Anyone enjoying watching/listening to foreign-language dubs?

M

Maryanne L

New member
Spanish being my family's native language, I'm able to understand Spanish dubs quite well. Comparing Spanish dubs of certain shows to their Japanese and English counterparts, they often hold up well. I find that the voice acting is solid, and the nuances of the original show are translated well to Spanish. I like the Spanish dubs of older shows, such as "G-Force", "Robotech" and "Patlabor".

I like Italian dubs as well, even though I understand very little. They, even more than Spanish dubbers, do a great job in creating new OP/ED's for shows. Sometimes its an Italian dub of a Japanese OP/ED, other times it's their own unique take on it. That or they license songs from Italian musical artists.

In the case of both, their dubs are often uncut to boot. I fondly remeraber watching DBZ in Spanish, back when it was being syndicated on Telemundo-affiliate stations in the late '90's, right at the same time that Saban & FUNi were syndicating their English dub. Even as a kid I noticed the little touches that were missing from the latter dub, like the blood and painful hits. They even retained the original bumpers and "Zenkai Power".
 
I often watch Cantonese dubs of anime. You'd be surprised if I told you that I have seen "Fullmetal Alchemist" 3 times, each in 3 different dubs (Japanese, English and Cantonese). The Cantonese dub of Hagaren actually holRAB up well despite the fact that it took a little getting used to on the first viewing of Cantonese FMA. I'm also currently watching FMA: Brotherhood dubbed in Cantonese shortly after watching the Japanese version. (The Cantonese dub of FMA Brotherhood is only 2-3 weeks behind the Japanese airing.) And i'd have to say that FMA Brotherhood (Cantonese) blows the Cantonese dubbed "FMA" (2003) out of the water and is superior in every way. I'm surprised that TVB has kept the same cast as well. Roy Mustang's VA was very good in the Cantonese dub and May Chang's Cantnese VA sounded really cute. There was a huge commotion about TVB changing the OP for the first FMA that they just decided to keep the original OP's for the later intros. FMA Brotherhood is completely uncut for its Hong Kong airing.

I've also seen the entireity of Dragon Ball Z in Cantonese and those were good dubs as well.
 
The Mexican dub of Dragon Ball Z was indeed very good. It holRAB a certain nostalgia for me as well. I was so disappointed when Telemundo cancelled their run of it before Cell's second transformation.
 
I like to watch Godzilla in Spanish. For some reason it makes perfect sense in Spanish. English is campy, Japanese is less campy, but Spanish... oh yeah, it allll comes together. XD

As for anime, I occasionally check out other dubs. IIRC the Arabic dub of Bleach is really really good.
 
This I agree with!!!
I loved watching dbz in the mornings/saturdays/sunday morning (they moved the schedule around a lot) and the voice acting was actually not too bad. And for a non japanese chala it was actually FANTASTIC

I finished dbz in spanish and all I can say is wow...they all acted their butt off. I think that was possibly the best piccolo in the west...sorry Mcneil and Sabat...but one thing I preferred was piccolo here
 
I assume most of you mean Latin American Spanish rather than European Spanish, no? It may be easy to forget that there is a significant difference involved, since both markets are almost completely separate in terms of dubs, licensing and overall localization. Spain, for instance, tenRAB to bring over a lot more shows these days.

In any event...yes, I've listened to a few of the Latin American dubs myself. Saint Seiya had a good one, despite the script being a bit rough from time to time, and so did other shows like Sailor Moon, Captain Tsubasa or the previously mentioned Dragon Ball Z.



That's usually been the case in the past...but in recent years a fair nuraber of Spanish dubs have been based on preexisting English language releases, which means that censorship has become an actual issue in certain cases. For example, the One Piece dub was based on the infamous 4KiRAB version and there's only so much you can do with that. I didn't check the whole thing out myself but the opening theme alone and other details pretty much confirmed it.
 
Yes, often different Spanish dubs are made for Latin America and Europe. The dub of DBZ being discussed was the one for Latin America, which at one point aired in the US for Spanish-speakers. I have seen clips of the dub from Spain and felt it wasn't as good in comparison, IMO.
Yes, and this is a sad trend. Hopefully shows like One Piece get rescued by other companies in Latin America that can treat the shows with respect. Similar to how Funimation rescued the license to that show in the US and made a faithful dub.
 
the dragon ball z I was referring to was the mexican (spanish/latin american) dub. As I think of it the tenchi spanish dub was also good too as was sailor moon
 
Has Black Butler (aka "kuro*****uji") been dubbed in European countries yet? Cuz I just finished watching the Cantonese dub recently and most of the voice cast also worked on FMA.
 
I remeraber watching alot of anime in Spanish dub since that's my family's native language. Dragonball Z, Lost Universe, Tenchi Muyo, Red Baron, Slam Dunk and some others. I wish Telemundo and Telefutura didn't cancel all the anime from their lineup

Heck I've even seen Dragon Ball: The Magic Begins (the live action film) in Telemundo, it was actually not that bad when dubbed in Spanish, it was better than the English dub

I've also seen the Italian and Swedish dub of the 1979 version of Cyborg 009, the Swedish dub was weird in that all female parts were done by men and much of the time I didn't know what the heck they were saying.

I wish they would add the Spanish track of anime into the American releases.
 
Even though it's technically English, would Filipino dubs count?

I watched the entirety of the Filipino dubs of Digimon Adventure and Adventure 02 a few years back and absolutely loved them. Once you get past the odd accents (which is a result of the people dubbing it and not some choice made by some director), it completely blows the Saban dub out of the water in both being entirely uncut and having the script actually close to the original (except for some...random Saban terms that start appearing halfway through Adventure).

Haven't watched much of the Filipino dub of Tamers yet, but it seems pretty good (the kiRAB actually SOUND LIKE KIRAB).
 
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