Do you prefer subbed or dubbed episodes?

[dada]

The age-old question.
Generally a lot of people in the anime community prefer subs, but since Pokémon has historically been so popular in English-speaking countries I guess most people here probably prefer the official dubs. So which is it for you, and why?
Personally I prefer the Japanese voices, partly because I'm studying the language. But also because I've hardly ever watched the English version except a few scattered episodes here and there, so I never got attached to the English voices.

 

[Sweenix]

When the original bgm is kept in, i prefer the dub, if not then sub.

 

[Pikafanboy]

I'll take the 4Kids episodes dubbed over the original any day. It might have something to do with the fact that I saw it first and grew up with it, but I also saw their version of One Piece first, which I find horrible and watch the sub version of it instead. I just love the voice actors, the jokes/references they added that weren't in the original, and the openings and other dub-only music. Plus now that I know they exist, all the pointless edits they made are amusing to me, like changing rice balls into sandwiches or calling them jelly filled donuts. That's not to say I find anything wrong with the Japanese version, I've just been so pleased with the dub I never found the need to watch the subs.

Once the new company took over and the voice actors had to change, the magic was just gone for me. Most of their openings don't get me excited for the show like the 4Kids ones or the original Japanese ones, and their dub bgm doesn't do it for me either. I just watch the dub now because I'm so used to the English names of everything. At this point I'm with the people hoping they will just leave the original music as-is instead of changing it in the Kalos season.

 

[Johtohfiller]

Lately I prefer subs. Intact music is the biggest reason, but I've also taken a liking to the Japanese voices, and I love the TRio but I'm not a fan of how TPCi dubs them. I'd buy the crap out of official subs if they'd do them.

 

[~Piika]

That's a tough question. I watch the dub, but now that BW has ended and we have to wait a little while before we get the dub of XY, I'm seriously considering switching. It's not really a matter of liking one set of voices over the other or disliking subtitles or any of the myriad of usual reasons, it was just the version I've kept up with for years. But now there are all sorts of spoilers on Tumblr for dub watchers...

I guess I'm neutral, then.

 

[Kano]

You know, I have no preference.. the dub is sentimental to me, and I find it interesting to see what they do with the voices, and how they handle the script. A lot of the dub voices are okay, it's not like I hate them, really. The Japanese version sounds a little more natural, but that's because the animation is fit to the voices, and not visa versa, which makes the dub not sync so well sometimes. The only thing I prefer in the Japanese version is that they don't clip the episodes as much, and sometimes characters are more lively. For example Dent had a bigger script and more personality, where as Cilan was pretty watered down in the English dub.

 

[MizuTaipu]

Subbed. I really can't stomach both the voice acting in both 4Kids and TCPI's dubs and the way they discard most of the background music and silence in favor of their own music, especially the silence. Wasting money and brain cells composing filler music when it's cheaper to leave the silence alone is baffling to me, but that's for another thread.

 

[Alexey]

I used to watch the dub, but when XY started, I started watching it subbed, so I was watching BW dub and XY sub simultaneously. Now that there is a break before the XY dub I have, in effect, switched to the sub, so I've voted for the 'No preference' option. But at the same time, when both dub and sub of the same episode exist, I choose dub, because I don't speak Japanese at all. So yeah, it's a bit complicated

 

[LuxrayOfTheWild]

I actually prefer the dubs which honestly aren't as bad as some people think. The voice acting was a lot better back in the 4kids era, though all that matters to me is being able to hear what they're saying and understand it, rather than reading subs. I notice also that some people don't like how some of the music in the dub gets changed, though honestly its something that doesn't bother me at all, or rather I just don't care enough.

So yeah I prefer the dubs.

 

[Misty Calls Masquerain]

Kanto - Advanced Battle (Dub) > Subs (All) > Battle Frontier - Current (Dub)

 

[Johtohfiller]

Another thing I like better about subs - you get the original openings and endings, the eyecatches, the Prof. Oak segments, and the next episode previews.

 

[FANG-TAN]

I watch all of my anime in their original Japanese format. I do watch dubs every now and then (shout-out to Samurai Champloo!), but Pocket Monsters isn't one of them because I find it to have one of the poorer dubs. Not as bad as the original One Piece dub, certainly not as bad as the Cardcaptor Sakura dub ("Cardcaptors", my hate for you exceeds the level of god), but it's one of those in-between cases where watching the dub isn't worth it for me, though the OS movies really dove into that disgusting QUALITY territory that the original One Piece dub had, especially the first two movies (ugh).

I must say though, that aside from all the stupid and infuriating shit that it did, the 4Kids dub was way more watchable than the TPCi dub in terms of voice acting, and that's really saying something...

 

[Muur]

I don't think I've ever actually watched subbed Pokemon.

In general I prefer dub though so I assume it would be the same for Pokemon.

 

[Yankees4life]

Nowadays, subs. Back in the day, tho...dubs...

 

[1rkhachatryan]

I prefer subs, mostly cuz I'm way to impatient for the dub xD. Yes I know there are usually errors, but you can understand the basic and important points at least.

I do also watch the dub though, just to clear up any points I might of missed.

 

[SlimeStack]

Generally speaking if I have access to both the sub and dub of an episode, I'll pick the dub.

But with new episodes the sub comes out much faster. The replaced music and the OPs/cut stuff are not worth the 3+ month wait.

 

[Pikafanboy]

I just started watching the sub of DP and wow, so much better than the dub, especially TR and Ash. I didn't feel that way when I watched the banned episodes of the OS subbed, I wished 4Kids had dubbed them because I like their voice actors and openings better than the Japanese ones. But the TCPI dub isn't something I'll miss, I'm going to watch anything I can subbed from Battle Frontier on. In conclusion, for Kanto-Hoenn and the little bit of Battle Frontier 4Kids got to do I prefer the dub, and once the new company took over I prefer subs at least from what I've seen so far.

 

[The Power of Pika]

I picked no preference what so ever though I was meant to hit dub.

Though I guess both are sort of correct. In some ways I don't really care what version I watch aslong as I see Pokemon and yet on the other hand I would pick english if english is an option.=)

I like english because I like watching pokemon in english.^-^

 

[bluestarfish]

I prefer to watch subs for pokemon. (I can't say in general, because that is dependent on a lot of things)

I'm going to preface my reason by first saying, I have nothing against the VA change that happened a long time ago.

I can't watch any of the new dubs, because no matter how long I go between watching, the different VA is just really distracting to me. I always think to myself that I probably won't notice anymore since it's been such a long time, and now adays Ash is the only character left from the original series, but every time I try to watch the dub, it distracts me again with the difference, like a tiny itch in some place that I can't quite reach.

I suppose another reason is that I really don't like a lot of the music added to the dubs, to me it's just too super cheesy/tacky, and that's coming from someone that actually likes the title music for Sonic Adventure 1 and 2! (I know lol)

 

[Solacen]

Generally for most shows ill take dub over sub anyday. I generally multi task while watching videos so it annoys me to have to try and read the subtitles. I prefer to be able to be able to listen to it in the background when i can.