Since I haven’t heard too much B.S. about this during my entirely too short time at college, I’m going to make this short and quick; there is a ‘right’ choice and a ‘wrong’ choice. But let me tell ya’, it’s not as clear cut as everyone loves to make it.
Before I tell you the ‘right’ answer (because you totally are just dying to know ~.~), let me mention now the difference of having a preference and having no choice. When you actually have an option to do something, anything, then what ever you willingly choose to do, in fact, is a preference. How-f*cking-ever, if there’s no option in the first place, then you can go f*ck yourself because you don’t have a preference one way or another, that’s just what you do or you can not do it at all.
Perfect example, it’s not that you necessarily want to watch episode 21 of Guilty Crown in sub, you have no f*cking choice. It doesn’t exist as a dub yet, and even if Funimation does license it (because they’re basically the only mofos left in America who are still in business -.- ), it probably won’t be until years later. I mean, I could be wrong and they could be licensing it sooner than that, but the point is you have to watch the sub if you want to watch it now.
Granted, watching things online illegally, because there’s no 2 ways about it it’s illegal, is another clusterf*ck all in and of itself altogether, I’ll save that whole thing for another post entirely.
Anyway, an even better example would be a series like Ao no Exorcist. They decided not to dub it but they did license the series so you can legally buy it in America. Also, if you couldn’t tell, I’m a huge proponent of buying legally (with an occasional bootleg/import here and there >.>) vs. D.L.ing illegally or torrenting practically all the time, and you wonder why the anime industry in America is crumbling -.- Anyway, back on subject; again, you have no choice but to watch Ao no Exorcist in sub, so again there’s no room for preference, you either watch it or you don’t. End of discussion.
So, back to what the right answer is, if you couldn’t tell already. Basically, both have their own merits, both have their bads and their ‘why the f*ck would you do that’s, & both have exceptional voice acting talents. So, they’re both good, one isn’t better than the other.
From my time in anime if there’s one thing I can tell you is that I’ve based this opinion off actually listening to both (of the same show) for many years (10+) and have never stopped listening to either.
Most people who outright say that dub sucks haven’t listened to dub for the longest time, haven’t seen the dub of the show they’re watching because they’re so busy illegally D.L.ing (and ruining the industry one click at a time), and/or going off what their friends (who are also sub fags [I apologize in advance to anybody offended by the word except for ‘sub fags’]) tell them to think. They have, essentially, never watched dub or when they last watched dub was in the 4Kids and before era.
No wonder why you have a low opinion of dub, I would too if I were that narrow-minded to begin with and hadn’t watched dub since it’s improved -.-
Anyway, to connect this to my whole spiel about preference, it’s not even enough to say you even prefer sub over dub, if the shows you’ve been watching lately are Jormungand, Fate/Zero, Last Exile: Fam, the Silver Wing, etc.; i.e., shows that have no option of dub because it hasn’t been dubbed yet, then you can’t even say that. It’s all about what’s available to you, if sub is more available because you’re watching your stuff online and it’s from the newest season of anime, so be it. If you have no problem waiting for anime to be licensed & dubbed or just outright are only watching shows that have already went through the process, then good for you.
Without really going into detail about my personal beliefs of D.L.ing vs. buying vs. ‘borrowing’ vs. whatever else, whatever is more available to you either financially and/or practically, go for it, but don’t confuse that with willingly choosing sub over dub, you don’t have a choice so you don’t have a f*cking option so there’s no situation for preference to even be brought up.
Lastly, real briefly, one of those links is to a site to watch anime streaming online; however, this isn’t my being hypocritical, this is exactly according to my beliefs. I believe it’s completely fine to watch anime streaming online, especially since there are legal ways to do it, like with Hulu and Crunchy Roll, as long as you’re either (a) planning to buy it when it comes stateside (if it ever does), and/or (b) buy more than you watch/DL illegally.
Out of my enitre collection (of the woes of consumerism) about %92 were legitimate copies of the series purchased from legitimate places (mostly Amazon and ebay), with only about %8 being a mixture of bootleg/import or D.L.ed. In my opinion, it’s fine if you use…illegitimate means (save stealing in the traditional sense) to acquire your anime, but when you’re doing that practically all the time, then what the f*ck, you’re just helping to further shut down the anime industry in America, d*uchebag -.-
(G***ammit! This article was way longer than I intended it to be -.-)
F*ck Everybody…The Life of a (Slight) Misanthropist 