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Okay, I don't normally make new topics like this but, I figured, what the hay.

So, everyone, when it comes to anime or forign-language-films dubbed in english in general, which one is the worst? What dub out there is SO horrible that is just grates on your nerves to think about it?

So go on, rant, vent, complain to your hearts content!

While it's not a film I'm going to have to go with most of the early episodes of DBZ. Some of the dialogue is just soo cheezy. "I can see their parachutes! They're okay!"

Oh, I'm gonna go with the 4kids English Dub of One Piece. I'm a HUGE fan of the original Japanese show but the Dub, well, I can't sit through 30 seconds of it without being over-run by anger.

A: They chose the WORST voices possible, Luffy sounds like a 5 year old, Zoro sounds like he's trying to be cool, Nami sounds cheesy, Usopp sounds like a 40 year old clown and Sanji sounds like a, I dunno a black disco singer or something. Then there's the fact that everyother role in the series was rewritten into niegh-incomprehensible pirate-speak, even when it doesn't make any sense.

B: Mass editing and censorship. Seriously, why buy the rights to a television show about pirates and marines, then digitally edit all the guns into supersoakers? That's not the worst of it of course, Japanese foods are digitally edited into American ones, refferences to major characters dying are removed. Heck I even heard that whole episodes in some cases are removed or condensed.

C: They removed the soundtrack. They took one of the best soundtracks ever filled with orchestral pieces from world famous composers, and replaced it with synth, cheesy pirate music, and rapping. Yeah, way to respect the property fellas.

Contributing factors, *but not major reasons,* would be stuff like, changing Zoro's name to Zolo, digitally editing the "Marine," insignia to read "Navy," and removing all refferences to guns, smoking, alcohol or "Devils Fruit."

That's a tough one. It might actually be easier to name all the movies/programs that weren't horribly dubbed.

Yipes.

Sounds like 'One Piece' got butchered there WolvenOne.

Gotta love censorship, eh?

one peice and the censored version of the matrix when the guy says "you can shove that red pill up your ear!"... tsk tsk tsk

Aki wrote:Yipes.

Sounds like 'One Piece' got butchered there WolvenOne.

Gotta love censorship, eh?

Well, in some cases you can get away with a little bit of censorship if it's not often and reasonable. However I'm of the view that if a show needs major editing to be "appropriot" to an audience, then it's probably not a good match.

In the case of One Piece, 4kids dubbed it because the manga was getting a very strong reception in Shonen Jump magazine, where it was essentially unedited. 4kids figured that they could live off the manga's popularity, however the heavy censorship seems to have hurt ratings so much that 4Kids have recently stated that they'll probably get out of the entire anime-importing buisness altogether.

So at least one good thing came from it. One Piece may be an exceptionally bad dub, but all the 4kids dubs face obscene amounts of editing.

It sounds like a really good thing that I haven't seen One Piece in its American-dubbed incarnation, then. I enjoyed what I've read of the manga, and I can't even imagine how much it would suck with all the changes mentioned. I think I'll have to see it once just to be able to feel your pain.

VGCats' take on 4kids and One Piece.

WolvenOne wrote:changing Zoro's name to Zolo

Now, I'll have to say that that one is actually a valid change. ラ,リ,ル,レ and ロ, and ら,り,る,れ and ろ are all pronounced somewhere between an R and an L. It is valid practice to interpret them as either one. Sometimes you'll see them interpreted both ways within the same name (i.e. Krillin). However, that doesn't mean you should choose the most stupid-sounding interpretation.


Plus, I think R is generally the much more common choice.

-- Vilkacis

The Artist of One Piece is very good and english and it appears english is the official written language of the setting, since almost everything from wanted posters to the Marine insignia is written in english. Zoro's wanted poster also is written in english and is clearly spelled Zoro. The translation was never really at question, rather 4kids simply wanted to avoid copyright issues.

*Though that seems silly to me as I'm fairly certain Zorro is an open-domain character.*

Sounds like it should be retitled "A Bunch of Pieces."

With that much digital hacking, why not just start over from scratch? If you're having to do that much overhauling to make it "kid friendly," shouldn't it be obvious that the very things that made it popular are going to get hacked out as well?

Scott Gardener wrote:Sounds like it should be retitled "A Bunch of Pieces."

With that much digital hacking, why not just start over from scratch? If you're having to do that much overhauling to make it "kid friendly," shouldn't it be obvious that the very things that made it popular are going to get hacked out as well?

*shrugs* I've never been able to make sense of 4kids logic. I'm a pretty conservative fellow myself and am all for kids having thier own shows that are appropriot to thier age-group. However, as you said, if a property has so many elements that need to be cut-out to make it kid friendly, the aspects that make it popular "will," get hacked out.

Though I suspect that 4kids doesn't really care. They've gotten away with heavy editing in the past and made money off it. For example, in Yu-Gi-Oh, all guns are removed, so when gangsters pull out thier guns, in the dub, they're instead "pointing menacingly." Though at least Yu-Gi-Oh had comprehensible dialogue. *Pirate speak, GAH!"

BTW, runners up on my list include

Zatch Bell: Originally entitled Gash Bell, the dub is littered with censorship, ranging from changing "Demons" to "Mamodo's", digitally removing guns, and removing jokes featuring sexual inuendo *of which there is plenty.* There's quite a few other complaints about the dub I have as well but I'll save em for another time.

Cardcaptors: Originally a magical-girl esque series entitled Cardcaptor Sakura, the english dub was drastically rewritten to remove content that would make parents squirm as well as to make it more palletable to young boys. Names where changed, multiple episodes were condensed, played out of order or removed, and to top it off the female leads role was partially marginalized in order to give her male rival a more dominate role.

Ravemaster: Um, this one seriously gave One Piece a run for it's money. The dialogue was bad, there were heavy levels of censorship and, well, in short almost nothing was left intact. However Rave Master even in Japanese is a rather vanilla-esque title so One Piece won, it simply had more room to fall then Rave Master did.

DBZ/GT: this dub is pretty famous so I don't really need to explain my issues with it.

Vision of Escaflowne Fox-Kids Dub: First few episodes were condensed into a flashback, and there were quite a few issues with making the show kid friendly. However it was canned pretty quickly so it never got to the later episodes that would have needed much heavier editing.

Sailer Moon: This is another one where the dubbing issues are famous so I won't go into detail.

Scott Gardener wrote:Sounds like it should be retitled "A Bunch of Pieces."

Or maybe "Resting in Pieces"?

Man there were advertisements for that show every ad break on Cartoon Network here, with some God-awful 'rap' theme song that hurt my eardrums. Never watched it (I'm not into anime much). But editing guns into supersoakers? Are you serious WolvenOne?

To tell you the truth, I don't mind subtitles on foreign films in general, because sometimes you can have some pretty bad voice acting.

iolarnula wrote:editing guns into supersoakers? Are you serious WolvenOne?

Yep, I'm completly serious. Gets worse then that even, they digitally place bandaids over all cuts, turn all pistals into cork guns/slingshots, in short, TONS of editing everywhere.

Okay, that is incredibly wacked. Geez, it's a wonder they haven't done that with the news on TV, seeing as it's so accessible (unless they assume children don't care about the news).

This isn't government instituted censorship or anything. This is just 4kids being cut-happy.

Oh, okay, I get it.

Ah... so that explains why I don't like english 'One Piece'. I'll have to go and check out the manga than.

Oh. I have one. what about all the English dubbed 'Godzilla' movies, eh? I mean, I've no qualms or anything with the movies, just the fact that when you hear English voices that come from lips that aren't matching the words is weird.

Almost every forign film to english dub I've ever seen is like that. Simple fact of the matter is that the subleties of RL lip movment are almost impossible to match up to words that they were never intended to match up to.

everything dubbed to german. i mean, is it so impossible to get voice actors that has voices that seem to fit with the looks of the characters?

and they scream all the time

WolvenOne wrote:Okay, I don't normally make new topics like this but, I figured, what the hay.

So, everyone, when it comes to anime or forign-language-films dubbed in english in general, which one is the worst? What dub out there is SO horrible that is just grates on your nerves to think about it?

So go on, rant, vent, complain to your hearts content!

Hmmmm.....I'm used to watching the anime in English. So I can't say if I came across one with a bad dub. I need to understand japanese in order to compare the 2.

Sometimes the subtitles are a bit different compared to the english sound track. But I only turn it on if the DVD is nothing but Japanese.

Any hentai anime is badly dubbed. Not that I watch any of those, nope, not me

Doruk Golcu wrote:Any hentai anime is badly dubbed. Not that I watch any of those, nope, not me

Then how do you know its badly dubbed?



Wait..let me guess....someone told you.

the dub that pisses me off every time i see it tha mauck 5 man it so awful i can't help but not to be pissed at it!