From: Thomas Chadwick (tchad@norfolk.infi.net) Dear EX Staffers, At the risk of being redundant, I wanted to congratulate you on a wonderful publication. Anime has needed a central hub or organization as its fandom reaches further and further into cyberspace, and I believe this is it. For folks who hold down 'regular' jobs, you've done a masterful job creating a very professional resource here on the web. I am a retailer of liscened anime products here in Virginia Beach, and I am very pleased to be able to have this kid of source to refer my customers to. I can assure you an all of the readers of this magazine, Anime-fandom is growing, and there are a lot of confused people out there who have questions and want to see and meet other anime fans. Clubs help when available, but an online service like this one helps me to believe that there is a growing base of support for legitimate sellers and a resource for my customers! As for the question of the week...my personal preference is for subtitled animation, although as a retailer, I can see the need for dubs. If we were to consider animation as a collaborative art form (which in fact it is) then we need to beleive that all those who take part in the creation of the product are just as important as any other person working on the piece. Therefore, if we take the completed film and remove a piece of it (the audio text) and replace it with a work from people who were not involved in its creation, we have an incomplete picture of the show. There is real vision and planning involved in the voice acting, and to remove that leaves the viewed with damaged goods. From an American market view, though, we need dubs. If anime in this country is ever to find a home in the mainstream, we need the masses to embrase it. Like it or not, the masses, do not want to read subtitles. Far be it from me to encourage laziness, but I want to be realistic here. We need to be able to tolerate dubbing for the sake of out hobby. And let's face it...every now and then, a really good dub does come along (Fox's TOTORO, or Manga's GHOST IN THE SHELL). So in conclusion I would ask all American Otaku to, if not support dubs, at least not to slander them. Think of the masses and the best opportunity for your/my hobby. Thanks for the Soapbox. From: Les Jenkins (Dream@cris.com) Hmmm. Seems I may have provided the basis for your first survey with my last letter to your magazine. I did read the RIAP Writes article on the topic, although with a title of "Why Dubs suck" I was tempted to avoid it, and found it a bit more reasonable than I expected it to be if not anything new in it's reasoning. The reasons outlined in the article are ones I've heard many times whenever I am foolish enough to mention my preference for dubbed anime and I will be the first to admit that they are not without merit. My main reason for preferring dubbed over subbed is as follows: For some people it's less distracting. I consider myself to be a reasonably intelligent individual, but I have a hard time reading subtitles and paying attention to whatever else is happening on screen all at once. Often times with subbed tapes I have to stop and rewind a segment to either see what the subtitle was that went by too quickly, or see what happened in the animation because I was too busy reading the subtitles. It's damned annoying in some anime and often will detract from my enjoyment of the anime overall. Yes, there is some horribly dubbed anime out there and when it's really bad I'll be the first one in line to denounce it and buy the subbed copy. AnimEigo's earlier attempts at dubbing, such as RIDING BEAN, are awful and people let them know it. AnimEigo responded to that criticism and managed to do a good, if not great, dubbed version of YOU'RE UNDER ARREST at a much later date. They improved upon that success with OH MY GODDESS (at least in my opinion) and I look forward to their dubbed version of VAMPIRE PRINCESS MIYU. Pioneer is another company that has some pretty good dubs coming out with the dub of EL-HAZZARD one of the few that many people consider to be better than the subbed version (a decidedly small category to be certain making it that much more of an achievement). The point being that the state of dubbed anime is improving, if not in leaps and bounds, then at least a slow, but steady, pace. Considering that sales of dubbed tapes account for almost 90% of domestic release anime sales by some estimates, it only makes sense that it would improve. Bad dubbing is bad dubbing and it will hurt sales no matter how popular a series is so it's in the companies' best interests to do as good a job as they can on it. Pioneer obviously believes this or they wouldn't have gone the route of using big name (relatively speaking, anyway) actors for ARMITAGE III: POLYMATRIX. In the end, the reasons listed in the RIAP Writes column are not so much reasons why dubbed anime should be avoided, but should be closely scrutinized. And then the companies responsible should be told what was good and bad about the dub both in personal letters from those of us who purchase them (I make it a habit) and in reviews in magazines such as this one. The only way they'll know that we're not happy with a particular dub is if we tell them and the more people that tell them, the more emphasis it will have. Mind you, I am by no means anti-sub as I own several series in subtitled format where the dubbing was too painful, or non-existent, but given the choice of a good dub over a sub, will take the dubbed every time. At the same time, I don't go around denouncing fans of subtitled anime as being somehow inferior for their choice as many hard-core fans so often do of us dubbers. To Beat a Dead Horse Even More: Dubbing vs. Subbing - The View From This Side -- by Scott Frazier I don't really want to get caught up in the never-ending battle about subtitling vs. English dubbing but I do want to toss in some comments from over here. The ideal way of releasing an anime film in the US (or anywhere else for that matter) would be as a high quality dub. I agree with Mssr. Kime that a bad dub can ruin everything and that direction is usually where the problem lies. As with any other part of film making like animating, color timing, camera work, or lighting a scene, voice direction is a technical skill and it requires experience to do well. So far, little real talent has been aimed at it. Either the foreign release companies tried to do it themselves or they got somebody who knew little about it to do it. Some knowledge of and an interest in anime does not magically translate into the ability to do a good job. Of course, the same can be said of subtitling for that matter. A lousy subtitling job can destroy a film just as easily as a bad dub. (I avoid subtitled anime for this reason.) (Note: I detest fan subs. Aside from all the copyright violation and unauthorized modification of somebody else's work (hanging offense in my book) pretty much every one I have seen is not only poorly timed but has flat, uninteresting dialogue. Certainly it might be a literal translation of what they are saying but that doesn't make it good or entertaining. Given time and experience these folks will improve and will (hopefully) someday produce top-notch work. The American public has shown their distaste for subtitles in movies many times over. A few months ago, GHOST IN THE SHELL (dubbed) hit #1 on both the Billboard Video Sales List and the Most Popular Video Rentals list. This is a first for anime. There is no way that could have happened with a subtitled video. Nobody but fans have complained about Manga Entertainment's dubbing job (which was incidentally supervised by the director himself). This is not to say that it was necessarily the best (or worst) dub in the world but that it worked for the film and people didn't dwell on it. Anime will only make it into the mainstream market through dubs. Now that it sounds like I am totally against the subtitling of anime let me say that I am all for it. Unlike the average moviegoer fans often want to hear the original Japanese soundtrack and dialogue while still understanding what it going on. If a company can release both high quality dubbed and subtitled versions of a film then it would be great. Keeping in mind that the market for subtitled works is dramatically smaller than that for dubbed and that it is composed almost entirely of fans the companies releasing subtitled works need your input and support. Let them know what you want to see. As Chad said, vote with your money. Let them know there is a market. If enough people let them know and they feel that they can sell enough then they will make subtitled versions. At cons I hear people complaining about the subbed version of Show X or (more often) the dubbed version of Show Y. All I can say is, "Learn Japanese, buy the original and ignore the English releases." (I did.) There is also the problem of people thinking that a show has a lot more to it than it actually does. I was having a discussion with a group of people at a con once about a certain show that I had worked on (and helped rewrite the last episode of) and somebody who overheard what I said took me to task about not understanding what was really going on in the show. He had a very complex concept of what was going on and all sorts of details and ideas. All I could do is look on with awe as he explained the true meaning of the ending and the whole show. If we had given it that much thought we could have done a couple dozen extra episodes...