[EVA] English dubbing for Rebuild 1.0

[Codename V]

...there are a large number of people that actually like the dubbed
versions, and if anything, the 50% jump in anime convention attendance in
the past 4 years has shown us that anime fandom as a whole is expanding
beyond "I got a fansubbed VHS tape at a convention" and into "I can watch
an English dub over iTunes at my leisure" territory

Assuming all English dubs will stink and simply not caring whether they
are good or bad, is irresponsibly guaranteeing that a low-quality dub will
be made.

as for "lots of new talent"....that doesn't mesh with the complaints I
hear about "why does English dubbing just reuse a small set of VA's over
and over again?" (i.e. Tiffany Grant)

Not to get into the whole dub vs sub thing, but even say Miyazaki, says
"just watch the dub, focus on my animation"

Both the Japanese and English VA's are simply actors; shifting between the
two does not alter Anno's script.

But utterly discarding the English dub like this seems downright elitist. 
No, we should not just "lower ourselves to garbage-level"; rather than
ignoring the newbies, we should be helping to educate them or ensure a
quality dub.

Otherwise we wind up like the lamentable Providence Anime Convention: 
what did that have?  it was an anime convention with a 21+ age cutoff,
designed to cut off the riff-raff of the noobies.  The result was *under
250 people* in attendance.

Every fandom has internal layers; you can like Lord of the Rings without
speaking fluent Elvish, you can like Star Wars without liking the Expanded
Universe novels.  But simply disregarding an English dub is diregarding
many fans.

ADV's original voice cast was iconic and amazing.  Several specific
criticisms aside, I've never been given a coherent explanation about how
"The English voice dub for Eva is infamously one of the worst
ever!"....granted it will never be as good as the original
Japanese....but....even if its not "preferred" how is it actually "bad"? 
The best conclusion I've ever come to is that the original japanese was so
iconic, that the English dub was held up to an unrealistically high
standard.  Compared to the near-contemporary Ghost in the Shell film dub
("people reading a translation off of index cards") its pretty good.

"expanding intelligent anime to a wider audience" is not "dumbing it
down".  You don't need to be able to fansub YOUR OWN shows and manga to be
a "real fan", otherwise Carl Horn would be out of a job.

I could understand if you were "preferring" the Japanese sub, but so
casually throwing aside the English dub with an attitude of "they'll screw
it up no matter what, so lets expect nothing of them" isn't productive and
hurts "the fan on the street".

And indeed.....if we adopt an attitude of "all English dubs are terrible
by definition", then....doesn't that mean that there's no such thing as a
comparatively good or bad dub?  If all dubs are "bad/insignificant to the
point of being ignored"....that means that godawful dubs (like the GitS 1
dub) are put on the same level as actually good dubs.

Above all else, it hurts the fans who just watch the dubs of things off of
TV or something; are the Code Geass fans watching the show off of Adult
Swim "not real fans"?

--V

("I'm pleased to meet you and I hope you guessed my name, but what's
puzzling you, is the nature of my game")

>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Codename V" <v at evageeks.org>
> To: "The english-language evangelion mailing list."
> <evangelion at eva.onegeek.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2008 5:32 PM
> Subject: Re: [EVA] Funimation issues C & D order for Eva 1.0
>
>
>> ...I'm concerned at being so flippant about an English dub:  the only
>> way
>> for "Eva fandom" to grow and expand is with good-quality English dubs.
>
> If that's the case then it's all over for "Eva fandom" (or at least a new
> or
> expanded one) . If you have to "buddy" it down for it to become a fandom
> success, then methinks there's something quite wrong...
> --
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>