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Crossposts: http://batyatoon.livejournal.com/159322.html

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So hey friends, especially certain friends from Milliways: If I were to (at long last) try watching Revolutionary Girl Utena, would you recommend dubbed or subtitled? My understanding is that subtitled is generally to be preferred, but I'd be interested in hearing about it if any of you have watched both.

Also: has anyone here watched Stranger Things? BOY DO I HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT IT.

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All general subtitle vs. dub wars aside, the voice acting on the English dub makes me cringe. :(

thank <3

I would definitely prefer sub, for the same reasons as

shati. (There are some shows I do think the dub is worth it! Utena ... is not one of them.)

Also: yes I finished it last week!

good to know!

also: what did you think?

I super enjoyed it overall, though I think most of my favorite bits were all the parts at the end when the storylines started to converge -- I hope next season will feature more people talking to people about things & working together cross-generationally! I want random team-ups of, like, Lucas and Nancy.

(Also: more women talking to each other.)

Random team-ups and more cross-generational stuff would be great. Yes please.

(also yes please. and more girls in the youngest age bracket!)

Iiiiiiii have many ST feels. Discuss. <333

SO MANY FEELS, MAN

I love every one of those children and I just want them to be okay ;_____;

I was surprised at how many feelings I had about Barb's wasted character potential.

Me toooo.

[spoilers below -- highlight to read]
I had a moment of Fridge Sad when I realized, hours after watching the episode, why Barb was even still there at all when the monster came: because she was expecting Steve to be an asshole, and didn't want Nancy to be stranded there with no way to get home if Steve tried to press her into more than she was willing to do.

... D:

The voice acting on the Utena dub is particularly bad, as

shati says. Unlike, say Cowboy Bebop or Baccano, where the dub and sub versions have different merits, for Utena it's best to go subtitles all the way.

I last watched it in college and I think on a sub and would love an excuse to rewatch it. My memories of it are very strange.

Definitely subtitles for Utena. The dub is ... not good.

ST, omg. I just finished it!

I have started watching with the subtitles!

And OMG. Is it not amazing? And there's going to be a second season yaaaaaaaay.

Subtitled.

I have DVDs if you need them, though I believe it's streaming.

I've seen some of the dub. The voices are just...wrong for the emotions too often.

I've got a source for streaming! And on the advice of, well, everybody, I've gone with subtitled.

... I find myself a bit dubious about the translations sometimes, but eh.

One thing about subbed over dubbed is that if you're dubious about the translations and know a -little- Japanese (and for me, seriously a little is piddly; a bunch of name-titles, some of the ways to say "do your best", "Thank you", and "I am called"; maybe a dozen other random words in all like "nakama" and "usagi"), you can sometimes find your way to correcting or at least identifying the places where translation loses sometihng.

Well, most of the time it's something minor like "okay, that exact same monosyllable was translated as 'yes sir' in the last scene and here it's translated as 'sure', is this a tone-of-voice thing?" or "okay I distinctly heard character A say character B's name but it didn't show up in the translation."

But then there are the background songs during and preceding the duels, where I honestly have no idea if it's a translation problem or if what's being sung is really that bizarre.

nodnod Even in the trivial case, it's still sometimes useful, but the translation's at least comprehensible, and in the second case it's usually that Japanese use names very differently than we do (although in the Sailor Moon Crystal (the redone 2014- version), one of the ending songs has a the character's names in the song, but not in the translation--because the songwriter used a sequence of words that caused the character names to show up even though they're not actually in the dialogue, as a rather delightful bit of wordplay that is completely untranslatable!).

Regarding the song, I think it's probably mostly that bizarre. If you really want bizarre, wait until you get to one of the most bizarre Nanami episodes (you'll know it when you see it).

Edited 2016-09-14 19:40 (UTC)

I've told her about it, because I've played The Song.

From the Nanami episode?

Yup.

I lean toward the latter, but it doesn't really matter as such anyway.

(To the primary point, I'd call it less tone-of-voice-thing and more high-context-language thing, inasmuch as Japanese has all sorts of things from inflections to words to implied meanings due to social standing that just Do Not Translate Well, and also are so ingrained in Japanese culture that even identifying it can be a trick and a half.)

Edited 2016-09-14 19:54 (UTC)

Is the source YouTube? Because: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrrh84y760v-hDEulas0Tp_wiQy0FcjLl

*raises hand*

I did the same research about a few years ago when I started watching. The thing that convinced me to go sub were numerous contents about how some of the more subtle content didn't make it into the dub.

(ALSO! Is Stranger Things really horror-type scary?)

I'm pretty sure there's some subtle content that isn't making it into the sub either, but at least I can hear how it originally sounded.

(Parts of it are! Although tbh it depends what you mean by horror-type scary. If there are particular things that you find squicky, I can tell you if they show up.)

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