Oh dear god they dubbed it and aired it....

[ifonlyiwereclvr.livejournal.com]

Ok since I posted a gripe against the dub I thought it only fitting that I post a follow up. My initial reaction which I'm sure i shared with many was "You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!" In defense of the dubbers they made a few decisions that i agree with. They did change the aggravating trailer "This Britannia will be obliterated" (though i still think obliterated is a poor choice of words), they cast the English Straight Cougar (s-cry-ed) and Alucard (Hellsing) {I think his orange will be phenomenal}, they kept the other "Yes my lord!" so can someone please tell me why in the name of all that is both holy and unholy did they insist on having loser soldier boy say "happily your highness" I'm sure they've at least seen their lines in the original Japanese, you'd think as an actor you'd want to stay as close to the source material as possible, and the emperor didn't even mention the Ragnares race though he did say something about the Ragnarok. It's only the first episode so i hope that they can pull it together because honestly I'd love to see a good dub come out of this, the show is so spectacular that any deviation from what we know should be is disheartening (to put it mildly) Still C.C.'s intro was surprisingly good, and they have 24 more episodes to go, fingers crossed. 

For those who have yet to see it...

Comments

[soba-noodlez.livejournal.com]

any dub is a bad dub. Why can't they just keep it the way it's supposed to be and freaking sub it? We'll learn about the japanese language in the most lazy way possible. :D

[powercorrupts.livejournal.com]

Well, subs are available on DVDs these days. It's not like we have to make the choice of subbed or dubbed VHS's anymore, or have to search high and low to even find subs.

They're trying to appeal to the mass market. Subs probably won't do as well on tv as dubs will. It's just that simple, and anime isn't a big enough market for them to go for subs when they can get higher ratings with dubs.

[bodyline.livejournal.com]

I thought it was fantastic. I loved every minute of it. I'm glad it was dubbed and I'm glad it'll bring more fans onto the show and for god's sake stop whinning that they changed the lines. Japanese and English are such vastly different languages, part of the problem is the exact Japanese translation won't fit the mouth movements. Who cares if they said "Happily your highness" instead of "Yes, my lord?" IT MEANS THE SAME DAMN THING.

Really, you're free to have your opinion but for God's sake, people. Cry moar.

[halevy.livejournal.com]

Who cares if they said "Happily your highness" instead of "Yes, my lord?" IT MEANS THE SAME DAMN THING.


skjhfskefhskeh I WAS GONNA SAY THE SAME. I don't see any issues with it. "Happily your highness" sounds more flattering to me (if I was part of royalty huhuhuhu).

[fox-holland.livejournal.com]

It was really good, though not as great as when it first aired.

[halevy.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen it yet but are we really going to get mad over choice of words? Destroy/obliterate/etc etc all pretty much mean the same thing so I don't see the problem with it.

[sugar-dustbunny.livejournal.com]

I kinda have to disagree slightly with your last statement. The effectiveness of the phrase varies depending on word choice.

[dist.livejournal.com]

I think it had some lame voices (and some decent ones, though) and they made some strange, pointless changes -- as almost all dubs do -- but it wasn't that terrible. Dubs are almost never the same quality as the original, but this is far from the worst I've seen.

[powercorrupts.livejournal.com]

I must be the only person in the fandom who liked "Happily, your Highness." I really thought the actor pulled it off incredibly, and it worked with the expression of rapt glee. Perhaps I was just too busy being in love with that soldier's acting, but I thought it worked very well. Sure, "yes" was the line, and to be completely honest I'm not sure why they changed it, but I don't think it made any real difference. It's one word, I just can't see how one word has sparked such bitching.

Personally, maybe I'm just way too old and too accustomed to the days of god awful chop jobs that go by the name of dubs, but... I wasn't horrified. I wasn't even upset. I wasn't impressed, for the most part - an actor or two exceeded my expectations, but my overall impression was simply that it was neither better nor worse than I'd expected. I didn't think it was any sort of travesty, like so many others seem to feel. Actually, I'd say the only voice acting I had a real problem with was C.C.'s.

[rainbow-cnxn.livejournal.com]

I must be the only person in the fandom who liked "Happily, your Highness."

Nope. I was more than pleasantly surprised by that line. It adds an extra layer of creepy/absurd to a platoon of soldiers shooting themselves in the head.

People complaining about bad dubs should watch some of the older stuff. Like Gundam Wing. Wowzers. (And that's not even that old.)

[natsunuts.livejournal.com]

The dubbing isn't as bad. Though, I thought most of the voices were perfect or close enough.

I did however laugh through out the first episode of the dub. xDDD
But, it could be just a bit better. This is bandai we're talking about.

[zidane.livejournal.com]

I rather liked the dub. Lelouch and Kallen are a little shaky for me, but then in most dubs it takes a few episodes for the voice actors to find their groove.

But by contrast, when I watched Geass in japanese I was SO VERY ANNOYED BY LLOYD at first. I got used to his voice after a while--but I really prefer the way his english VA is doing it.

[kyen.livejournal.com]

I totally agree with you on the Lloyd bit. I liked his English VA very much compared to the Japanese one.

[onhonhon.livejournal.com]

I loved it and I want MORE

MY OPINION COUNTS

[adhering.livejournal.com]

It does not.

[sugar-dustbunny.livejournal.com]

It's hard to be completely accurate because of the mouth flaps...although while watching the subs, the mouth flaps didn't match up completely either (I have too much time on my hands). I still don't really like "obliterate", but hopefully, it's something I can get used to. As for "Happily, Your Highness"? I don't know if multiple viewings help, but it wasn't so bad after a while. At least, they still kept "Yes, My Lord!" in in other places.

[tyg.livejournal.com]

I want to see this, so that I may have my own opinion of it XD

From the clips I saw, the English dub was okay. I agree with you that I'm kind of peeved by the "Happily your highness" thing, but that's because of a personal preference of "Yes, my lord"/"Yes, your highness" I guess. "Happily, your highness" just feels and sounds kinda forced to me.

And I'm no so sure about the English voice actors having seen the original Japanese version of their lines. They might or might not have, but I don't think we can presume they have, one way or the other?

[drug-holic.livejournal.com]

Are dubs that bad?
I'm sorry for butting in, but since I'm a Japanese citizen, I never really had the chance or the reason to watch an anime dubbed...

[saitaina]

Are dubs that bad?

Depends on the studio, actors and work, really. Some are really bad (yu-gi-oh), some have bad casting choices (Fruits Basket) and some really rock (FullMetal Alchemist). Then there are some that are good, but you get agrivated when key lines are removed (Detective Conan/Case Closed). It's just a matter of knowing your studios and knowing the show (and the fact Japanese doesn't translate easily to mass English audiance, changes will have to be made).

[shizuka85.livejournal.com]

Personally, I thought the dub was great. I've seen much worse. Stop complaining!

[saitaina]

Personally, I thought the dub was great. I've seen much worse. Stop complaining!

I survived a dub with invisible guns and fruit juice wines, I have a high tolerence for dubbing.

[miken-chan.livejournal.com]

Synonyms are synonyms, whichever one you choose is fine as long as you can get the point across... -_-""

Plus, dubs actually have to take into consideration the mouth flaps, which makes direct translations hard to work with.

The dub's perfectly fine, I don't get why there's so much wank going around. If you don't like it now, just wait a couple episodes and let the feeling sink in. If you don't like dubs in general...then just don't watch, that's all there is to it.

[wabisuke.livejournal.com]

My arguement is the same for any sub/dub war: regardless of what you watch, the original raw language will still be on the DVD in the original format. If you don't buy the DVDs, you still have your fansubs.

Just be glad that this isn't 90s anime a la Card Captor Sakura redux and Lelouch didn't turn into Louis McRainbow Princess and that it wasn't spliced left and right.

[teaclovers.livejournal.com]

Just be glad that this isn't 90s anime a la Card Captor Sakura redux and Lelouch didn't turn into Louis McRainbow Princess and that it wasn't spliced left and right.

Or that Milly didn't turn into a hillbilly?

[inulovinkit.livejournal.com]

I'm still Meh... on the dub.

Some voices, like Clovis and Orange-kun were awesome, others were not. Lelouch and Kallen particularly.

I'm just wondering why all the minor characters got excellent voices, and why all the main characters (except Suzaku) did not.

[saverellawish.livejournal.com]

I will agree with the obliterate comment you made.

Other than that, the dub was tolerable. I still hate it just cause the original is so much better, but this dub could have been so much worse. Just get over it and move on. Or do like I do and console yourself with the subs. Or take solice in the fact you know better than all the current fans who found Geass thanks to the dub, what the show is really like. Or better yet help newer fans get into the original and just skip over the dub all together.

[teaclovers.livejournal.com]

I thought the dub was done very well, they tried as closely as possible to match the voices although a few of them are still missing something, this is the FIRST episode so I'm sure they'll fit in after a few episodes.

As for the word choice, there are many reasons why they change the word choice:
1. Is that they need to synchronized the rhythms of the words to match up with the mouth movements, you don't want one of those really bad dubbed Kung-Fu movies do you?
2. Some phrases/jokes that make sense to the Japanese might not make sense to an American/English speaking audience so they try their best to translate the original Japanese into something that makes sense to English speakers.

Not all dubs are bad, Bang Zoom Entertainment and The Ocean Group are probably the BEST dubbing studios I've seen.

[meeraku.livejournal.com]

Sorry, just have to comment-
OCEAN GROUP = LOVE♥

[clockwork-joker.livejournal.com]

"I'll show you what this badass mother can do!"

Need I say more? Srsly, Karen, srsly. 3:

[chiapetzukamori.livejournal.com]

anyone remember what the original line was there? I might be more prone to hate the badass thing if I knew how different it was from the original. Frankly, I thought the badass line wasn't THAT OOC for Kallen. I thought it was well-delivered too.

God, what has happened to me? I'm defending a dub!!! lol

[tsuyogaru.livejournal.com]

I thought it was fairly well done. The only real complaint I have is that Lelouch's voice actor was a terrible choice. He has no range and everything he does sounds the same to me. He just doesn't have the vocal quality for Lelouch :/ Maybe if he lowered his voice a little? It's strange to hear the exact same voice coming from Guy in Tales of the Abyss, Ichigo in Bleach, Nero in Devil May Cry 4, etc. and Lelouch.

I personally loved Jeremiah's the best. Suzaku was pretty good, too.

[bodyline.livejournal.com]

IMHO, CLOVIS HAD THE BEST VA.

NOTHING WILL EVER MAKE HEARING THE VOICE OF GUNTER VON KLEIST ORDER A MASS MASSACRE OF THE JAPANESE PEOPLE NOT AWESOME. NOTHING.

[shizuka85.livejournal.com]

I liked Clovis' dub voice too, possibly because I hate his Japanese voice. (He played Tomo in Fushigi Yuugi and that scary guy in Get Backers.) Too bad Clovis will be dead by soon, so his voice won't matter anymore.

[kaiserkehl.livejournal.com]

I want to see/hear it.

random>heh, dubs are usually very good in spanish, I know nothing compares to the original audio, but some dub studios are really really good at what they do. Can't wait to hear Code Geass in español unless they dub it in Venezuela, then I'll save myself the sour momento</random

[zerorevenge.livejournal.com]

O'lay!

[zalem.livejournal.com]

For a dub it was tolerable. And I don't mind the happily your highness stuff....as long as they get the general meaning right. My problem is with the voices. Lelouch's VA is just bad. Or at least he is bad for this role. Maybe he's ok in other stuff. But it's enough to ruin the dub for me since Lulu is my favorite character. C.C. is even worse. O_O But what's the point in saying anymore? I mean I'm just not going to watch the dub anymore that's all. DVDs have subs so it's all well and good.

[pinao88.livejournal.com]

For me, it was not so much the voices as it was the delivery. There was too much emphasis where it wasn't needed, there wasn't enough emphasis where it was needed. It started out awkward and became obnoxious very quickly. Orange-kun and Diethard were the only ones who weren't guilty of this to me; perhaps it's because they had very few lines.

I also think "obliterate" is a poor wording choice. There were a lot of poor wording choices, but I'm not going to complain about them because I see it as being mostly minor and up to personal preference. It's the same as the strange pronunciations and editing Pizza Hut out. I can overlook that stuff easy, it doesn't really matter to me.

The delivery is simply too important. I can't ignore it when every other line sounds like it's being spoken by some amateur with no emotion reading off a cue card.

[morose-doll.livejournal.com]

Well I watched the first episode...it wasn't to bad.

I initially hated Lelouch's voice, it lacked so many things, but I am slowly getting more and more used to it. It might take me a while, though. I just thing Lelouch sounds to rough, like he's gonna brawl someone. This works best with Ichigo, not Lelouch.

Kallen was okay, except her first few lines when she sounded like a small bratty child. Suzaku and Lloyd were good to me, and C.C. I was hoping for a deeper voice instead of the light, blank one we are recieving.

I am sad to say that I have to record this series for a friend. Poor girl, she has to bare witness to the dubs since she doesn't have a computer.