Encyclopedia of Opinion
Question
Should you watch anime dubbed or subbed?
Position1 of 3
Subbed anime is better
Argument1 of 5

Japanese voice actors are best suited for anime

Voice actors have been selected by directors who believe them to be the most appropriate in representing each character.

The argument

The characters of an anime are intended to speak in Japanese. The Japanese voice actors are screened and hired to perform them. Dubbed anime is not able to give this much thought into picking voice actors. Due to the limited number of dubbing studios, there is also a limited number of voice actors, and as a result the same actor voices several characters across different shows.

Premises

[P1]Anime characters are designed to speak Japanese, and Japanese voice actors are carefully cast to match those characters. [P2] Dub studios have a limited pool of actors, leading to less careful casting and the same voices being reused across shows. [C] Therefore, subbed anime, with its better-suited Japanese voice acting, is the superior way to watch.

Counter-arguments

Dubbed anime is a growing market, with large companies such as Funimation heading projects to dub more anime for international viewers. The trend of dubbed anime could grow bigger in the future, so it should not be shunned just because it is limited for now.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Anime is animated to a script, and in most productions the Japanese performances are recorded to finished or near-finished picture much as a dub is. "Intended to speak Japanese" names the language of origin rather than a property of the character that another language cannot carry — and a viewer who does not speak Japanese is judging a performance they cannot assess directly while reading subtitles that compress the dialogue. [Rejecting P2] The claim about casting pools is dated rather than structural. Dubbing has grown into a substantial industry, with companies such as Funimation commissioning at scale, which widens the pool rather than narrowing it. Reuse of actors is also at least as common in Japanese voice work, where a relatively small number of seiyū appear across many seasons.