Akaihane

I’m not a massive fan of dubs, but at the same time I’m open to watching them and have had the pleasure of enjoying a few that are undoubtedly close or of the same quality of the Japanese version (’Cowboy Bebop’ and ‘His and Her Circumstances’ come to mind foremost). One of the motivating factors behind picking up a series on DVD is the quality of the dub; I generally watch the sub first time around and then anytime I’m in the mood to watch something but have other things to do, I’ll stick it on with the English dub. It’s also great for circumstances where I just want to rest and am too tired to read.

I’m sorry to say, however, unless things improve greatly from the official trailers, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to bring myself to watching the dubbed version of Death Note. Which is a pity as it is the kind of anime that would do well being shown on TV.

From listening to the actors who portray both Light and L I actually wonder if they have even read the manga, watched any of the anime or even really done a little research on their characters. Light sounds far too young (which makes me worry about his portrayal after Vol. 7) and…happy. His voice feels very one dimensional, with none of the insidious tone that show us he isn’t just out to “save” the world from the criminals, but that his main goal is to turn himself into God. He sounds to nice, too good, too moral. And this isn’t just a critique on the dubbing as I felt Tatsuya Fujiwara’s Light in the movie suffered from similar problems, which made him quite an unbelievably character for me. L in the trailer sounds too angry, too emphatic. In the manga and the Japanese version of the anime, he’s generally softly spoken, he voice generally curious and calculating. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him angry. And let’s not forget that the character is autistic!

I think another aspect that grates upon my ears is the strength of the American accents. I’m from the UK and I probably watch more subbed anime than I do American TV shows, so the American accent is at least as foreign to me as a Japanese accent. So to my ears both characters seem like typical American teenagers (probably if they had non-colloquial English accents, that would sound smoother to me as that is the accent I’m most familiar with when it comes to TV, but then that would sound awfully odd to English speakers outside the UK ). But I have watched anime, acted by American actors, where the accent doesn’t really come in to play in my mind.

Wel, those are my two-pennies anyway. Hopefully some of the characters don’t sound as badly off, but I don’t think it is as easy to mis-portray some of the others. Near does worry me though as he is so close in personality to L.

EDIT: Thankfully it wasn’t tha actual dub, though I still need to check out the real dub even now that several of the DVDs has been released in the UK.