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Dub vs Sub (the battle within Anime)


Last year I became entrenched in the anime world after hearing my friends rave about shows like Kakeguru, Seven Deadly Sins, Attack on Titan, etc. When I began looking for anime shows to watch, I quickly realized that watching Anime would mean having to listen to the characters in Japanese since most are created in Japan. With a little research I found an easy solution that involved clicking the Audio setting to English. This brought the characters to life and thus I began my Anime watching journey.


After feeling good about being apart of the Anime fanbase I was met with resistance since I was one tHoSe people.... You know.... the person who watches Anime in dub (English translation) rather than sub (Japanese, which is the original audio for many). This caused a debate between my friends and I about which is better.

Personally I thought watching sub took away from the characters since I felt disconnected from the characters. That's why whenever my friends recommended shows I would check to see if they had it in dub and if they didn't then I refused to watch it. To me watching anime in sub felt like white noise with no meaning.


My friends would counter saying that all you have to do is read the captions and that I would get used to watching the show and reading the captions.


To this I countered saying that it took my attention from the art which defeated the purpose of watching anime. If I had to read the captions throughout the whole show then it was harder to see what was happening and the audio would be in Japanese so I didn't have verbal cues.


Another counter my friends would say is that dub would change the meaning of what was actually being said since the English version would shorten or elongate the script to match what was being shown on the screen. This results in words being changed and the meaning being twisted a little bit.


I figure this was a good trade off if it meant that I could connect with the characters while getting the same storyline. It's not as if watching anime in dub meant the animations would be altered or scenes would be cut out.


Ultimately my friends and I failed to convince each other of committing to the other's way of watching Anime, but in the end what's important is that we share a common appreciation for the artwork, storyline's, and characters.


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