Anime over the years has pretty much become a staple in both American and Japanese culture. It's adored by many and has spawned giant conventions, committed cosplayers, and its endless variety of originality, stories, and characters have touched people all around the world.

But as it is with any popular thing, there are always arguments and tons of drama within. Those who have watched anime know about the usual banter, such as shipping wars and whether or not the story or characters of a specific show are good or bad.

But there’s one topic that never shows its face unless on the internet, and that's the debate of Subbed anime vs. Dubbed anime.

Now, watching anime subbed or dubbed is entirely one’s own opinion. But it's always the sub fans who seem to start the arguments. To be fair, there are quite a few dubs out there that could be considered awful, and sometimes dubbed anime just isn't something people like. But some of the arguments they make against it are pretty flimsy and honestly, just insulting to the people who work hard to bring these dubs to us.

And I'm here to list out some of those arguments and defend the dubbed anime out there.

1. The acting is terrible, the acting in Japanese is better - I don't mind the first part of this complaint because really, everyone has different preferences when it comes to acting. Someone could sit down at a Broadway show and say the acting was terrible while everyone else said it was great. And let’s be honest, voice acting isn’t easy. You aren’t able to emote or move to get your acting across, and with anime, this is even more difficult. The anime is already animated, so actors have to match words to the lip movements almost to a T. This can cause lines to sound awkward or unnatural. What specifically gets on my nerves is when they say the Japanese acting is better. So, you didn’t like the acting in the dub, fine. But let me ask you this? How do you know the Japanese acting is any better? The short answer: you don’t. And unless you speak fluent Japanese, you never will. Different languages will always sound superior in terms of acting. In fact, there have been a couple instances where Japanese people have said that the dub version of an anime is actually better than the original. I’ll let that sink in a bit.
2. They butcher the dialogue- This complaint it pretty much just ignorance from people who don’t know any better. Yes, when dubbing an anime, the words have to be translated and changed to fit the mouth movements, so of course, changes are gonna have to be made. If they kept the original script completely intact, then the dialogue would end too early or too far after the character has stopped talking and the whole show would be thrown out of sync. Even people online who do English covers of Japanese songs are criticized about this. In this case, they have to change the words in order to match the rhythm of the music and help the song flow. If they kept the original words, they would most likely end up with too many or too few words to match with the notes. Open your eyes guys; doing this isn’t a walk in the park or an easy cash grab. It’s work, hard work.
3. They always change the story - I'm not gonna act like English Dubs aren't guilty of this; they’re not. There have been plenty of dubs in the past that have completely changed the story of an anime because of censorship reasons, which is a whole other article. And yes, it's acceptable to get upset and hate dubs over giant changes, but what I can't stand is people simply hating a complete dub because of one or two tiny changes. For example, one day I was returning a friend’s copy of the movie ‘Kiki’s Delivery Service’. We were talking about it and how much we enjoyed it, when another friend of ours overheard us and joined the conversation. But his demeanor completely changed when he saw that we had watched the dubbed version of the movie. We asked him why he didn’t like it, and he said it was because they changed the original title, which was ‘Witch’s Delivery Service’. Really? That’s the only reason you don’t like the dub version? And it’s not like in the movie they cover this fact up, they clearly say that Kiki is a witch! If tiny changes like that are made to an anime that don’t interrupt the story, then they aren’t worth complaining, or hating an entire movie/franchise over!
4. The voices sound nothing like the Japanese ones - I hear this complaint so much it makes me want to bang my head repeatedly against a wall. Of course, they don’t sound anything like the Japanese ones; they’re being played by different people! Yes, there are cases when voices really don’t match, but that hardly ever happens. If it does, it’s really obvious. But when an actor is giving a good performance and making us believe that they are the character, who cares if it doesn’t sound like you imagined it to be? It’s not all about you!
5. They shouldn't even dub anime in the first place - This one has got to be the complaint that makes me snap on a regular basis. First of all, if people just stopped dubbing anime, like, Funimation, Aniplex and other dubbing companies were shut down, do you know how many people would be out of work? Countless directors, translators, writers, sound engineers, and actors would be out of a job; unemployment is bad enough guys! Second, if we ‘never dubbed anime in the first place’, that would mean that anime would either have never come to America, or old anime that aired in the early days, such as Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z, Pokemon, Digimon and so on, would come to us subbed. Now imagine that you are a little child again, flipping through TV and you come across the anime show you might have watched growing up. But instead of cheesy but funny lines in English, you just get a bunch of people screaming at one another in a different language. Yes, children are open to learning new languages, but Japanese? I think that’s stretching it a bit. And finally, whether you like it or not, people need dubs! As hard as it is to believe, there are people who cannot watch anime with subtitles. Some people don’t have the attention span to read the words and watch the animation. They can either read the words and ignore the awesome animation, or, watch the pretty pictures and have no idea what’s going on. Not everyone is good at multitasking, people! So I’m sorry, unless you want to completely ruin anime and render it unwatchable for some people, dubs are here to stay.

So, what’s the point of bringing all this up? Am I telling you to not hate English dubs? No. I’m simply telling you to give them a chance. If a dub is available for a show, give it a try; just don’t watch it back to back with the Japanese version.

Give your mind and ears time to get used to the voices, and who knows? Maybe you’ll actually like it. You could get into voice acting and maybe go with some friends at voice acting Q&As at conventions.

So don’t completely disregard dubs, give them a fair chance, and try not to look at them through anime-purist goggles. Take a new path and explore anime in a way you’ve never seen before.