Netflix English Dub Discussion

[pwhodges]

Changing "I'm so fucked up" to "I'm the lowest of the low" and "Love" to "Like" matters. It feels like some context has been lost now.

And some has been gained by getting closer to the Japanese; the main thing lost is familiarity. Although appreciating the love/like change fully is somewhat reliant on at least a little knowledge of Japanese language and customs, this specifically is something that is often covered when discussing anime; and even without that knowledge it still works sufficiently OK in English.

[xtr00kvltcorex]

I appreciate some of the more nuanced pieces the new translation brings, but, in the absence of knowing what kind of time crunch they may have been under, some time could've been spent discerning some of the better moments the ADV dub had, namely with those two lines. Those seem to be the biggest gripes people have (me too).

As an aside, another one that I felt lost some maybe unintentional humor was: "It's hot" to "Lukewarm?" by Fuyutsuki in Episode 11. Gendo responds "Yes" in either (I believe), but "lukewarm" felt like an odd word choice.

[pearisdriving]

Lukewarm is the translation for 'nurui' here. It's the same in sephirotic subs. I always interpreted this as a comment about the water in the bucket that Gendo put his feet in, not the ambient temperature in which case lukewarm would make sense

Edit: I replied without watching the scene in the netflix sub. I just did an Fuyutsuki straight up says "This water is lukewarm"

[Reichu]

According to the script, Fuyutsuki's feet are in the bucket. I know, right? I thought it was Gendo this whole time too...

[Chuckman]

What?

[pearisdriving]

In the Kitchen scene in EoE right before the "you've never loved yourself" line, Asuka in the netflix sub(and dub) says "You're the only one here!" while some other translations are something like "You're all you' have!". Is this another case of the netflix script being too 'accurate'? From my limited knowledge of Japanese she does seem to say something about him being 'here' but was wondering if it's just some idiom that was translated too literally.

[robersora]

I'm a native German speaker, so my exposure to all the English dubs has been quite limited. That being said, from what I've heard, I always felt like the ADV's dub general approach was too cartoonish. It might have fit for FLCL, but not for EVA. While Eva is an Anime, in comparison the delivery of Eva's voice cast tends to be relatively muted and subtle. So I'm glad the new English dub tried to honor/imitate that approach. That being sad, while this new dub is far less grating to listen to thanks to this approach, the actors kind of lack the skill to convey emotions in a subtle manner, so it feels kinda flat at times. Also they never quite reach the agonizing high the original managed archive. Asuka fighting against the Evas sounds incredibly phoned in in the new version. I also think it's funny that some people are reminded by the new voice, that Asuka is just a 14 year old girl, lol.


Now, the new German dub is actually that what many people accuse the English track of being: kinda lifeless. And I don't mean to say that the original cast was "louder" or more cartoonish, not at all, they were just much more skilled in conveying emotion through their voice. (or were better directed, Idk)
New Asuka is a lot more grating, while not being able to bring the same emotional range to the table. Asuka's German lines where circumvented quite charmingly in the original, here she is just robotically saying the same words the Japanese Seiyuu said. AN...FANG... DER... BE... WE... It's quite comical, actually.
The new pronunciation of "Rei" rhymes on "fly/why/die". Rei herself speaks her lines woodenly, but not in an ephemeral way, but in a way that makes her sound like she's doing an intentionally bad impression of a person. Her poem in Episode 14 sounds like a 7 year old who just learnt how to read and is now struggling to apply inflection. It's a huge deterioration from the quite solid OG dub.
The person doing Ritsuko delivered a stellar performance in the original, this one, I'd call slightly above mediocre. Either way, it's a downgrade.
Shinji's new voice actor seems to be equal to his predecessor, with the caveat that his voice is more annoying while still
Misato generally hits the wrong mood very often; she's icy when she's supposed to be sympathetic, and vice versa.
Interestingly enough some of the minor voice cast (like the dialogue between Asuka's father and Asuka's new mother) put down an amazing performance, lol.
(I just now realized it was them two talking, I thought they were random people until today, lol. I never stop learning new things about Eva!)
The script seems ok, at least. Overall it's more colloquial; less literal, more localization. But I feel like most choices were inspired.
Overall the new dub is a step down, it feels rushed and much more amateurish than the very good first version. Especially Misato and Rei and terribly miscast/misdirected.

Normally I wouldn't care at all about the dub, but I really hoped that this would finally be an easy version to watch the show for my friends. They want it in German, and they want it to be easily accessible. There is no pirate site that hosts German language Eva, so I really hoped for a good localization. That's that, I guess.

Some observations:
I'm happy the Netflix version finally fixed the "mindrape" scene. Asuka is finally voiced by the other voice actresses instead of herself for 5 times.
The old dub used the English term, if the original used an English Term. So Entry Plug stayed Entry Plug, but Unit 01 became "Einheit 1". So ADV fully translated Human Instrumentality Project into German, while Netflix uses the English term for reasons unknown.
Kaworu says, "he likes Shinji", like he always did in the German version.
@Reichu: "the worthy of my grace" thing at the end of the Episode makes more sense in the dub as Kaworu actually says it there.
The German version uses "child" not "children".


Also, the missing of Fly Me To The Moon is a travesty. How can Khara be so hands on, demand so much money, and then ok a decision like this?

[pearisdriving]

How can Khara be so hands on, demand so much money, and then ok a decision like this?

It's not like they can force netflix to pay for it. Maybe the initial plan was to have it and then it fell through. When the first trailer came out a Spring launch was advertised. It 'aired' in late June. Maybe prolonged music licensing negotiations were the reason.

[Stan]

Also, the missing of Fly Me To The Moon is a travesty. How can Khara be so hands on, demand so much money, and then ok a decision like this?

I remember the English DVD/blu-ray release of 3.0 got delayed by two years because Khara did not approve of a few lines and forced a re-dub of those scenes. Then when it finally came out we had the original lines in the form of subs as a bonus, and the changes from the original dub to the forced redub were very negligible and minor. My point is that for being so protective of the Evangelion IP, Khara really dropped the ball with this Netflix release.

[robersora]

I remember the English DVD/blu-ray release of 3.0 got delayed by two years because Khara did not approve of a few lines and forced a re-dub of those scenes. Then when it finally came out we had the original lines in the form of subs as a bonus, and the changes from the original dub to the forced redub were very negligible and minor. My point is that for being so protective of the Evangelion IP, Khara really dropped the ball with this Netflix release.

While I love Khara's unorthodox marketing for Evangelion:Q, their marketing outside of Japan notoriously sucks, tbh. You can't tell me a company as prestigious isn't able to find one capable foreigner to handle that stuff - I mean, they clearly try, but just look at this travesty of a tweet from a studio currently working on a multi-million yen project:

tweet-body

— twitter-user (@username) date

srsly, Khara. Get your act together, lol.

It's not like they can force netflix to pay for it. Maybe the initial plan was to have it and then it fell through. When the first trailer came out a Spring launch was advertised. It 'aired' in late June. Maybe prolonged music licensing negotiations were the reason.

I think it's just better timing considering it now coincides with the start of the advertising campaign of Shin Evangelion and the new Standard Blu-Ray release.

[Quadhonk]

Haven't read through this thread yet but I just started Episode 1. Anything I should be expecting?

[kuribo-04]

Haven't read through this thread yet but I just started Episode 1. Anything I should be expecting?

A shock when you reach the credits. :P

[Quadhonk]

A shock when you reach the credits. :P

Boy you weren't kidding. Kinda figures though. Not really surprised they couldn't get the rights to use the song.

[kuribo-04]

Boy you weren't kidding. Kinda figures though. Not really surprised they couldn't get the rights to use the song.

What's worse is the instrumental isn't there either (so the Misato-Kaji scenes in 15 and 21 have no music). :/

[ChaddyManPrime]

You know, I've never liked Fly Me to the Moon, just a little too on-the-nose you know? Also not a big fan of Frank Sinatra.

[kuribo-04]

∆ Actually not originally a Sinatra song! I think that's a little known fact.

I think Netflix's solution wasn't good. Rei's theme doesn't always fit, and the Misato scenes need some music.

[Ringworm128]

Just started watching. My first impressions is that it's not the most amazing dub, but it's still good. The original, IMO still holds up somewhat well for such an old dub; so the difference in quality is still apparent but not as much as I hoped.

The cast sounds pretty solid; but I would have preferred the Rebuild voices.

[xtr00kvltcorex]

There's places where the ADV/Manga dub does have its cartoonish moments, but there's life to them at least. I think the biggest difference between either English dubs' respective qualities is the Asuka Eva fight. As someone above said, in the Netflix dub it felt phoned in. In the Manga dub, problems it may have, did nail that scene. Tiffany Grant exudes joy when Asuka has her badass epiphany and palpable rage and bloodlust during the harpy fight. New Asuka was horrible. To me that sequence really drove home the qualities in certain VA choices. The Shinji and Misato ones seem to be the only ones actually trying.

[SawItAtAge10]

There's places where the ADV/Manga dub does have its cartoonish moments, but there's life to them at least.

This. All of the passion seems so sucked out of their performances. Yes, The ADV/Manga dubs are FAR from perfect. But, in being so rough and tumble and rough around the edges, there's such a kind improvised wild vitality to what they did and how story unfolds through the first English dub. Like Tiffany's passion when giving gratuitous German or in the hat of battle, Spikes's maddening screams (and whines) and Allison's capacity to be frenetic and funny and do a 180 into emotive intensity (her private moments with Kaji/breakdown when he dies, apologizing to Shinji all too late about Toji, and her final EoE scene with Shinji are some of her best)...With the 3 of them able to dispense amazing levels of despair within there respective characters. As such, the First English Dubs have so much more personally to them.

And, I KNOW..The new dub is more on point to being a literal translation of the Japanese. But, I'm putting my foot down on the English of the old dub. The fact is, when it comes to Shinji and Kaworu, the "I Love You" is so far out off the closet at this point and has been for such a long time. Sidestepping "accuracy," the original English reading of the line here and its implications is far too ingrained in the culture and widespread into the iconography. It simply can't be unseen or unheard. It means far too much than what the "true meaning" was meant to "ambiguously" convey. And, it goes beyond mere shipping and all of that jazz. When stripped down, Kaworu himself is something of a gay icon.

I think the biggest offense here - again this not on an attack on you die hards consistently espousing how you only watch it Japanese and thus this is irrelevant to you - is how Orwellian this whole thing was with Netflix Genesis. By this I mean, us dub preferentialists vs the subbers was never an issue as we all were able to strike a balance trough accessibility. However, it sure gives half the fanbase short shrift by not even making the first English dub an available option. I think that's what feels like the most unfair part here.

And Carrie whatever face...Well, she's a rather vile one. You wanna harp on AWL's "bad directing" but Carrie what's her face not only hamfisted this rather dry, flat uninspired dub but she THEN had he audacity to muscle her way into the role of Misato - giving her cheap impression of Alison Keith every step of the way.

SMH Netflix Genesis SM F'ing H

[Sailor Star Dust]

SawItAtAge10: Please step back with your attacks, they're seriously uncalled for.

And Carrie whatever face...Well, she's a rather vile one. You wanna harp on AWL's "bad directing" but Carrie what's her face not only hamfisted this rather dry, flat uninspired dub but she THEN had he audacity to muscle her way into the role of Misato - giving her cheap impression of Alison Keith every step of the way.

Also, what? According to the Netflix credits, VSI Group is the dubbing studio that all (most?) the various language redubs used.