The Western anime subculture has no idea what a “good dub” is.
For years, Cowboy Bebop was held up as the pinnacle of English anime dubs, and indeed, it’s a well-acted performance and the cast is very talented. I personally think the Upotte dub was particularly well-done.
But a late 2019 article on Crunchyroll sings the praises of dubs like Ghost Stories, Pop Team Epic, and the 1995 Devilman OVA. What these three have in common is that they all make some significant changes to the script for the English language track.
There’s an ongoing debate on whether translation and localization are more art than science or vice-versa, and the answer, like many thing, lies somewhere in the middle. That paradigm, however, has given people license to eschew the consumer perspective in terms of what’s appropriate for a dub.
Steven Foster’s Ghost Stories dub is often heralded as a work of comedic genius in the anime space and as an early precursor to the “abridged series” style of fan-made comedy dubs of anime. The difference is, however, that Code MENT and the Code Geass dub exist independently. If I’m interested in Code Geass for its story, I have the option to watch that story in English if I want.
Not true for Ghost Stories. If I’m interested in the actual story of “Gakkou no Kaidan,” I have no option to watch that in English, because Steven Foster and the actors made a decision to do what they wanted instead of what’s implied by the act of creating a dub in the first place: To give people the option to experience a work in their native language.
The success of Foster’s Ghost Stories dub created a paradigm around dubbing that portrays dub scriptwriters as creatives, eventually giving writers at Funimation permission to use their dub scripts as a vehicle for pushing their own personal social beliefs, inviting ire from fans tired of being preached to at every turn.
We don’t know what a “good dub” is because the history of dubbing is so fraught with decisions made stateside at the whims of people who didn’t make the anime. And with few exceptions, the only standouts we recognize are the wildest of those deviations.
In some sectors of Western anime marketing, there seems to be an obsession with getting people who aren’t into anime on-board with it, by any means necessary. Foster’s Ghost Stories dub was praised for appealing to many people who didn’t really like anime. Meanwhile the anime fans who nonetheless like to watch their shows in English are left out in the lurch, while Foster and his cast court those with a fleeting interest, who are guaranteed not to return to anime again after they’re done with Ghost Stories.
Instead of giving loyal consumers what they want, the anime dubbing industry caters to the whims of those in writer’s positions, who abdicate their responsibilities in favor of leaving their “personal mark” on something they did not create.
And as a result, we have no idea what a “good dub” is. Because the industry cares more about notoriety than quality.