voices are just perfect matches and super-distinctive. But then, GitS' scripts are laden with impromptu mini-lectures on philosophy and technology... There's probably not any good way to make the delivery of those feel natural, because those types of exchanges are, fundamentally, wildly unnatural.

Out of left field here, but I remember Battle Athletes Victory having a really outstanding dub.

I don't get the Bebop love, I just can't listen to the dub for the simple fact that Jet's husky, soulful Japanese VO is approximately a million grillion times more distinctive than his boring-ass English one.
 
For me Goldenboy is the only anime I'd prefer the english dub of over the original japanese cast. There's just something about the way Doug Smith portrays Kintaro that cracks me up so bad.
 
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