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Friday Fun Thread for August 22, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I've been going back and rewatching some anime from my childhood. Currently, I'm rewatching Bobobo-bo-bobobo. It's one of the only anime in my mind that has a dub that's superior than the original sub. The plot is translated well, but some of the jokes are actually better when translated. The narrator, for example, is much superior in the dub. This brought to mind an interesting question: Which anime dubs are actually superior to the originals? Bobobo and Ghost Stories are the only two that come to mind. Bobobo being true to the original and Ghost Stories being completely different.

What are you guys' picks for anime that have superior dubs?

This comes up on Reddit a lot so you can always search over there (Steins;Gate generally shows up on lists but I was never a fan of that anime in general).

Anything recent and high budget (ex: Dan Da Dan, Apothecary Diaries) is always likely to be good.

Someone else here mentioned Cowboy Bebop which I think is a good pick but that is in part because the English voice fits the mood and vibe better, I don't think the dub is truly stellar by modern standards.

My personal vote is FMA: B, the dub is pretty great and has some big names you'll recognize if you know their voices, but the outtakes are absolutely incredible and work better if you spent the show listening to those interpretations of the characters.

My personal vote is FMA: B, the dub is pretty great...

I strongly disagree with this. The dub for FMA:B is terrible, full of actors who are completely failing to act. It's one of the worst dubs I've ever heard. The Japanese audio isn't particularly remarkable, but at least it isn't "actors flatly reading lines with no character" like the English is.