Animania

Normally I won't watch anime in dubbed form.  Always original language with subtitles.  Primarily because I think dubs suck.  The American voices rarely capture the same emotion found in the original Japanese actors voices, and some times the voices are just so hideous they grate my ears.

Tonight, though, while working on the Sensual Phrase review and some other stuff, I wanted to watch Wolf's Rain.  I have a friend I've been trying to introduce to anime, but he won't watch it subtitled (probably because he gets distracted easily, so if he turns away he'll miss stuff).  Kinda frustrating, but oh well.

So I decided to try out at least one episode of Wolf's Rain, one anime I thought he might like, in the dubbed form to see how it was.  For the most part, the dubs stick the script of the subs (some places do dubs that go so far off the original script to match the mouth movements that it really isn't the same show anymore).  One change from the first episode that kinda sucked was changing Tsume's reference to "curling up and sleep" which was an obvious allusion to his wolf nature, but I didn't notice any other severa changes in the first two episodes.

Kiba and Tsume's voices aren't too bad. Hige's is a little younger sounding than the original, but it does match his happy go lucky personality.  Toboe's is fairly good, matches his age well.  Quinn's is pretty darn close to the original with that smoker drinker rasp. Cher's dub voice is more feminine, not really matching her personality as much. Hub's is okay. Darcia's voice was also close to a spot on match.

For the most part, none of the English voices were really jarring or grating or super bad.  So, if my friend ever agrees to watch it with me, at least I'll be able to say "I can tolerate the English version."  For viewing alone, though, I'll stick to what I love best, the original Japanese with subtitles.

Someone on the AoD forums posed the question of what you think the best anime tearjerkers are. For me to consider it a tearjerker, it has to make me cry pretty much everytime I see it. My big ones are:

• Full Moon wo Sagashite - especially the last 10-15 eps or so
• Gungrave - quite a few parts, but especially the end
• Wolf's Rain - the last four eps are almost constant :cry:
• Kamikaze Kaito Jeanne - several eps and especially the end
• Fushigi Yugi - the obvious Nuriko!! but also Nakago's death tends to make me cry, and Hotohori's death scene, and of course Tamahome's family even though I've watched this series at least 5 times now, still :cry:

I'm not listing Grave of the Fireflies or Saikano, cause I only watched them once and haven't been able to bring myself to watch either again. I tried Saikano and oddly enough found it boring on the 2nd viewing, and Grave of the Fireflies I just can't get in the mood to watch again.

So what are yours?

If anyone is actually reading this thing :P they are probably wondering why I haven't talked much about anime in ages, all manga.  Well, part of that is that I haven't bought any anime in awhile, nor have a I rented much except Princess Tutu.  I do plan to post about all the anime I currently have at some point or another, I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

I only have one or two anime items planned for June (DeepDiscountDVD's 20% sale coming soon!), and I did just pick up Gungrave for $49.99 on sale at RightStuf (go get it NOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!).

So I still enjoy anime, I just haven't watched much lately (or even many of my regular DVDs), hence not posting much about it.

Not a huge suprise as to who, but its been confirmed that Viz has the Bleach anime series (and has had it since February at least).  Glad to see its finally coming over.  I stopped watching the fansubs over a year ago figuring it would be picked up any day.  Loooking forward to renting to see if I like it all, and if so, I hope Viz will be doing season sets or something, cause the shonen line of singles suck.

4Kids the crappiest anime licensor ever has announced that they will be massacring Pretty Cure next.  As always, can hope they might eventually go for a DVD release that includes the original, unedited Japanese versions, but don't hold your breath on it.  At least its one series I won't have to worry about finding room for in my budget...but

On the good news side, its been confirmed that Viz has subtitled the songs in Full Moon.  Woo hoo!  Now I just get to wait 3-4 years for a box set to come out. *sigh*  Also, Be Beautiful has announced that is has the license for the Embracing Love DVD!  Yeah!  I'll grab that one shortly after its released.

ADV has announced its license for Kono Minikuku mo Utsukushii Sekai (This Ugly Yet Beautiful World).  I only vaguely remember KonoMiki but glad to see it licensed (for some reason I thought it already was though LOL). I'll definitely be renting it, if nothing else...dont' remember it well enough to know if I want to buy yet. I do remember that I loved the opening theme and listen to it regularly.

FUNimation has announced that it does indeed have the Fullmetal Alchemist Movie (not a huge surprise, but great for Fullmetal fans).  They will also be releasing it to coincide with the release of the last volume of the series (and speeding up the release of the series), so doubly good news for the Fullmetal Alchemist fans.  I really should get around to watching all of it one day, I did enjoy the few eps I saw before it was licensed.