Postby Kendrix » Fri Nov 06, 2020 1:34 am
So I decided I should rewatch the show in time for the new movie and to spice something up I decided to give the Netflix german dub a chance.
The quality of dubs really went down since there has been this pressure for quick releases
The pronunciation of the names has somehow gotten worse, Maya sounds way too old and Misato sounds like a Ghetto Prostitute named Chantal who lives in a Communist era concrete appartment building in Berlin and reads no newspapers but the Bild, which like, is an aspect of her she's probably meant to sound a little silly but the old VA always gave her a certain warmth & earthyness which is imho closer to the original
The pronunciation of the names somehow got ~worse~, even though they kinda partially added the suffixes & kept the original use of first name/ last name which ok, the Rebuilds also did, but goes against the point of a dub imho, someone with previous knowledge of Japanese culture is probably watching it with subs anyways. A dub is meant to make it accessible for someone who has no clue about Japanese whatsoever, but I guess that's a philosophical opinion.
I do like that they subtitled a lot more of the written text.
In a sense I thought it might be interesting to see a new interpretation of the characters (Gendo's new VA is thinking Mephistopheles, Shinji's is doing a slightly more childlike take on him but clearly the direction sucked 'cause he didn't "click" until the confrontation in the cage)
I kinda really, really liked Gendo's old VA tho, he could do bastard but he had more range, so maybe I'm biased
But what I can't quite forgive - and what the original dub from the 90s did very well - is that they're not really conserving the tone well. The verylifelike dialogue is one of the best parts of EVA imho and that's lost if they don't take care that the soldiers sound like soldiers, the scientists like scientists...
Especially since the intellectual cynism is something that would normally really resonate with an audience back home in Mordor.
When I watched the rebuilds in a theater everyone laughed at "politics only creates problems" line
I also think the original dub did something right when they decided to pronounce "EVA" like the bible character.
They also left "Human Instrumentality Project" as an English term (the 90s dub translated it), which yes was deliberately chosen to be a reference to an oldersci fi work and is maybe realistic - maybe its just my personal annoyance at gratuitous english terms everywhere, but I think it's more ominous if it's translated like, it's not just a name of something, you're forced to consider what the words mean
I might continue this for entertainment value tho, lets see what Kaworu, Asuka and Rei get saddled with...
I hope whoever dubs Q at least sticks with the cast from the first two films
What I'm really appreciating in this rewatch is how well, detailedly & lifelike the subtle details in the expressions are animated
EDIT: Touji is pretty good though! Another point of disagreement seems to be wether it's der, die oder das Entryplug, ah the age old argument.
But they definitely effed up the tone of the script at crucial points. I really don't think Rei would use the word "verpeilt" ^^° the whole thing comes off rather comedic instead of mysterious
I wanted to try harvesting the rice
I wanted to hold Tsubame more
I wanted to stay together forever with the boy I like