What's wrong with Sentai Filmworks's dubs?

[JamesMayFan]

so i watched Chuunibiyou on English Dub, while the dub wasn't an Oscar Worthy material or something i found it was rather well-done in certain parts, otherwise they just plain medicore... but what I heard is the company had a very notorious for making bad modern day-dubs, so I like to hear your thoughts

[Akito Kinomoto]

Sentai Filmworks' English dubs aren't bad so much as wildly inconsistent. Being the leftovers from the defunct ADV doesn't seem to help them in hiring a wider pool of voice actors, because there's only so many times you can put Luci Christian and Greg Ayres in the lead roles before people notice. That, and the voice actors might not be bad, but the ADR directors...directing is the source of much 'what.'

[GDiddy]

They suck for the most part.

[JamesMayFan]

i see what pepole complaints here, I remember back in the day when Haruhi we're used to owned by Bandai, i never heard any complaints to Bandai whatsoever...

Originally Posted by Akuma Kinomoto

Sentai Filmworks' English dubs aren't bad so much as wildly inconsistent. Being the leftovers from the defunct ADV doesn't seem to help them in hiring a wider pool of voice actors, because there's only so many times you can put Luci Christian and Greg Ayres in the lead roles before people notice. That, and the voice actors might not be bad, but the ADR directors...directing is the source of much 'what.'

hmmm... no wonder their dubs being hated, but as most of their licensed titles we're heavily set Japan, also as the vast majority of their titles heavily reliying on female casts I'm sure this is another factor of why majority their dubs we're universally panned among fans :|

[Hiroi Sekai]

Sentai is insta-better than Funi in my opinion, since I'm pretty sure they have more than 3 VAs on staff. Their DVD/Blu-Ray synopses are ghastly though, not to mention their localized titles.

[Utsuro no Hako]

Originally Posted by Hiroi Sekai

Sentai is insta-better than Funi in my opinion,

I cannot agree with that. Funi's voice actors actually feel like they're acting. The ones Sentai gets usually feel like they're reading dialogue they were handed five minutes before and the only direction they've received is, "She's a cute teenage girl, so make her voice sound like a chipmunk." Plus Funi VAs know how to pronounce Japanese names. With Sentai (and to be fair this applies to other companies as well) you get people using vowel sounds that don't exist in Japanese and pronouncing letters that are supposed to be silent.

[Triple_R]

^ The two posts above represent an interesting Point-Counterpoint to me.

I've only listened to a few dubs over the last few years, so I haven't paid much attention to specific dubbing companies.

With that in mind, a couple questions:

1. K-On!, Kill La Kill, and Madoka Magica - Who was the dubbing company (or companies) for these three? For the most part, I liked the dubs of all three.

2. Unless No. 1 completely takes care of this, can we have an example of a Sentai dubbed work, and another one of a Funi dubbed anime?

[hinakatbklyn]

Originally Posted by Triple_R

1. K-On!, Kill La Kill, and Madoka Magica - Who was the dubbing company (or companies) for these three? For the most part, I liked the dubs of all three.

2. Unless No. 1 completely takes care of this, can we have an example of a Sentai dubbed work, and another one of a Funi dubbed anime?

(1) K-on! = Sentai / Kill La Kill & Madoka = Aniplex USA
All 3 I think were dubbed by Bang Zoom
The one Sentai License K-on, the first season was originally licensed by Bandai which could be one reason Sentai decided to outsource the second season and the Movie to the same dub company rather than dub themselves.

(2) Funimation: While I can't specifically pinpoint one best Funi dub over another since I've seen quite a few lately, the most recent one I've seen (late) with a funimation Dub is Steins; Gate.

[Hiroi Sekai]

Originally Posted by Utsuro no Hako

I cannot agree with that. Funi's voice actors actually feel like they're acting. The ones Sentai gets usually feel like they're reading dialogue they were handed five minutes before and the only direction they've received is, "She's a cute teenage girl, so make her voice sound like a chipmunk." Plus Funi VAs know how to pronounce Japanese names. With Sentai (and to be fair this applies to other companies as well) you get people using vowel sounds that don't exist in Japanese and pronouncing letters that are supposed to be silent.

It's a very weighted scale for me, personally. To me it feels like Funimation grabs like 75% of the series out there, then fills them over and over and over with the same 6 people. I'll agree that they do a better job with pronunciation (since Sentai's is quite often horrendous), but they're still not great. I suppose in the end it's an English dub, but it's still painful to hear how off it all is. Plus, I don't really know how many Funimation dubs you've seen, but I had the displeasure of being stuck in a party with a guy who only watches anime through Funi dubs. We watched (no joke) 16 different series in one night (just their first episodes). Their subtitles are painful, are completely inconsistent, and they always make their characters sound at least 5-10 years too old. They just don't cut it for me, personally.

Originally Posted by Triple_R

^ The two posts above represent an interesting Point-Counterpoint to me.

I've only listened to a few dubs over the last few years, so I haven't paid much attention to specific dubbing companies.

With that in mind, a couple questions:

1. K-On!, Kill La Kill, and Madoka Magica - Who was the dubbing company (or companies) for these three? For the most part, I liked the dubs of all three.

2. Unless No. 1 completely takes care of this, can we have an example of a Sentai dubbed work, and another one of a Funi dubbed anime?

1. K-ON was actually dubbed both by Animax Asia and Sentai. Sentai's translation was awful, but I actually think they got some of the voices decently close. I can't remember who it was, but one of these two dubs also had a horrendously obvious "cheap microphone" issue in their recording.

Aniplex dubbed Kill la Kill, and by god are most of the voices unfitting. But you know, give a medal to whoever did Nonon's voice, she got it pretty darned close. I actually enjoy the performance quite a bit.

Madoka was also Aniplex. This is a prime example of characters being made to sound like they're too old. This is my second biggest pet peeve of dubs (first being mispronunciation), and I feel like I'm watching a college film or something. Mami especially sounds like she should be working in a corporation the whole time.


Sentai's Chuunibyou dub:

Funi's Seto no Hanayome dub:

You know what, Triple_R's reminded me of why dubs are so painful to me. Maybe I'm not the right one to speak on behalf of them.

[JamesMayFan]

Originally Posted by Hiroi Sekai

It's a very weighted scale for me, personally. To me it feels like Funimation grabs like 75% of the series out there, then fills them over and over and over with the same 6 people. I'll agree that they do a better job with pronunciation (since Sentai's is quite often horrendous), but they're still not great. I suppose in the end it's an English dub, but it's still painful to hear how off it all is. Plus, I don't really know how many Funimation dubs you've seen, but I had the displeasure of being stuck in a party with a guy who only watches anime through Funi dubs. We watched (no joke) 16 different series in one night (just their first episodes). Their subtitles are painful, are completely inconsistent, and they always make their characters sound at least 5-10 years too old. They just don't cut it for me, personally.



1. K-ON was actually dubbed both by Animax Asia and Sentai. Sentai's translation was awful, but I actually think they got some of the voices decently close. I can't remember who it was, but one of these two dubs also had a horrendously obvious "cheap microphone" issue in their recording.

Aniplex dubbed Kill la Kill, and by god are most of the voices unfitting. But you know, give a medal to whoever did Nonon's voice, she got it pretty darned close. I actually enjoy the performance quite a bit.

Madoka was also Aniplex. This is a prime example of characters being made to sound like they're too old. This is my second biggest pet peeve of dubs (first being mispronunciation), and I feel like I'm watching a college film or something. Mami especially sounds like she should be working in a corporation the whole time.


Sentai's Chuunibyou dub:

Funi's Seto no Hanayome dub:

You know what, Triple_R's reminded me of why dubs are so painful to me. Maybe I'm not the right one to speak on behalf of them.

umm... chaps, if i be honest, I loved Chuunibiyou on Korean dub to be honest, i feel like all the Korean Cast we're spot on(especially Korean's Rikka VA to be precise), hell I even go to some random Chinese site just to watch that thing on Korean Dub

[GDiddy]

Originally Posted by Utsuro no Hako

I cannot agree with that. Funi's voice actors actually feel like they're acting. The ones Sentai gets usually feel like they're reading dialogue they were handed five minutes before and the only direction they've received is, "She's a cute teenage girl, so make her voice sound like a chipmunk." Plus Funi VAs know how to pronounce Japanese names. With Sentai (and to be fair this applies to other companies as well) you get people using vowel sounds that don't exist in Japanese and pronouncing letters that are supposed to be silent.

This.

Funi's actors can at least be convincing and pronounce things correctly, even if it is the same three damn people(sometimes).

[Top Sergeant]

I know that Sentai's dub of Oda Nobuna no Yabo is the [i]very best]/i] English dub I've ever watched, so much so that it actually improved my enjoyment of the series. That came out just last December (2014), so I am hoping their future products I buy will be up to the same script and acting standards. This dub was absolutely PERFECT.

[Fireminer]

Not my words, but this is a spot on complain: Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse – Collection 2 (Sentai Filmworks)

[demonix]

Originally Posted by hinakatbklyn

(1) K-on! = Sentai / Kill La Kill & Madoka = Aniplex USA
All 3 I think were dubbed by Bang Zoom
The one Sentai License K-on, the first season was originally licensed by Bandai which could be one reason Sentai decided to outsource the second season and the Movie to the same dub company rather than dub themselves.

Bandai was the original license holder for the first season of K-On, and Sentai got season 2 around the time Bandai closed their doors and to keep parity with the first series they outsourced the dub to bang zoom instead of doing it in house (they did the same with Rozen Maiden Ouverture (however they didn't with the newer series) and ADV outsourced the Ah! My Goddess: Flights of Fancy dub to the team that did the first to maintain parity between the two seasons, but that was the only time they did that).

My only two issues with sentais dubs is that they didn't bother with casting when it came to dubbing clannad, and with high school of the dead: drifters of the dead they didn't even bother checking that everything matched up (there are really obvious lip sync issues at the start).

More of this hate should really be pointed at NISA since they've already dropped a massive dub clanger with toradora (and I'm not the only one who things they made a complete mess of it), and their most likely going to ruin love live and the other series they've now cued up to be dubbed.

[Soliloquy]

I used to like Sentai Filmworks, too but these days, I feel they are subpar. It doesn't help that Steven Foster keeps managing the position of ADR director who can be pretty great if he is given a gag anime that need a lot of script changes. I honestly feel that Sentai Filmworks seems just as bad when it comes to recasting the same people.

Funimation nowadays has quite a number of new voice actors, they don't even have that old problem of casting the same people over and over again. If I'm not mistaken, most of the casts in D-Frag are new VAs that could perform as well as the vets.

[JamesMayFan]

so that's it, they should stop dubbing these niche shows if they won't gonna done it right anyway, not only a waste of money, they also just wasting resources to these horribly-done dubs as the 95% of the audience just don't want a dub in these kind of shows anyway(not just Sentai, I'm also talking about Funimation, and licensing Companies in general. they should focus on dubbing on series that worth airing on Toonami instead of wasting resources on dubbing those shows that literally no one appreciate nor cared about)

[Solace]

Originally Posted by JamesMayFan

so that's it, they should stop dubbing these niche shows if they won't gonna done it right anyway, not only a waste of money, they also just wasting resources to these horribly-done dubs as the 95% of the audience just don't want a dub in these kind of shows anyway(not just Sentai, I'm also talking about Funimation, and licensing Companies in general. they should focus on dubbing on series that worth airing on Toonami instead of wasting resources on dubbing those shows that literally no one appreciate nor cared about)

That's taking it a bit far, I think. Dubs aren't inherently bad. A lot of people hate reading subtitles and/or don't find certain foreign languages easy to listen to, at least initially. I was like that when I first got into anime. I mean, Japanese audio was okay and I can read fast enough for subtitles, but I felt like it was easier to just relax and listen to the English dub. I absolutely think that dubs are a great gateway into foreign media, anime or otherwise.

Anyway, my point is just that it's easier to be critical of languages when you understand what they're saying. I don't think most non-Japanese speakers (which is most foreign anime fans) can actually tell if a Japanese voice actor is good or bad simply by listening. Unless it's a grating voice or something really obvious, but even that can be boiled down to preference. Not every English speaker finds every English voice appealing either (like Gilbert Gottfried ). But often it's more like "The person doing the dub for x doesn't sound like the person in the original audio", which isn't an unfair criticism to point out, but it's also unrealistic to expect if the original actor is particularly unique that their dub counterpart can duplicate those unique sounds and tones. I'd be really impressed to hear a Japanese voice actor duplicate Peter Cullen's Optimus Prime voice!

But if you haven't heard the original in the first place, the only real criticism of a dub is that the voice actor either isn't very good, or sounds mismatched to the character. Even then, actors change a lot. DBZ's English dub has had multiple versions, for example:

YouTube

https://youtu.be/QX0bwFN-K9w

Sorry; dynamic content not loaded. Reload?

YouTube

https://youtu.be/4U42lNWMfa0

Sorry; dynamic content not loaded. Reload?

Also note that the lines change for each actor. This is due to script translations, obviously, but it shows how important that is to the line delivery. Even a great voice actor can only do so much with the lines they are given.

[JamesMayFan]

Originally Posted by Solace

That's taking it a bit far, I think. Dubs aren't inherently bad. A lot of people hate reading subtitles and/or don't find certain foreign languages easy to listen to, at least initially. I was like that when I first got into anime. I mean, Japanese audio was okay and I can read fast enough for subtitles, but I felt like it was easier to just relax and listen to the English dub. I absolutely think that dubs are a great gateway into foreign media, anime or otherwise.

Anyway, my point is just that it's easier to be critical of languages when you understand what they're saying. I don't think most non-Japanese speakers (which is most foreign anime fans) can actually tell if a Japanese voice actor is good or bad simply by listening. Unless it's a grating voice or something really obvious, but even that can be boiled down to preference. Not every English speaker finds every English voice appealing either (like Gilbert Gottfried ). But often it's more like "The person doing the dub for x doesn't sound like the person in the original audio", which isn't an unfair criticism to point out, but it's also unrealistic to expect if the original actor is particularly unique that their dub counterpart can duplicate those unique sounds and tones. I'd be really impressed to hear a Japanese voice actor duplicate Peter Cullen's Optimus Prime voice!

But if you haven't heard the original in the first place, the only real criticism of a dub is that the voice actor either isn't very good, or sounds mismatched to the character. Even then, actors change a lot. DBZ's English dub has had multiple versions, for example:

YouTube

https://youtu.be/QX0bwFN-K9w

Sorry; dynamic content not loaded. Reload?

YouTube

https://youtu.be/4U42lNWMfa0

Sorry; dynamic content not loaded. Reload?

Also note that the lines change for each actor. This is due to script translations, obviously, but it shows how important that is to the line delivery. Even a great voice actor can only do so much with the lines they are given.

fair enough, but I mean companies should carefully choose titles for dubbing something, and we're here discussing a company that's had the reputation of making a lot of half arsed modern day dubs and licensing a ludricuous amount of shows that's not meant to be dubbed at all, particularly moe shows

PS : i do agree there are plenty of amazing low-budget dubs though, like Chunnibiyou on Korean dub, everyone in the cast is just amazing(especially for someone who playing her role as the main heroine), despite of their budget is ranged around $100 or something, and i'd see the English dub again, I'm not saying it was bad but it feels pale in comparasion with the Japanese Noble's original version and a group of poor Korean Kimchi farmer's version

[cyth]

"Shouldn't be"? Moe romantic comedies are the biggest generators of traffic these days. I think this sentiment stems from misunderstanding the market. A lot of these shows warrant dubs because they have the potential to reach a very wide casual audience. It's actually pretty amazing to see the resurgence of the casual audience and how it fits in the internet landscape and anime fandom these days.

If people wanna watch crappy dubs, and the Japanese are fine with a tarnished localization, let them.

[Triple_R]

Originally Posted by cyth

"Shouldn't be"? Moe romantic comedies are the biggest generators of traffic these days.

That seems to me to be the case amongst the core online anime fandom, yes. I'm not so sure about the casual audience. The casual audience lately seems to be going a lot for shows like Attack on Titan and Kill La Kill, based on what I've heard and read about recently on the wider anime scene.

A lot of these shows warrant dubs because they have the potential to reach a very wide casual audience. It's actually pretty amazing to see the resurgence of the casual audience and how it fits in the internet landscape and anime fandom these days.

Do you have any stats or sales figures to back this up?

I'm not disagreeing with you, necessarily, but the sort of claims you're making here should be substantiated, if possible.

If people wanna watch crappy dubs, and the Japanese are fine with a tarnished localization, let them.

Or maybe it would be better if more anime fans became accustomed to watching subtitled entertainment given that's where the core fandom is at?

I'm not as against dubs as some are, but I'm not sure if it's good for this sort of thing to create sharp divisions within a fandom.