Why I am Most Likely Dropping my FunimationNow Subscription
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This Has been weighing on me for sometime now, many of you may agree, especially you who have watched anime before it became mainstream. and others may not. however since the advent of the simuldubs , and then now even more so with the crunchyroll partnership i see absolutely no need for me to pay for two subs to get my anime in Japanese with subtitles. even though the subscription cost now reflects the change compared to before. on top of the fact that simuldubs have murdered the quality of dubs in a whole. 9 out of 10 dubs are now garbage whereas prior to simuldubs it was 5 out of 10 in recent years. whereas 5+ years ago it was more like 2 out of 10. with my next statement let me be clear that i do not think the voice actors are bad, infact its the total opposite. i believe most of the current voice actors are damn good at there jobs. the problems lies in the characters they are cast for, and i believe this problem is all due to time constraints due to the simuldub explosion. this is with the added effect of over-localization in the script. i do understand some script changes must be done due to the nature of translation, but you cannot over Americanize an anime that was made with japan in mind. dont get me wrong this has been done successfully in some cases, but sadly as of recent its almost always. i now have 5 different subscription services that all offer anime in some form. FuniNow , Crunchyroll , Hulu , Netflix , AmazonPrime. seeing as i can get english dubs from funi on hulu what reason do i have to keep funimationnow. the only good dubs on funimation are really just the older ones due to stupid simuldubs. there are a few exceptions, but i can watch most of those on other platforms.
I really wish funimation would lessen the number of simuldubs. i know i would be more than willing to wait a bit longer to have a good dub. i even used to hold out watching some series in japanese just to wait for the dub, and even when i was to inpatient to due so i always re-watched it the day the dub hit the market. yah these simuldubs may satisfy some, but i refuse to buy funi blu-rays just to get the same crappy dub. when there is a good dub then i do infact almost always end up buying the blu-ray. but sadly i highly doubt any of this is ever going to change. Especially with anime becoming more and more mainstream here in the usa.
Edit 1: I would love to haar anyone elses input regarding this. how to you feel about the recent changes ehre on funinow eliminating there japanes language+subs version of there catalog, the quality of recent dubs , and if there any other alternatives i may not know of out there i can try. want to let of steam about how wrong or right i might be id love to hear the input of others on all aspects of this post.
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You could try VRV. I think its $10/month but it combines CR and Funi's catalog plus other non anime content
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Meh no issues on my end with dub quality I just wish they would dub more of the shows I like. So I guess I'm on the side of more SimulDubs a season.
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The "Americanizing" has been done for over 20 years obviously they're not going to have a half Japanese half English script when they're based in America and their main customers are American, people have become to sensitive and easily offend by it that is because it has become to mainstream and I completely agree that it becoming mainstream has had way more negitive effects than positive ones when Sony bought funimation their focous on what type of shows they pick up has canged they seem to be more interested in getting stuff that's mainstream friendly and not giving the more niche shows a chance like they used to which was what had made funimation stand out as a better company because they would give those shows a chance whereas Sentai and other companies will cover their existance and automatically give them a sub-only releases if they get their hands on the licenses, and I agree that people are getting tired of having to pay for so many services to see what they want with seemingly a new one popping up every year or sooner due to more and more big companies getting into it and eventually it'll turn so many people away to other ways of getting what they want for free and the industry will start loosing money and these companies will want to pull out and the ones that own companies here like Sony owning funimation they'll just shut down their owned companies and they'll be gone and the only remaining ones will be the bad companies that don't care about us.
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Only reason I resubbed was the Yamato 2199 dub. I'll wait until when my Sub is near the end and then I'll decide whether or not to resub
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Some of my favorite dubs have come out during the simuldub years so I guess that's not a problem I have. I actually never saw any dip in quality. Simuldubs actually make it possible for some shows to get dubbed compared to 10 years where they would have stayed sub only. So I am all for simuldubs personally.
As for the over-localization thing. It only ever really happened once with Prison school. Even then it never even bothered me. The problems some people actually need to be brought to my attention for me to actually know what they're talking about too. I think it's mainly a thing with people being a little to sensitive in recent years, but heh whatever. Anyway it ever really bother a minority in like what...3 shows?
So yes I'm all for this beautiful dub era where I can watch MHA same-day as Japan dubbed in English. A high quality dub too. An era where I can decide to either watch a show dub or sub because they only come out a few weeks apart. An era where FUNi's streaming services are actually good and working. It's never been a better time to be a dub fan.
Humm so yea. I'll keep my sub. I'm highly satisfied. I have a lot of other subs too, but I don't see any I could drop.
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Funimation seems to be prioritizing speed and quantity over quality in recent years. I don't think it's a big deal, nor would I call any of the dubs "garbage". In fact, some of my favrorite dubs have been simuldubs. Here and there however, one does notice a dip in quality where I suspect the culprit is time constraints.
Listening to VAs, I hear it is more difficult for them to have a life outside of work these days because the scheduling is so demanding. It also seems like both actors and directors are juggling multiple projects at a time.
Its good that there is more work available and more content than ever, but personally, I'm more of a quality > quantity person. I like to appreciate and digest things rather than quickly consume them. I don't mind waiting if it means its going to be better.
I can't keep up with all of the shows Funimation puts out, let alone everyone else. I'm not sure that's actually a bad thing, but it does make me a little nervous if the trend keeps accelerating.
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I personally don't have any problem with the dubs I think they are great. in my opinion they seem to be getting better.
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There's more localization happening because there are far more shows happening from season to season. Go back to whatever favorite classics you can remember 20 years ago and you'll probably notice that the majority of them are action or fantasy, neither of which is a genre that allows much room for localization. Certainly not compared to modern anime, which has far more slice-of-life and school shows than action/fantasy and has a number of cultural or language difference that don't exist in our world and don't mean much to us. At least, I prefer what's done here compared to how Sentai handles it and simply types notes onto the screen to explain some joke or reference the average Westerner won't understand
As far as changing the script, I don't think it's a big deal to punch up the jokes in a comedy, or tone down pedophilia, among other examples. There's a certain amount of Japanese culture that the average viewer probably can't stomach, and I don't think it's wrong for dubs to try and improve on that (especially when a number of shows from Japan tend to have pretty stale dialogue)
My reasoning is this: if I wanted a translation of the show, I would just watch the Japanese language version and read the subtitles. I don't think there's a point to the English versions double dipping like that, unless it's clear nothing can be changed
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Maybe one reason is that Funimation is having to do all the dubs since no other licensor is licensing and dubbing as much anime that Funimation does.
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other than you're average comedy, and the unfortunate blunders in Prison School (which was fixed), Dragon Maid, and Girlfriend is a Gal, I haven't really noticed any major issues in scripting. you have your usual changes for better word flow, flaps and stuff like that, but no major creative liberties similar to the previously mentioned shows. I don't watch everything and there are some dubbed shows I haven't gotten to yet, so it is possible I've missed something. And there's always reddit, which blows up every time something happens, like with the shows i mentioned, and i think it's been generally calm since Gal.
