2010-07-04, 12:51 AM
Japanese w/ subs has the advantnages of being available first, having more material available, and being easier to find in most cases. When I can make a comparison though, I generally err in favor of Japanese. English can be good, i.e. Cowboy Bebop. It depends on how well I think the English voices "fit" the character compared to what I've heard in the Japanese. version. Even if Cowboy Bebop as a whole is good, I never could bring myself to like Jet's voice in English, and at this point I've seen Bebop more times in English than Japanese. But Code Geass, Bleach, Naruto... oh god. Please no. Or the English version of Laputa: Castle in the Sky. The version of that that I watched a few months back had the English Disney dub but subs translated from the Japanese. My friends and I were so amused by how horribly mismatched they were we left both on. I can't bring myself to like GitS in English much either. It's good by dub standards, but Batou and Aramaki just... ach. I suppose I'm biased to whatever language I heard it first in, which is almost always Japanese. It is nice to not need to read subs though. My first time through Bebop in English let me catch and appreciate a lot of things in the art I'd never noticed.
tl;dr
If you're really into anime, subs gives you what you need. How it originally sounded, easier to obtain, more plentiful, and more shows. I start with Japanese for this reason, learn to attach characters to certain voices, and become biased toward the Japanese if I see the show in English.
tl;dr
If you're really into anime, subs gives you what you need. How it originally sounded, easier to obtain, more plentiful, and more shows. I start with Japanese for this reason, learn to attach characters to certain voices, and become biased toward the Japanese if I see the show in English.