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Originally Posted by NinjaServ
I feel unless you have LIVED there and spoke japanese for MANY years, you don't have the right to say SHIT about the japanese dubs being better unless the english ones are GOD AWFUL
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I don't think so - all it takes is about a year or so of watching things in Japanese, and you can catch on pretty quickly about how things are supposed to sound in each situation; what different facial expressions and vocal intonations are normal for a given situation. I watched anime subtitled for about two years before I began learning Japanese and talking to a lot of Japanese people, but even now that I feel I have a (somewhat) decent grasp of the language and find myself talking to many Japanese people, I find that the reality isn't that much different from what I got from watching Japanese TV. Obviously, any native Japanese speaker is able to better appreciate what is and isn't good Japanese voice acting better than any English speaker, but that doesn't mean that English speakers who know little Japanese can't get a decent grasp on what is and isn't good voice acting - I know this to be true from experience.
But anyway, I agree with basically all your points about the FMA dub.
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Also, something I'd like to point out to people (especially concerning the comments about the GitS dub) - realize that comparing the English dub to the Japanese dub in terms of whether they sound alike isn't (in my opinion, anyway) a good way of judging a dub. Saying that "this dub sucks because this guy's voice is a bit higher pitched whereas in the Japanese version he's not" doesn't hold up well. A dub should be judged on it's own merits and whether the writing and voices fit the characters in the way they're presented - not whether it mimics the Japanese version.
Frankly, I prefer it when dubs avoid mimicing the Japanese version because they usually turn out too rigid and awkward sounding, and frankly anyone who's concerned about getting "the real deal" shouldn't be watching a dub to begin with - they should always watch the original. Dubs CANNOT be a full-out replacement for the original version because too many changes have to be made to make the show work in English - it's much better that they just go with it and make it watchable on it's own merits than try to be rigidly true to the original when it's impossible for a dub to be anyway.
If you care about a highly accurate translation, watch it in Japanese. If you don't like subtitles and/or are able to check your care for accuracy at the door, watch dubs. All that matters is whether the dub stands well on it's own merits. And that inherintly is why I don't watch dubs much - I want as accurate a translation as possible, and subbed versions give that.