Claymore licensed by Funimation

[Gangsta Spanksta]

The worst dub Anime wise I've listen to is probably still ADV's Dirty Pair Flash, although the Japanese dub probably was just as bad. Anyway, I did say that some of the voice acting was fairly good, like Clare and Teresa, though there is a bit miscasting going on. Also when I listened to it the first time, I had some headphones on as to not disturb anybody, which has a lot higher quality sound than the TV speakers or the monitor speakers and increased the badness of Raki and Chibi-Clare, along with Helen. So if you watch this with a speaker system of a lesser quality, it isn't as bad.

But that aside, I said it wasn't the dub itself that made it bad, it was the liberties they took adding things to the dialog, some over explanation of the obvious in some cases, some conflicting things in other cases, changing the context of the story, that really gave me problems. The first time I watched it, it felt like I heard every single change that they made dialog wise that differs from the manga/anime. I may not have watched as much Anime as you, but I've heard a lot of bad dubs too, and I was able to enjoy a lot of the badly dubbed ones also. I don't usually notice this much difference between the subtitled version and the english dubbed version. In this case, it was a whole lot of little things that added up that made it bad. For example, them saying "Rank 47" instead of "Number 47" in the part where clare meets helen and deneve is a small thing, but it is a bit of a spoiler since you figure out that Clare is weak before the planned time of the original dub. If little mistakes like that keep getting made, the whole thing becomes more bothersome. And there where some bigger mistakes made than that. I really don't think the voice actors did their research or whoever is responsible for those lines didn't, and they added some things that sounded good at the moment, but will conflict with things later on.

[Gangsta Spanksta]

Anyway, the first episode wasn't that bad either; raki is annoying, but hey! It gets worse around the Teresa of the faint smile arc IMO. I wasn't able to enjoy my favorite arc in the english dub. And a Valley Girl in Claymore is wrong on so many levels. MisterJB pointed out the Ophelia dub, which was actually a pretty good voice actress, but failed to capture the crazy in crazy psycho bitch that is Ophelia, and instead you get cold calculating in the bit I watched on you tube.

Anyway, the quality of the animation is higher than the version I had before though, beautiful colors. the text on the subbed version disappears too fast on some parts though, unlike the other version, haven't paid attention if it is as good; I was just testing a bit.

[Cyclone]

And it's percisely because you know Claymore inside out that you can notice each and every single mistake and liberty that they take. It's because you like Claymore in the orginal that each liberty they take grates on your nerves. I sympathize - I'm the same way with Claymore. It's not that it's a particularly bad dub - it's just it's nowhere near good enough to make us happy [which would be very difficult I imagine].

As for the Dirty Pair Flash dub - been ages since I've seen it, and can't recall if it was dub or subbed (probably subbed) [I have the DVDs so I guess I could check... but why bother]. If it was dubbed, it didn't register in my top 5 list of worst dubs anyways.

--
edit:

I'm still waiting for dvds 2 and 3 to be delivered so I haven't heard the dub from anything on those yet.

[Gangsta Spanksta]

I don't think it is just how well I know Claymore. I mean I know other manga too, and I've watched a lot of Anime too, usually both in Japanese and English. I have enjoyed bad dubs. I haven't really seen any dubs as bad as some badly dubbed kung-fu movies, I have to admit. But anyway, you said you only bothered to watch one episode. I could've lived with the dub in the first 4 episodes, which happened to be my least favorite episodes in the series. Claymore really didn't become great until the Teresa arc, IMO; it had a slow start, which is what other people say too. The thing is that usually the english dub stay in context with the Japanese dub, that isn't the case here. It is more than just a translation; they added their own things to the dialog. that is unusual from my experience.

Anyway here is a bit of Dirty Pair Flash. This isn't quite as bad as some of the anime, especially the very beginning. I started watching this in english, then I switch it to Japanese because it was so bad, and I hear the same annoying voices speak in Japanese I swear. So they capture that pretty well...

[Cyclone]

Ah yes... I remember that episode (and I think I did see it dub initally [rented VHS]). Ah, I miss fan service episodes...
No no no - there are far worse dubs than that though.

Take the Kenshin OVAs I mentioned earlier. One of the people Kenshin kills in the dub says to one of his body guards (paraphrase): "No - go save yourself. You're still young". The Japanese original had a simple: "Ugah!" instead. Furthermore, the jackass that directed the dub had no idea what japanese sounds like and obviously never listened to the sub. One of the main characters is called Tomoe. In Japanese there are no silent E's. Hence it's pronounced TO-MO-E. Everytime one of the characters said "Tomo", it was like driving a nail into my skull.

Video Girl Ai was also bad, but one thing stood out above all else. The plot in the series is: main character likes a girl. She likes his best friend. Best friend doesn't care for her and would prefer if main guy and her got together. Main guy is a nice guy and wants to help girl hook up with best freing to make her happy. With that in mind, consider what kind of idiot's idiot could transform (paraphrase):
girl: "[main character] is a nice guy. Sometimes I wish I had fallen in love with him instead."
Into:
girl: "You don't mind that I have fallen in loven with [MAIN CHARACTER]".

Bad dubs have been around for forever though. Even before my time, Carl Macek and Streamline Pictures were butchering a lot of series. The original Dirty Pair movies. Turning Macross into Robotech. Dubbing Nadia. And God only knows what other attrocities.

As for Claymore.... you're right, I suppose I should withhold judgement until I'm masochistic enough to watch the dubs when they arrive. I had a peek at someone's profile, and noticed a link to a snippet with dubbed Ophelia. It's bad - I hated it. Then again I hated the episode 1 dub (first dub I watched in years) - like I hated almost all dubs (exceptions: Ninja Scroll, Cowboy Bebop, and maybe a handful of others). Personally I disliked it not so much because it was truly terrible, or that I know the original, it's because I like the original too much, and changes in canon are simply unwelcome. There do seem to be too many little changes...

[MisterJB]

if you think that's bad you should listen to some portugueses Dubs they are hilarious.

I'm gonna give an example, if anyone watched DBZ you should remember the teleportation Goku used, well, in portuguese, almost everytime he does that, he says:

"Silence now because I'm going to sing!"

As for Claymore, Ophelia is really wrong, thay make her sound like if she plans her games for a long time instead of making them in the pressure of the moment

[Gangsta Spanksta]

Well, Funimation did their own subtitle version, which is slightly inferior to the Eclipse version. I noticed they have people refer to Claymores as Bastards a lot, which is quite confusing since I don't hear that term applied to women that often, I don't see the need too but another B word would've worked better.

But Anyway Another example:

E = Eclipse, F = Funimation

Subtitled:
E: Chibi-Clare: Give me-- Put inside my body: Teresa's flesh and blood!"
F: Chibi-Clare: Give me-- Put Teresa's flesh and blood in me!
dubbed:
F: Chibi-Clare: Please do it! It's Teresa's flesh and blood. Help me. Put it inside.

The subtitled version are pretty close. I suspect the Eclipse one may be closer to the original word order? I have no way of knowing, I just know German for example has a different word order than English, and sometimes maintaining it sounds better in a translation. So just a guess.

The Dubbed version there is all over the place and sounds awkward. In fact, the anime would've been a lot better if they used their own text from the sub tittled version for the dubbed dialog in the dubbed version. And this is what I am talking about. Usually, voice actors only change things to make their version sound a bit better, more natural, than the subtitles. In this case, however, the subtitles provide the better dialog.

As for Dirty Pair Flash, that was the only clip I could find and it isn't that bad. But as you could hear Yuri has a very annoying voice and at the beginning of the anime, for example, there is a lot of yelling, screaching, throughout the action packed first episode. I'm not the only one who things so; I had a friend independently mention that anime, and he said he had to turn the sound off to watch it; 'twas on TV so no japanese version.


As for Robotech, the dub was actually quite good asides from Minmay and her horrible singing, which got old. Lisa Hayes(Misa), Gloval (an improved from the japanese Global name) and others were very good. Now before Robotech, I also saw Star Blazers (Yamato) and Speed Racer. I don't think I'm that picky on the dubs.

[Gangsta Spanksta]

BTW, another probable mistake in the dubbed version occurs in the Ophelia scene when she calls Clare by her name. Clare never identified herself, and from what we've seen Claymores usually aren't briefed on the names, or at least not in the Slashers arc, nor does Clare know about Ophelia. True that Ophelia could've been briefed on Clare's name, but it is highly unlikely, given the evidence. They add things to the dialog because they sound good at the moment -- to them -- without considering how the added bit impacts other things. Clare mentioning the bit about the Claymore aging process at the beginning of the story, probably will cause problems in the Irene scene. In a way, this is a bit like a writer not taking plot holes into consideration, and writing without trying to avoid them.

[Cyclone]

I hate it when the dubbers take too many liberties too. It's the one thing I think makes a truly bad dub.
At the same time though, I'm willing to grant a little leeway to get mouth flapping correct as long as the meaning is not changed. It's when the dubbers want to be funny or 'improve' the show that the real disaster starts. I think that in Claymore (in most cases at least) they just worked a little too hard at matching mouth flapping at the expense of content in some of the scenes you don't like (e.g. by padding with "meaningless" extras, etc) [as well as a bad dub script in general].

Originally Posted by Gangsta Spanksta

As for Robotech, the dub was actually quite good asides from Minmay and her horrible singing, which got old. Lisa Hayes(Misa), Gloval (an improved from the japanese Global name) and others were very good. Now before Robotech, I also saw Star Blazers (Yamato) and Speed Racer. I don't think I'm that picky on the dubs.

The voice actors were alright, but good lord... that script! That's a script that someone should have been sued for. I wish you lived nearby so I could force you to watch a side by side...

[Gangsta Spanksta]

I guess I am a bit more forgiving of Robotech, in that I realize that in order to get the show aired, they had to combine Macross with Southern Cross, and Genesis Climber Mospeada. The first part of Robotech I still enjoyed. I haven't got to watch the original Macross though, because geez AnimeGo was expensive at the time. But there have been worst atrocities committed in Anime, take for instance Starblazers, where they drew over the dead people robots for the american version, in the name of the children.

But those two Animes are from different generations too, both done to be able to air in the US. These days, Anime is distributed on DVD mostly, and the american translators should know their fan base and should know that people hate things such as this.

[Gangsta Spanksta]

Well, I finally ordered and watched Volume 3, which contains the Endless Gravestone Arc. Despite my complaints last time about the English dub, I want to support Yagi anyway way that I can, and this does have a subbed version though from what I seen I prefer the Eclipse sub over the Funimation one. Anyway, I've tried to be more open minded about the thing this time. Watching it on a regular TV, with a less high quality sound system than the one on the computer, does make things more enjoyable: you notice less of the mistakes, bad acting and annoying voices. Anyway, the graphical detail is much nicer on this version than my Eclipse one. I wonder if I can rip the graphics of this version and add to it the Eclipse subs. That would be the ideal version.

Anyway, I was hoping to say I overreacted about how bad things are this time, but the actors do take too many liberties. Despite what Clare said in the first episode in this version, she is surprised when Irene tells her about the Claymore aging thing. I told y'all it would come back, since as an Armature author that is the kind of thing I look for to avoid writing a plot hole. Last time, I mentioned that from a Youtube clip I watched of the Ophelia arc that she magically knew Clare's name. Now while the Actor who did Ophelia voice is a good voice actress, she ended up ruining the arc, because when she is awakened and in the lake with Clare, she mentions Irene by name. That just insulted my intelligence too much.

The bottom line about the english dub is this: It is bad, despite some of the voice actors being good, because the actors themselves take liberties and have created a few plot holes because of it. Ophelia knowing Irene's name was the biggest one for me; it ended my trying to give the english dub a second chance.

BTW, do all funimation dubs take so muc liberties? And what is up with forcing you to watch the previews? You can't even fast forward them on a commercial DVD player. So if you watch the DVD a 100 times, you have to watch the whole preview a 100 times. It sure made me miss my non-commercial DVD players on my computer where I can just skip the commercial despite what the MPAA wants.

[MisterJB]

In the japanese dub, Ophelia also says Irene's right arm

[LONEWOLF13]

Originally Posted by MisterJB

In the japanese dub, Ophelia also says Irene's right arm

Well thats so true of course

I dont wat to be sound rude but sometimes he's exaggerating a bit. Sure everyone can have his/her opinions but the way i see how his complains are going...You can make a book out of it and doesint make it any better.

[MisterJB]

Actualy, Gangsta has point in lots of things that he is saying, Ophelia knowing Clare's name is like an author who doesn't give a damn about plot holes.

Still, I think me and him talked a little too early about Ophelia knowing Irene's name.
Its true that in the manga, Ophelia never said such a thing. However, right after Clare uses the quicksword on Ophelia for the first time, she says that she is te bearer of Irene's
right arm. So, it's no wonder that Opehlia knew Irene's name

[LONEWOLF13]

Originally Posted by MisterJB

Actualy, Gangsta has point in lots of things that he is saying, Ophelia knowing Clare's name is like an author who doesn't give a damn about plot holes.

Still, I think me and him talked a little too early about Ophelia knowing Irene's name.
Its true that in the manga, Ophelia never said such a thing. However, right after Clare uses the quicksword on Ophelia for the first time, she says that she is te bearer of Irene's
right arm. So, it's no wonder that Opehlia knew Irene's name

Of course he is right about a lot of things.But when i saw his commend for the first time he was sounding that they should have done everything by the book or meaby it was just my dutch nature that i saw him as an exaggerating Otaku.

[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by Gangsta Spanksta

And what is up with forcing you to watch the previews? You can't even fast forward them on a commercial DVD player.

I've been watching Funi's Baccano! release and found the automatic previews very annoying as well. I discovered I could escape the previews on my PS/3 by pressing square which took me to the main menu. You might be able to escape to the menus as well. I found I couldn't use FF or chapter skips, though.

I took advantage of the BestBuy clearance to stock up on some recent series and am getting ready to watch Claymore again. After reading this page of comments I'll probably not listen to the dub for long, especially since I get to hear Kuwashima Houko and Paku Romi on the Japanese track.

[Gangsta Spanksta]

Originally Posted by LONEWOLF13

Well thats so true of course

I dont wat to be sound rude but sometimes he's exaggerating a bit. Sure everyone can have his/her opinions but the way i see how his complains are going...You can make a book out of it and doesint make it any better.

I resent the exaggerating a bit part. Sometimes I am wrong and sometimes I have an opinion, but to exaggerate is to be dishonest. You might disagree with my opinion, but don't say I am exaggerating things, because I try to be honest and make my arguments in good faith.

Anyway, as for an example where I was wrong: The bit with Ophelia saying Irene name does suppose to happen and makes sense. Clare Identified herself as the flesh and blood of teresa and the right arm of Irene, and I missed that, probably because I was already feeling down from something else Ophelia had said.

But what I say stands: The voice actors do create plot holes in the story, and even worse they purposefully rewrite the story itself so that it is no longer compatible with the story being told in the manga.

Let me give you an example:

Eclipse:
Sub: What? Such a let down. *slices off arm* You are boring, after all. Just die. *Clare falls off into the ravine* You didn't pick the right way to end it, and that ruined everything.

Funimation:
Sub: Oh, what a disappointment. *slices off arm* You're boring, after all. Just die already. *Clare falls off into the ravine* It only gets ugly if you misjudge your time to bow out.
Dub: Hmph... Such a disapointment. *slices arm off* You look like you're in pain Clare. I'd be happy to end it. *Clare falls off into the ravine* And I've been told that you have potential. I guess everyone makes mistakes.

See, no exageration, this is blatant rewriting of the story going on here. This bit makes the English dub incompatible with the manga, unlike the Japanese dub until the war in the north. The bolded part means that someone has informed Ophelia of Clare and that this is a hit. So either the Org or Ruble has given Ophelia permission to kill Clare. You don't think the Voice Actor or the Director over stepped their bounds?

Anyway, let me also put to rest that I am some sort of Otaku that complains about every dubbed anime there is. :P As I have previously stated, I have enjoyed watching badly dubbed animes before. I usually watch Anime both in English and Japanese. I am not a manga purist. I like the Ranma 1/2 English dub, which is considered bad by many, as much as I like watching the Japanese version. I enjoyed watching NGE in English, even though it is considered badly dubbed by me. I support a voice actors right to change the words to make the part fit. I think that Samurai Champloo and Cowboy Bebop are better dubbed in English, and I know the voice actors changed things to fit the role. What I don't support is the rewriting of the script by the voice actors or the director for a current Anime (I don't mind Robotech so much; it had to be done that way to show on TV in the US in the 80's)

[Cyclone]

I've been watching the Claymore DVD (recently got 2-4 in one shipment), and noticed something I never noticed in the anime.

Teresa's first... rather unsuccessful... execution squad, had a girl in it that looked a little like a younger Galatea-sama. Someone even pointed this out in one of the other threads (Q & A I think). I naturally checked the manga, and found that it wasn't Galatea-sama based on the different mark and left it at that.

However, watching the anime version, I'm almost sure that it WAS Galatea-sama in the anime version. After the hunting party is struck down by Teresa, there is a shot of the character in question dropping her sword and lurching forward. The mark on the sword is very similar to Galatea-sama's (where's the Blu-ray version of Claymore so I make sure?!?).

I'd be so cool if Teresa and Galatea-sama had met before - however briefly.

[hell88]

Originally Posted by Cyclone

I've been watching the Claymore DVD (recently got 2-4 in one shipment), and noticed something I never noticed in the anime.

Teresa's first... rather unsuccessful... execution squad, had a girl in it that looked a little like a younger Galatea-sama. Someone even pointed this out in one of the other threads (Q & A I think). I naturally checked the manga, and found that it wasn't Galatea-sama based on the different mark and left it at that.

However, watching the anime version, I'm almost sure that it WAS Galatea-sama in the anime version. After the hunting party is struck down by Teresa, there is a shot of the character in question dropping her sword and lurching forward. The mark on the sword is very similar to Galatea-sama's (where's the Blu-ray version of Claymore so I make sure?!?).

I'd be so cool if Teresa and Galatea-sama had met before - however briefly.

I just checked this scene to see, it is hard to tell it does look like Galatea though. I even went to check the manga and zoomed in on this character. In the manga she does seem to have the same symbol as Galatea and looks very much like her. I always had a feeling that Galatea has been around for a long time, maybe later on in the manga she will ask Clare if she remembers her from that time.

[MisterJB]

Originally Posted by Cyclone

I've been watching the Claymore DVD (recently got 2-4 in one shipment), and noticed something I never noticed in the anime.

Teresa's first... rather unsuccessful... execution squad, had a girl in it that looked a little like a younger Galatea-sama. Someone even pointed this out in one of the other threads (Q & A I think). I naturally checked the manga, and found that it wasn't Galatea-sama based on the different mark and left it at that.

However, watching the anime version, I'm almost sure that it WAS Galatea-sama in the anime version. After the hunting party is struck down by Teresa, there is a shot of the character in question dropping her sword and lurching forward. The mark on the sword is very similar to Galatea-sama's (where's the Blu-ray version of Claymore so I make sure?!?).

I'd be so cool if Teresa and Galatea-sama had met before - however briefly.

I would never notice it, she does look a lot like Galatea and the symbol is the same.

But then again, there is a shot in the War's arc where you can see Jean wearing a uniform with Galatea's symbol on it so I guess it was a little mistake done by the anime