Yeah I have the same experience. I can't even figure out what the original is supposed to mean. The recent Dub at least sounds like someone who has heard those words being pronounced even if they have no idea what they actually mean. Tiffany Grant sounds like a nonnative who at least put some effort into learning the language, even if they still get the grammar wrong and have an English accent.
I'm not someone who speaks German, however my Country is one of the Germanic languages countries, so both the Japanese and the new dub I can instantly hear that "something" is off, meanwhile it's not obvious to me with the original dub.
I have an old DVD of the AB Group DBZ dub, specifically the movie where “Big Green” drops the “Let that child alone” line. One of my prized possessions 😂
I miss ADV Films so much. I didn't know it's stands for Anime Dubbing Video. I first met the company at A-Kon anime conventions back in the late 90's-2000's, but then went under. How sad. I enjoy visiting their booth, meeting staff and voice actors/actress and buying videos/dvds and other merchandises from them. They have the best selection of anime ever, even when I watched it on Cartoon Network, Sci-Fi Channel, and Encore Action Channel during the late 90's. I also remember asking voice actors/actress on the script, dialogue and changes for the series. I agree on Monica Rial's comment.
Oh my god i genuinely forgot how many times Evangelion got dubbed, i just thought i was miss remembering scenes constantly, and bad dubs should always be critiqued but without localizers we would never have gotten the legendary dubs of Ghost Stories, DBS, Cowboy Bebop, and almost every Tenchi series.
Ghost stories was a sh*tpost. It has a more accurate dub because the creators didn't like the previous 'dub' and now there are much stricter standards for allowing dubs
I be honest I do disagree with a lot of your takes on Twitter but I will say that you do make some good points in this video. I don’t believe that all localization work is automatically bad for just changing or adding something, but I appreciate it more when they didn’t specially on sub.
I appreciate dubs nowadays for having some personality in the ADR direction. I recently watched ADV's Evangelion and I enjoyed it for the most part. Its sad that most new fans wont experience it, but I think the new dub has its value. For one, the cast is actually consistent across the series and movies. And while some of the translations are weird, it's the kind of translation that Gainax and Anno always wanted, which is interesting to witness.
As a German I say that the old Asuka VA was actually really good. Speaking of Germany and Miyazaki, in 1982 a French Company made a VHS release of The Castle of Cagliostro, they cut out 16 Minutes of the movie, beacuase the person in charge thought the French could not understand the concept of Goemon the Samurai... And turned the movie in a Love Story. And then A German Company came and adapted the French Version, renaming lupin for copyright reasons to Hardyman, inserting tons of bad Oneliners and dubbing past the original. It is such a weird version, meanwhile the new German Cagliostro Dub is also not 100% faithful, but works cause they got most of the characters right, even if they make bad jokes.
Honestly I really hate the very idea of "improving" a work with localization, its not their job to do that. If I become a writer no way I would be happy to hear that localizations of my work are straight up changing the very contents of my work instead of just making it easier to understand in another language. I want my work to be respected.
I do understand your point and can agree on a lot of levels. But I do also think that context sorta matters. In a movie, an actor's performance and improv can drastically change the tone and vibe of a character. It may not be the original script's literal intention but it doesn't mean it's bad either. And, as was said in the video, the most important thing is that the people leading the project agree. Ultimately, with anime, nothing is done in a vacuum. The original work must be adapted, either from a light novel or manga to an episodic animated form, acted out and then translated. Hundreds of people have their hands in these productions, and I personally think it's amazing that they can take an already great series and take chances to improve upon it. I agree that I wouldn't want my own work changed and meaning ripped from it. But If I were in this scenario, I'd also be excited to adapt to a new medium and improve my own works in subtle ways. Again though, all contextual, all case by case, etc etc
12:11 yes if you listen to the commentary for end of eva they mention it alot how they wanted it to be more natural and not literal, getting the same meaning across
I don't know if it was in the manga, but the "you have to thinking in german" is one of the most german thing to say. Also the "Wunderbar" is just such a Köchers Kuss
My man used Eva....and I'm here for it. That dub from ADV...I didn't know it was ADV at the time I consider the perfect version. Especially for the Rebuild films too. They just get the characters.
Great video, I learned a good deal. : ) I don't know if it gets made into an anime but the Manga "The World of Moral Reversal" made me think and reflect alot about the perspectives and roles men and women. Feels very fresh, fanservice is on point. It's also writen by Amahara, the same writer of Interspecies Reviewers. Thank you again for this video!
This subject is honestly not that far from the whole discourse around media adaptation. Going from book to movie to comic book to audio drama to video game and all of that. We can all inherently recognize that the way something is done in a book can be difficult to capture in a movie, to communicate the concept fully. And yet we still always get criticisms of adaptations rooted in "it was in this, so it has to be in THAT" regardless of what it might do to the rest of the work (Lookin at you, Tom Bombadill). And when you're changing languages, many of the same issues are going to crop up. And just like you can have a hundred adaptations of Hamlet or Journey to the West, each having a unique perspective on the work that hits or misses on different aspects, you can have translations that do the same. Each one is to some degree an adaptation.
I think you are missing that alot of localizations that we're done in these titles very in our different in severity. For example why you only mentioned asuka's German in EVA'S Dub the censorship Netflix did of Shinji and Koawrus dub was hated more and had a lot more controversy and was purpose censorship of a relationship that marketed heavily as romantic even in merch. Also comparing a company that hosts Eva to Kyoani that was very much considered smaller at the time doesn't really have the funds not the power and time to go back and force dub changed also alot of company's care about in JP is Blu-ray sales and if it's affecting sales from previous iterations like a clear track record in EVA'S sales they will say something.
It was a more hated change, Kaworu's "Worthy of my grace" line. But the video was focused on Grant's improvised German, not every change made in the Evangelion dub. Also, it doesn't matter if they "had funds" or not. They signed a contract, which legally gives KyoAni the right to just veto any changes presented to them.
As a native German speaker all versions of it in Evangelion hit the uncanny valley at best. The original Japanese is incomprehensible to me, the most recent Dub has all the wrong tenses and pronunciations are off, and Tiffany Grant is by far the best of them all. There isn't really a comparison at all, she still doesn't sound like a native speaker and gets a lot of grammar wrong, but at least it doesn't sound like early babble fish translations
With this, the vid on fan service, and the reaction vid of Eva specifically, I can see viewers making memes about how everything connects to Eva. Though, considering how old & impactful it is, I guess that's not really surprising. I'll be down for more since you've been making me appreciate it more.
And what a weird selection of lines it was. They did things like tone back the swearing and change Asuka's nickname for Mari from "four-eyes" to "four-eyed croney".
I think about a lot of the shows I watched as a kid where I was introduced to them through their dub. Like cowboy bebop, outlaw star, tench muyo, and big o. I think those dubs were really good. I have seen those shows subbed too but I still enjoy the dub. the new trigun has a great dub and they even brought back the VA from the 90s show which was a nice touch. but also shows like Slayers and all of its sequels had great dubs, space dandy, konosuba. lots of shows have very good dubs! hell I remember this wacky robot anime called "generator gawl" which technically had a terrible dub because they completely rewrote the script and added lots of jokes, but I still liked it! all the VAs were good and went onto be in other shows and games!
as far as i am concerned , my view on dubbing and localization shifted drastically. i am not english native, there is no good dubs of anime in my language and dubs of other media iritates me to no end. and for some reason i grew up learning english from adv dubs, and geneon and probably some other i don't know the names of and most likely ocean studios so by proxy i was very in favor of early and mid 90's and 2000's dubs. but later i discovered i enjoy the sound of japanese language more even if i don't understand it. but with multiseasonal shows that had dub for one or few seasons but not the whole thing or when different studios pick up dubs of different seasons and cast didn't match i was always kind of annoyed they don't all sound closer to the oryginal because with few of my favorite shows of that time, Eureka seven, figure 17 or azumanga it felt normal to watch one episode in english, one in japanese , compare and experience both and never decide which is better (for me they are both foreign) but for those shows and few other i was 99% ok to just change language on the spot , watch further and still know who is who by the sound of the voices even if they were not exact matches , they were good casting choices on the dub side, but more than that the characters of those people on screen wasn't drastically altered because localizers did a good job, stay hidden and fly completly under the radar. but lately dubs become unwatchable when anime become more mainstream. Voices are more abnoxious, translations are way further from the robot subs and seemles transitions from language o language are practically unheard of. Plus localizers seems to be drunk on theyre new found god mode and start to actually change the content, not only swap jokes and references for better ones. and if not for internet we probably would never even know how much proud thay are about that changes there are shows that from my perspective should never be dubed, because they would loose character. you can't substitute for kansai ben or for how crazy osaka people are compared to regular snitized universal japanese ... well british people could dub them as angry scotish people. there are anime like 3rd season of ojamajo doremi dub would be impossible to pull off because of how well japanese cast spoke in english and some times how bad they did as a contrast one thing though iritates me the most in current english dub scene people just cn't take responsibility for theyre actions and simply can't stand criticism from people who pay them in the end. being toxic towards your customers is never a good option , yet loclizers nowdys like to die defending theyre own pety agendas they mannaged to sneak in and yes evangelion was a product of different tmes but it also was a bit overloaded, compared to similar situation in already mentioned ojamajo doremi, funnyly enough also character named asuka the influence of the other language should still be there but for a child or young adult should also be heavyly toned down as the episodes go on but i don't know i never watched evangelion in english at all, it was my firt anime and i had very well made subs in my own language at the time and as for dragon miad, there is another alterntive, when you work with someone for long time you begin to trust theyre jurdgment and sometimes disagree with your own opinion to make things go smoother so to sum up translation should be 100% but localization of that translation should be as invisible and non intrusive as possible and non biased by worldviews, because localizerd are not there to fix the story sorry for long incohearent stream of thoughts
I’ve spent most of my time growing up in other countries, Localization of anything doesn’t bother me as much as others. I feel like once you realize other countries don’t have the same standards or understand some cultural references, the more you can understand why localizers change stuff for other audiences.
Great video overall but I didn't know EVA got dub that many times. I need to finish watching the Rebuild films but once again you did a good job of not attacking but making your points. You're good at being level headed.
The point that KyoAni didn't care is just conjecture. They use localizers is good faith. Not everything gets checked line by line on the Japanese side. I watch a ton of current shows and do understand the basics without the subtitles. This is why the amount of sloppy, or completely misinterpreted translations bugs me. They mistranslate even the most trivial thigs. I get how underpaid the personal is, but that is on the localization studios. Your take on Asukas old dub is spot on. It would be great to see more along those lines even in the original Japanese when it comes to foreigners in the shows.
I greatly appreciate you going indepth on the actual process of localization, with how much misinformation there is on the topic, I am glad you accurately explained it in a way that those who are not familiar or were misinformed should be able to easily understand. I also greatly appreciate you bringing up Beowulf, as that is a perfect example of how translation isn't as blindly simple as many often like to claim it is. and Beowulf is a work that is translated from Old-english to modern English, languages of the same language family, where the source language had evolved into the target, and there is still no ideal "perfect" translation, despite being one of the most translated litterary works of all time. Also on a personal note, I always really did enjoy the extra german of Asuka in the ADV dub, cause as someone who was multi-lingual individual, that spent a portion of their childhood overseas, I would instinctively fallback on my native english if my mind got too busy or was in a strong enough emotional state, having Asuka do that in the ADV dub. It really helped portray that, she was a foreigner, and really sold the fact that in the original japanese was mentioned as a character element but never really super well portrayed.
As an anime freak the only times I am ok with localize in my anime if it a Japanese speeches that cannot be easy transfer to English. For example Naruto famous Believe It
Akazukin Chacha relied on a lot of Japanese wordplay, but the translators did a great job with popping brief explanations up in the screen much like Hetalia did for many history references.
AB Dub also are responsible for the Westwood Dub, that carried most of the same cast as the Ocean Dub but a wildly different sound track. This aired in Canada and Ireland/UK. Some tax reason why it was cheaper to produce them from Canada rather than license DB from the Funimation Dub at the time. And that Dub which some lumb in with the earlier Ocean Dub thanks to the initially shared cast, shared scripts with Funimation's dub at the time. The only real difference is probably they carry over the pronuaction of Gero over, rather than the Funimation one. That and some of the new actors start out more wooden than their Funi counter parts, Trunks' Westwood actor-Alistair Abell I believe-has a rather memed "If they let that Android free, it will be the end of all of us! NOOOOO!" Which is the same line Eric Vale's Trunks but is so loud and wooden that it comes off funny. He gets better as he plays the character. Anyway, AB Dub produced that Dub, but when it came time to produce the movies from what I understand they were offered the same tax benefits so did so in France. Which explains a number of choices made for those films. Such jarring experiences watching those movies when they aired on our Toonami. The Westwood Dub is basically lost media now. Shame, Brian Drumond's Vegeta is pretty much the ball. Still, fan-edits with the audio from TV recordings with footage from DVD ones exist, so it can still be viewed in some fashion unlike say the Irish Language Dub of Avatar: The Last Airbender which exists only in the form of three off the screen recordings as far as I am aware. So at least its not that. Anyway, I liked the video.
I assume Voyager Entertainments dub of Space Battleship Yamato (Star Blazers) isn't going to be mentioned, but aside from toning down the "fanservice" and Japanese WWII stuff they also changed a characters motivation from 'going out in a blaze of glory' to "covering for everyone's escape" which SBY adapted when converting from movie to the TV series. Also: since Star Blazers was marketed as a cartoon for young kids blatant shoot outs with enemy soldiers was masked by: "They're robots!" I can't say for sure if this influenced the 2012 remake, but the enemy empire in that series now uses robots, which when your expanding territory on a multi-galaxy scale it makes more sense. As for the dubs, I haven't actually seen the original Star Blazers dub in quite some time, I remember it having a lot of character to it. The remake 2199/2202 did get a dub, it unfortunately was a victim of the um...Broly incident...anyways it goes for more contemporary deliveries like the 90s Star Trek shows as opposed to Japans more theatric line reads. I'm still waiting for the 2199 movie and 2205 to get dubbed but uh...the recent Funi/Crunchy news makes me think that's not happening anytime soon. Which is a shame, I think the team on that did an excellent job. (EDIT: Desperate to know that other people were watching the series as well I constantly searched "Yamato 2202" on Twitter during the dubs runtime, and I remember a Japanese fan mentioned that a characters motivation near the end was much better explained in English than in Japanese.) (EDIT 2: Before Funimation picked up the dub apparently Bang Zoom had the rights at one point, they even had the first few episodes dubbed for an Anime Expo in France... here's hoping someone still has it, be it a cam rip or the source.)
17:25 maybe they were being lazy and just didn't check, both why would someone try to ruin something they are working on. People are working on Anime because they like Anime. Why would they with malice.
Something I'll add and this is just a vibes thing but like:I just feel like some lines work better as a subtitle than as a spoken line, especially with slang or swearing
Here in Italy the first Kara-approved dub was a disaster (there was a mtv dub before it) the guy who did it really believed in overly literal translations and in trying to render the formality of Japanese speech with faux-outdated Italian. The guy also worked on several Ghibli movies but there often the voice actors were allowed to rewrite his scripts so they are often tolerable (but there is still a lot of nonsense, Mononoke is particularly infamous) but not this time and Netflix had to redo it. Imagine a machine translation converted into faux-elizabethan speech and you'll have an idea of what that sounded like.😅
The only time when a Cannarsi adaptation sort of worked is with Saint Seiya. Sure it's still completely different but one can say that is sort of work With Mononoke is just XD
Great video! Having spent some of my childhood in France I can say the dubbing scene there in the 90s/early 00s was similar to 4Kids style, though with a loooot less censorship. I think the AB localisation of Dragonballs as "crystal balls" is from the French dubbing, since it flows better in that language and the show aired at a time where it was catering to Saturday morning cartoon audiences, per-terminally online weeb era (at least thats my sense of it). Also at the expense of being "that guy", one little fact check. It was Toshiro Suzuki who sent the sword with the "no cuts" message, not Miyazaki.
This was a great video. Remembered a lot of things, but I also learned much more. I never did watch the entirety of NGE (too busy/no money), but I was able to buy a thin box of ADV's Platinum Collection (?) before they ceased to be. As with many things, it's in storage, but the last time I checked, it's still sealed. It's a bummer some localized shows are unable to provide that much-needed spice in their work. I'm still fascinated by the changes that are/aren't made, though, as well as the reasons behind that decision. Of course, whenever I think about localization, I always think about the number of ways people named the main character of "Berserk". Even the Dreamcast game, "Sword of the Berserk: Guts' Rage" tried to have their cake and eat it by making his given name "Gattsu", with "Guts" being what his friends call him. Granted, I don't think it really changed the script at all (I don't recall the distinction mentioned in-game beyond maybe a single line, but this detail IS in the manual), but it's still something funny to look back on.
But english speaker only had one bad dub of kobayashi's maid dragon. Yeah some change is good, like "Exodia obliterate!" but doing something just to angry anime fans and please people who hate anime is wrong to those who really support anime. There are this new actors like jelloapocalips who changes dialogue just because he hate the original anime/Manga. How that help anime?
JelloApocalypse failed to change anything. The system in place managed to prevent his changes from being carried into the dub. Also, he's basically blacklisted. I had a live stream where I went into more detail about it.
What's interesting to me, as a French person who grew up in the mid 90's with runs and reruns of Dragon Ball and DBZ in french - with the french AB dub, since they were the ones to bring the franchise overseas in I think 1986 - is that the english AB dub arrived so much later in english speaking countries. I wonder why a push for that version was made. Oh and, to explain "Awesome Turtle", it's because the french version calls him "Tortue Géniale". While the "géniale" part, I don't know how they got that, the "tortue" part simply comes from one of his japanese names, "亀仙人" or "kame sennin", kame meaning turtle. The french dub has even more baffling translation choices. For example, Piccolo isn't called Piccolo but "Satan Petit Coeur" (Satan small heart), which in turn forced the actual Satan character to be renamed "Hercule" which completely negates the pun between Satan and Videl. Who is actually, at least in the anime, called "Bidel". Yup. But the greatest offender in my opinion are the protagonist and his two sons. See, Son Goku, Son Gohan and Son Goten are not named that in french. They're named Sangoku, Sangohan and Sangoten. Of course, the problem with that is that Son is their surname, but in french, for the longest time, we thought they didn't HAVE a surname. Which makes that scene during the beginning of the Buu saga, where Videl explains how she found about Gohan's father being Goku by saying something along the lines of "you share the same last name and it's a pretty rare one so he's your father, right?" completely baffling in french since we didn't even REALIZE they had a surname. All in all though, I do have fond memories of watching Dragon Ball and DBZ on the Club Dorothée :)
Your video helped spark a great conversation I had one stream about the Dub of Fate/Samurai remnant's DLC and how they left out words you can hear in the voice acting that while not changing the impression the character gives does in my mind kind of detract from how I think Type Moon has portrayed the character. Which is another thing about translation and localization like this you can dislike it but that doesn't mean its bad. I LOVE seeing videos like yours because it helps people understand these differences BY putting them side by side. I had never heard all of Asuka's german eva start up side by side and the ADV is BY FAR the best of the three with japanese coming up second imo, but in a lot of cases I wouldn't call the Netflix dub bad, granted there are a lot of parts I WOULD call bad but still. Thanks for the great work looking forward to everything you make!
In the English dub of infinite Stratos, Charlotte occasionally speaks in French and my mother is fluent in Spanish, and I occasionally pepper my speech with Spanish adios and Gracias
Pretty good work again, Ant. I'm SO glad you brought up the line in Dragon Maid and it's something that I said a long time ago: If it was that much of an issue, Kyo-Ani would've rejected it. Aside from that, great informative video on localization and one that MANY anime fans needs to watch.
All he provided was speculation. Saying that because Kyo-Ani would have rejected it if they had a problem with it is not an argument. If the localizers wanted to make the Dub all about Hitler ideology shit and Kyo-Ani didn’t have a problem with it, I don’t think you would be cool with that even if the original studio didn’t mind.
@@jbstarkiller4626 I'm sorry but it can't be speculation especially since It's been 7 years since this dub came out. If the line was an issue, Kyo-Ani would've rejected it...or they probably don't care because they trust the ones dubbing it. The line made it into the home release as well. Maybe it's best to stop assuming someone's inserting agendas into something and just enjoy the anime.
@@UnderdogBT Yes it can be speculation and it was speculation since he provided no evidence that was the case. "Maybe it’s best to stop assuming someone’s inserting agendas into something and just enjoy the anime" ok well I’m not "assuming" anything. The political message is there weather you like it or not, "patriarchal societal demands" is inherently divisive and political and no normal person unironically says that. Don’t get mad at us for noticing and having a problem with it, I assume you would be fine with the dub having weird Hitler shit in it if the original studio was cool with it right? and if the answer is no then why?
@@jbstarkiller4626 Believe whatever you want. I say it's not speculation and the fact that it's been seven years since the Dragon Maid dub and Kyo-Ani said nothing about the line is all the evidence I need. I'm done going back and forth with you.
Good video, I really love Tiffany Grant's Asuka but I can't hack Spike Spencer's shinji, althought it's sort of become an iconic performance nowadays. Not a criticism but heard you stumble over yourself saying Seamus Heaney's surname there, it's just simply He-nee. The translation of Beowulf he did actually has a few instances of Hiberno-English, even with the first line being a singular "So." to denote the start of the story, which you would hear in Ireland but not spoken in other anglophone countries which aligned pretty well with the original Old English script, another great example of the experience of the translator/actor adding to the translated work.
Haha! YEah, Spencer's Shinji is an acquired taste. I think he did a solid job with it, but it has to grow on you a bit. And yeah, I tend to mispronounce or stumble over some names, in part because I keep second guessing their pronunciation...it's something I need to work on. But that is honestly an interesting point about Heaney's Beowulf translation.
I’ve always thought the whole thing with Dragon Maid and Nagatoro saying sus was overblown. I forgot when fansubs had characters swearing up a storm for no reason. Even back then I thought that couldn’t be what they were actually saying.
Then there's the well-placed F-bomb in that scene in the ADV dub. It's not a literal translation, but it hits better. Translation is an art. I have done some translation as a hobby, and initially I didn't want to put "translated by TurtleMarcus" on title page, but rather "re-told by TurtleMarcus." It felt more like a re-telling (same story, told in a new way) than a true translation (same text in different language). But that's exactly what all translation is: re-telling. People think they want a literal word-for-word translation, but that's not what they need. Sure, if you're studying a classical text in a class room to learn an ancient language (like the Illiad or the Bible), then literal word-for-word is good, but if you want to feel something and enjoy the story the way the author intended, then you have to concede to a less-than-literal translation. Of course, there are different approaches to this. For example, if you read Harry Potter in Dutch, you'll get the impression that the story takes place in the Netherlands, not Great Britain! In other words, bad localizations can break the trust which exists between author and translator, and less trust can mean less creative freedom in translating. Is it good or is it bad for the author to be involved in translation into languages she doesn't know or understand that well? That depends. I'd love to see discussions about translation philosophy go mainstream.
I think it's really problematic to focus on only the Dragon-Maid dub moment that got Reactionary Anime fans upset and ignore the scene Queer fans hate for it's Queer Erasure. And Kyoto Animation is a corporation not the actual Artists. I feel like the ADV Dub of Evangelion is the Star Wars Prequels of Anime with everyone now forgetting the fan hatred that existed in the post after something more hated was made. VraiKaiser used to talk a lot about how it bothered them that in the Dub Shinji like his Girly sounded voice and Asuka lost her more Masculine sounding voice. What Eva is doing with Gender expectation between those character means far more to the shows Themes then Asuka's Germanness. The Keikau Means Plan incident is fake, it's a meme someone created it never actually existed in a real Fan Sub.
So basically: "it's ok to culturally appropriate non western art for western audiences as long as I'm the one being pandered too" I genuinely hate people like you it's not even funny
Speaking of Ghost Stories, I highly recommend that everyone should watch Mercury Falcon’s video “The TRUTH About the Ghost Stories Dub!”: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-wVkYediuSuw.htmlfeature=shared. In that video, Mercury Falcon traces the origin of the “Ghost Stories anime failed in Japan” myth, and then calls out the infamous ADR director Steven Foster for perpetuating the aforementioned myth and his notorious pattern of taking huge liberties with the scripts by-instead of punching up the scripts-rewriting the meaning of entire scenes to suit his idea of “humor”.
The thing I don't understand about the furor over the Dragon Maid line is that it didn't even actually change the meaning of the exchange the two characters were having? Regardless of the specific translation the exchange ultimately comes down to: "Why are you wearing a frumpy sweater?" "People thought I was too provocative so I changed into something more modest" "[Sarcastic response about how this is doomed to failure]". Any translation of a piece of Japanese media into English is going to need to make changes to the source material in order to facilitate that translation because Japanese has a completely different sentence structure to English. Couple this with the changes that need to be made as part of the Anime dubbing process (Fitting dialogue to lip flaps, making the dialogue sound natural to how actual English speakers talk, etc.) and you're left with a situation where the companies that own these properties accept that there's going to be a certain amount of content that needs to be changed to make the localization work. So what really differentiates a good from a bad dubbing decision really comes down to how well the original intent and information of the source material is being maintained, and with that particular scene in Dragon Maid its not really altering the narrative intent behind that scene. Which makes it all the more obvious that the foofarah certain people made had less to do with the integrity of the translation, and more to do with a bunch of perpetually online culture-war weirdos getting triggered by hearing the word "patriarchy". It's just a continuation of the fiction certain segments of reactionary anime fans have of Japan as a culture untouched by so-called "woke" politics, despite the longstanding history of feminist and leftist discourse that's been happening in Japanese society.
I partially agree with you. Proper dubbing takes nuance and what is important is the meaning and intent of what is being said. While the narrative of the story is the same in the dragon maid line, the character's narrative is slightly changed. Saying you just want to be left alone vs making a witty/snarky remark are two different actions even if they communicate similar messages. This is mainly me nitpicking and I'm not gonna go on a crusade about it or anything because I agree people shouldn't freak out over a single line. However, small changes like this could potentially add up over the course of a series and change a character without changing the overall narrative in any meaningful way. If a character is very straightforward or has a laid back personality, it would be unfaithful to the character to make them say something sarcastic. It's really not that big of a deal but I wanted to ramble my thoughts.
I can attest you that only the ADV dub sounds like german (though with a recognicable accent). The japanese sub sounds like a child mouthing out a word it doesn't understand the meaning of and the new dub gets the pronounciation but doesn't sound like a person would speak (both obviously have very pronounced accents).
9:30 Hate to be that guy but like this is the most ironic thing ever bc the big green dub is actually a genuine 1:1 translation.....OF THE FRENCH DUB SCRIPT LMAO bc AB Group mandated it be used for all international distribution of the show all over Europe Circa all the way back since 1990. So the big green dub was ironically a case of an overcorrection where the English script was being TOO FAITHFUL for its own good lol it's just unfortunate how they were being faithful to a shitty one lol. Crystal Balls, Super Warriors, Warriors of space, French DBZ speakers still only recognize those names to this day. The only new change that came was English big green dub's own doing is, well, Big green funnily enough, Piccolo's French name is Tiny-Hearted Satan/Satin Petit-Coeur, a name still used in official French Dragonball material to this day even in Super Hero believe it or not. It's crazy to thing that for French speaking audiences those name changes are as iconic to them as the English Pokemon names are for the rest of the Anglosphere. (The French script of DB overall is a mixed bag but considering it's the first translation of the Dragonball story in a Latin language for both manga and anime it's incredibly impressive how it continues to stand the test of time with sub-only French weebs continuing to watch it in dub and even WB (who could've easily misundestood its cultural touchstone and tossed it like what Khara did to the ADV dub) opted instead with keeping its legacy alive on their TV and streaming after they took the rights from AB Group and MangasTV in 2023. DBZ's French history (and what was conned in 90s France as "Dragonball-Mania*) is so mind-boggling especially when u realize all of it was concurrent to the actual Dragonball manga and anime back with they were in active serialization who knows what aspects of it slipped into influencing the work. ( Like All the SNES games, the first DBZ fighting games to be made, all made it in France roughly 7 months after its Japanese release date. A Japanese TV interviewed the French dub cast in friggin 1988 before even Z existed and inviting Brigette to play kid Gohan with Masako Nozawa IN PERSON IN JAPAN LIKE OMG IT WAS ALSO RHE FIRST TIME THE FIRST EPISODE OF DBZ WAS EVER PREVIEWED AND IT WAS WITH FRENCH GOHAH LIKE (I got side tracked I apologize I really wish I could be doing an hour long video on this and not be awake on 5am charging my phone bruh...)
Sees thumbnail, will give the benefit of the doubt. If it is related to the Dragon Maid, I imagine some talking points will be that the Japanese creator is more progressive, so that the English therefore helps that come through.
You can really tell that Kyoani wasn't concerned with the dub of Dragon Maid, considering that the whole show is littered with stuff that's so far off from the original JP.
9:42 I can answer that one lol. Well the previous ones are also from the french translation but kinda suck in french to begin with, but "dragonball" translated in french as "boules du dragon" or "balles du dragon" sounds absolutely ridiculous and it makes a lot more sense to call the "boules de cristal". But yeah dragonball french dub is wild lol and I never watched the english dub before but I can tell from just that that they basically translated it word for word lol.
-Dragon Maid's dub got lots of backlash mainly because it's beloved by "degenerate" otaku (thanks to Lucoa, Ilulu and to an extent Kanna and Riko) -I can't believe otaku are still angry over "Jelly-Filled Donuts" (I can understand why they'd be angry over "The Shadow Realm" "Sanji's Lollipops" and "Power Juice" due to Yu-Gi-Oh and One Piece's prestige)
it's a senseless and disrespectful line that changes the meaning of the scene so of course people were angry. there's no "degen" fans as much as fans who like what the author makes.
one more thing, while i do agree that the change in the Dragon Maid dub was weird and off, its also the least of the show's problematic elements LOL. Additionally, i have only seen the OG 2.0 dub but it was a fantastic dub imo. From what Ive seen of the amazon dubs however...oof. It sucks that when we eventually get a reissue of the previous three films on home media, it'll likely be the Amazon dub, unless GKids get lucky enough.
So I've never watched Evangelion (heard it was classic though), and this entire video has made me want to check it out. But its wanting me to check out the original dub, not this Netflix one
Honestly, as much shit as 4Kids (rightfully) gets, I will say I am very thankful that they dubbed YuGiOh. For all the dumb censorship that happened there's a background gag or conversation that absolutely elevates the subject matter. Whether that's Kaiba's incessant insulting of Joey to the point that otherwise mundane statements have a barb aimed at Joey, or Joey and Tristan bickering over something completely stupid during a scene transition, or just an airplane pilot flubbing his preloading speech and finishing with "Sorry first day on the job" all the way up into Arc-V. Makes these worlds breathe in ways that the insanity of worlds formed around a card game demands.
7:50 usually that they introduce politics that someone personally disagrees with its basically the antiwoke grifters newest grift to the point wehre some claim they#d prefer if ai did it which I mean take any epic anime moment, type the subs out into google translator nad have it read them out and see how amazing that would be lol
I can already see the weebs bust out the same 4 or 5 examples from Dragon maid and Prison School from 5 years ago. I'm looking forward hearing you debunk already debunked points that these weebs refuse to let go of.
Nothing was debunked. What does that even mean? That Anime distribution companies change the meaning of scenes by adding things that have nothing to do with the show, yeah that was never debunked. 🤡
@@jbstarkiller4626 I take it you didn't wastch the video at all then. It's said in the video that if the animation studio doesn't aprove the line, they'll tell the dubbing company to change the line.
@@loneswordsman295 Even if that was the case in regards to dragon maid, what does that debunk? Nothing. Are we supposed to be ok with it if the original studio doesn’t mind? If instead of the patriarchy line what if Lucoa after Toru mentioned her clothes starting quoting Mein Kampf for no reason, I don’t think you’d be cool with that.
Great video. Thank you so much. I was a little dismayed that you accepted the framing of that Dragon Maid line as inaccurate. There’s a great video breaking that line down: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-slrgeYBot4Q.html They conclude that why while the subtitled version is closer to a word-for-word translation, its use of “everyone” rather than “society” is inaccurate both in terms of word-choice and when accounting for context. If anything, the dub better conveyed the full meaning of the original.
0:05 Holy shit she was so real and based for that, ong no cap! Shouldn't have gotten too surprised/weirded out by Twitter freaks/antis somehow malding over such a small inconsequential thing that simply just, at most, make her out to be real/based, but they just keep surprising everyone.
Not anime, but Fire Emblem Path of Radiance rewrites an entire late game plot point in the localization, and the localized version is a lot less of an asspull and makes more sense. I won't spoil it, but its fun to look up.
"THE" time? There's literally over 2000 examples of this. Narrow it down. Anyway, whatever you think the BEST example is, you're wrong. The right answer is "Excel Saga".
A specific example from one of the fan translations of the demon slayer manga comes to mind as well. Despite the line not existing in the official translation and the main fan translation, that line is referenced constantly within the fandom, made a huge impact, better portraying the intent.
Oh boy - here we go. Another round of toxic incel weebs about to wear out their keyboards over some observations and research. Have a feeling video games are gonna be brought into this as well.
@@jbstarkiller4626Oh, I didn't know anime fans were angry at the Japanese studios and rights holders who signed off on these changes - I thought they were mad at the dub studios who are already on a tight leash overseen by the original show's publisher. Silly me. /s
@@shelbyherring92 The Japanese studios aren’t the ones responsible for dubbing their content, this guy didn’t even prove that was the case for dragon maid just other projects. Even if he did what would that mean? That we are wrong for opposing when they do it? No that would just expand our problems to the Japanese studios themselves. Nice try tho
