Lily:
My hard stance against subtitles only applies to anime. It doesn't apply to films, video games, animated films from other regions, etc.
The reason I have that opinion is because it's a soft form of quality control. Most of the really gross, assembly line written, weeb-centric anime never gets dubbed in English (because the overseas audience for it already thinks dubs are inherently terrible) and if one does you notice it's terrible a lot more quickly if it's in a language you can understand.
If the dub was bad, the show was probably bad in it's original language as well.
chloelefay:
idk to me this kind of feels like a refusal to engage with anime on its own terms? like yea undubbed shows are less well-documented in english-speaking circles but there's a lot of hidden gems out there and you're effectively limiting yourself to a surface-level, filtered version of the culture. and I don't think you saying you only treat anime this way actually does you any favours. that
is actually singling out a specific culture and acting with prejudice towards it.
like, I do get it, most of everything is trash, I don't understand seasonal anime watchers who just watch airing originals without any idea of what they're about but hey I guess someone's gotta do it, everything I watch is stuff that I already know at least a bit about and have a reasonable expectation that I will enjoy it. I'm not the kind of person who scrolls netflix looking through thumbnails for something to watch.
I just don't know that you should let dubbing companies do the filtering for you. there's better resources out there these days for that.
when I asked you about this before you said you just have difficulty reading subtitles, which is completely fair. it's unfortunate because dubbing is exponentially more expensive and resource intensive than subtitles and so the amount of art you have reasonable access to is hugely limited but it's a limitation a lot of people have, I wouldn't try to argue with that.
personally I almost always watch media in its original language, with subtitles if needed, but I can do that because I'm good at reading and processing information like that quickly, and I speak multiple languages so I don't even always need subs.
now I wanna be clear that in all honesty, I do not give a shit if you watch subs or dubs, do whatever works best for you, but I do want to briefly make the case for why I prefer to watch things subbed more generally.
I live in germany, where the local film industry is honestly a fucking dumpsterfire but we have a huge an active voice acting industry, so we get a lot of American movies dubbed into german. and they have gotten markedly worse with time. so as a kid I very quickly learned that it is just a better experience all around to watch those movies in the original english. in my experience, the same is true for anime dubs. most of them that I have heard are just not as good as the original vo in japanese, or as good as dubs used to be. in both cases, the acting is weirdly flat, the sound mixing removes a lot of texture, and the translation is stunted by trying to fit the movement of the lips as well as just often having this uncanny quality where they can't decide if they want to be a proper localisation or include a bunch of words from the source language to be a more faithful translation. from what I've seen the spy x family dub avoids these issues, and I have been told that the english dubs of kill la kill and steins;gate are actually better than the original vo, so it's definitely not universal, and well, the fact I think dubs have gotten worse over time clearly means that I think dubs used to be much better, which I do. a lot of old dubs are surprisingly good, I just wish that level of quality was still present today.
conversely, it's much easier in dubs to erase culture, change meaning, and do censorship. one really big moment of realisation for me as a kid was when I found out that in... I think it was Planes, in the german dub, they just straight-up changed the nationality of one of the characters to german. I also recently saw a video on how the french dub on frozen completely changes the nature of the story. in a very real way dubs are different works from their original language counterparts, and there's valuable artistry in that that shouldn't be discounted, but in a very real way watching a movie dubbed gives you a version of it that is filtered through another culture and another creative vision than that of the original work, much moreso than with subs, and to me, I want the most authentic version of anything I can get.
also, it's just good to hear and get used to the sound of different languages, even if you have no aspirations of speaking them. recently, there's been some american media that included spoken dialogue in native american languages, and it really was kind of a strange experience for me because I had just never heard those languages or languages like them before and my brain kind of took a while to understand, like, this isn't just gibberish with subtitles under it, this is a language that people actually speak that, with enough time, I would be able to understand. that can be a real moment of revelation.
but I'm also a person who thinks that if you at any point aren't in the process of learning a new language you've kinda failed yourself and the world and the ideal way to watch anything is raw, in the original language without the need for subtitles and the fact that a lot of anglos only know one language for their entire life baffles and disturbs me so you know all of this is just my 2ct.
weebs who watch subs all day every day and yet somehow don't know what ですね actually means are a fucking embarrassment.
Lily:
idk to me this kind of feels like a refusal to engage with anime on its own terms?
I used to engage with it on it's own terms. I don't anymore. And there's a reason for that.
you're effectively limiting yourself to a surface-level, filtered version of the culture
That is what anime is.
I don't think you saying you only treat anime this way actually does you any favours. that is actually singling out a specific culture and acting with prejudice towards it.
Actually it's not. It's singling out a specific
industry. I do not hold this same rule to Japanese films, or video games.
One of my favourite games is Tales of Phantasia, which has never been properly localized outside of the GBA version (incidentally how I discovered it existed). The PS1 version comes with little voiced skits which fan translations obviously can't dub, so they just translate the dialogue text. I adore them, they're cute.
The PSP version, the best version of the game, has no fan translation at all. The entire UI is illegible for me. I still play it because it's just a fun game and I've played the PS1 version so many times I know the UI like the back of my hand.
I also have a fondness for Takashi Miike movies after being introduced to them by Moviebob, and most of his films have no dubbing.
This is a common logical fallacy anime fans make (though this is the first time I've seen someone make it in good faith and not just butthurt outrage) assuming that the anime industry represents Japan as a whole, and therefore disliking it means you have some kind of racist hatred of Japanese people and their culture.
That notion is absurd and boils an entire nation down to its animation industry, and doing that to any other nation or culture would be called out as the exotifying garbage it really is, and yet weebs put their entire pussy into it without a shred of irony.
Finally:
but I'm also a person who thinks that if you at any point aren't in the process of learning a new language you've kinda failed yourself and the world
I do know a second language. French.
I am also learning ASL.
If I decide to learn a fourth, it will probably be Russian because one of my friends speaks Russian and she has books she's written that I want to read.