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My buddy who only watches dubs told me subs are just gatekeeping and now I can't stop thinking about it
We were grabbing tacos in Austin and he said he's been watching anime for 9 years and has never once felt like he missed a joke reading subs. I've always been the guy who says subs are better, but hearing him say that made me wonder if I'm just repeating what forums told me back in 2016. Does the sub vs dub thing actually matter to the story or are we all just picking teams?
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elliot_king9d ago
Honestly this hit me hard because I had almost the exact same thing happen with my cousin last year. He's been watching for like a decade and only does dubs, and when I gave him crap about it he just shrugged and said he watches to relax, not to prove something. That got stuck in my head for weeks because I realized I parroted the subs thing for years without ever actually checking if subs were better for me. Then I went back and watched a few shows dubbed and yeah, sometimes the jokes land differently, but I still got the story and the feels either way. I honestly think the whole war is less about the show and more about people wanting to feel like they're in the cool club that knows something. Your buddy is right that he's not missing stuff, and you're right that something gets lost in translation, but that's true of subs too, since translating Japanese into text is its own kind of loss. So maybe we're all just picking teams like you said, and the real answer is watch whichever one keeps you coming back.
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