"Where's the apple-flavored Mountain Dew?" "In the fridge, duh!"

[amanuensis1]

I've watched the first episode of Death Note with the English dub, to see if the dub was enjoyable, 'cos I love this series so much I'd like to experience it every way available. I think it's well done, but I'm not so happy with Ryuk's voice. Not that the actor isn't good, it just makes Ryuk a different guy. Japanese-voice Ryuk sounds like the kind of lazy good-for-nothing friend of yours that lies on your sofa eating your Cheetos and watching your cable, but you let him hang around because he's fun to play Gran Turismo with and he never asks you when you're gonna clean the place up. English-voice Ryuk, on the other hand, is not a friend but he's this guy a friend of a friend of yours knows, and you never ever hang out with him because they say he has mob ties and drives around with three shotguns and a drum of kerosene in his car trunk, and you only call him if you have to get rid of a body, and he says, "I'll meet you at ninth and Gateridge; bring fifty feet of garden hose and $8000," and while you're still saying, "Where the f**k am I gonna get $8000 and garden hose at this time of night?" he's already hung up on you and is heading over.

So, um, yeah. Different.

Comments

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

If I have the choice of a subtitle, I will always take it. Most dubs seriously grate on me, though there have been a few that I thought were quite decent. As examples, I keep citing Pet Shop of Horrors, which came to me dubbed, and I really liked D's English voice, and once I decided to watch Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with the English track and found it very well done.

Every so often, I have had a foreign DVD sitting about that I knew I was never going to get to sit down and watch with my full attention, and so I sighed and popped it in and put on the English track so that I could get it watched and didn't have to give it every bit of my attention. I remember doing this with Spirited Away and Brotherhood of the Wolf--though once I'd seen those that way and discovered I loved them, I then went back and watched them with the subtitles and now I watch them subtitled by preference. ^_^

[fyrie.livejournal.com]

I think my worst experience with dubbing was when I was in Sweden. I was trying to watch Brotherhood of the Wolf, but it only had Swedish subtitles and gah. I can understand some Swedish and French, but two languages at once? Broke my brain.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Yeah, French is the language at which I have the best chance of understanding a foreign language, so I like my French films subtitled.