I watched Inuyasha on Cartoon Network for the fifth time tonight. I don't have a lot of experience with English dubs, but I think I can say for sure that I MUCH prefer the original Japanese. Inuyasha does a good job of it most of the time, and the actor's voices are generally good... though Kaede in the English version REALLY bugs me with all the 'ye's and 'lad's. What's she supposed to be, Irish all of a sudden? Even the Celts still use 'you' half the time instead of 'ye'. Gah... it's very annoying. Not at all what I'd thought it'd be like. Oh! And I'm so used to the past being called the Feudal Era or the Sengoku Era that when I heard it being called the 'Waring States Era' in the English dub I honestly laughed quite a while. Makes me think of how we call the Civil War 'The War Between/Among the States'. I dunno. I'll always call it the Civil War. Just one of those things, you know?
But on occasion here and mostly in other anime I've seen they try to match the words to the characters too well that it sounds halting or starts to make no sense... I just CRINGE when that happens. Sometimes they don't even try to make it work with proper inflections and tones, they just stop halfway through a sentence and pick it up again a beat later. Doesn't sound natural. I'd rather it not match up at all. But with the Japanese, I don't have to worry about that (unless the subs aren't matched up properly, which is a problem, too, but not so badly). I guess it's all a matter of preference, though.
Anyhoo, was watching tonight, like I said. And when I watched the first 20-something episodes in Japanese, and finally met Miroku I must admit I both hated and was amused by the guy. But he had a lot of traits that aren't particularly appealing to me (oh, say, using his position to take advantage of people, LOL) and I generally wasn't overly fond of the character. Though as I'm not QUITE into Kagome/Inuyasha yet I didn't mind him in that respect... I think his continual passes at her are kinda cute, actually.
ANYWAY, point is, I was watching tonight and suddenly thinking to myself "Self, what was I thinking? This guy is adorable!" I wanted to just hug him and snuggle him and, oh, all right, yesterday he was almost dying and all cute and hurt, so that probably helped. But it took me a few seconds to realize why I was suddenly falling for his character- same voice actor as Cyclops in X-Men:Evolution. And as I have a huge h/c love when it comes to him... and the character is pretty darn cute, that was rubbing off on me BIG time. I'm surprised it took me 3 episodes with him to realize it, but there it is. I'm a little slow. And SILLY for liking a character I normally don't care for just because the voice makes me think/feel for another character. LOL
But Cyclops... ohhh... it's just really hard NOT to like his character. And I really like Kirby Morrow's voice. Eh... so maybe the English dubs aren't so bad after all...
But on occasion here and mostly in other anime I've seen they try to match the words to the characters too well that it sounds halting or starts to make no sense... I just CRINGE when that happens. Sometimes they don't even try to make it work with proper inflections and tones, they just stop halfway through a sentence and pick it up again a beat later. Doesn't sound natural. I'd rather it not match up at all. But with the Japanese, I don't have to worry about that (unless the subs aren't matched up properly, which is a problem, too, but not so badly). I guess it's all a matter of preference, though.
Anyhoo, was watching tonight, like I said. And when I watched the first 20-something episodes in Japanese, and finally met Miroku I must admit I both hated and was amused by the guy. But he had a lot of traits that aren't particularly appealing to me (oh, say, using his position to take advantage of people, LOL) and I generally wasn't overly fond of the character. Though as I'm not QUITE into Kagome/Inuyasha yet I didn't mind him in that respect... I think his continual passes at her are kinda cute, actually.
ANYWAY, point is, I was watching tonight and suddenly thinking to myself "Self, what was I thinking? This guy is adorable!" I wanted to just hug him and snuggle him and, oh, all right, yesterday he was almost dying and all cute and hurt, so that probably helped. But it took me a few seconds to realize why I was suddenly falling for his character- same voice actor as Cyclops in X-Men:Evolution. And as I have a huge h/c love when it comes to him... and the character is pretty darn cute, that was rubbing off on me BIG time. I'm surprised it took me 3 episodes with him to realize it, but there it is. I'm a little slow. And SILLY for liking a character I normally don't care for just because the voice makes me think/feel for another character. LOL
But Cyclops... ohhh... it's just really hard NOT to like his character. And I really like Kirby Morrow's voice. Eh... so maybe the English dubs aren't so bad after all...