Evangelion, which is the preferred dub? Netflix, Amazon Prime, ADV???

[yugioh54]

I'm confused that they brought back Spike Spencer as Shinji for the Rebuild movies but make a new dub that doesn't include him. TIffany Grant and Alison Keith? I haven't watched the movies and have only seen the 2nd half of evangelion with the ADV dub. Which is the preferred dub?

[Seto Kaiba]

I'm confused that they brought back Spike Spencer as Shinji for the Rebuild movies but make a new dub that doesn't include him. TIffany Grant and Alison Keith? I haven't watched the movies and have only seen the 2nd half of evangelion with the ADV dub. Which is the preferred dub?

You don't often hear fan communities discuss dubs and dub quality these days.

The longtime anime hobbyists tend to gravitate towards Japanese audio w/ subtitles, and have since the early 90's. There's a lot said about it being about the desire for the most authentic, undiluted viewing experience. It's also, I think, a preference shaped by those longtime hobbyists having had little choice in the matter until very recently with most shows only being available to non-Japanese speaking audiences via less legitimate channels like Hong Kong bootleg tapes with hilariously bad dubs or passable subs in the 80's and 90's and internet fansubs thereafter. Nowadays, the major distributors put a lot of their new licenses out as simulcasts on streaming services, pushing new episodes out a day or two after they air in Japan in subs-only form and looping back to dub them later. Subs kind of still dominate the anime conversation, so to speak. Dubs are something of an afterthought meant for new and casual viewers.

From what I've heard from those Evangelion fans who care about such things, they seem to consider the ADV Films dub the definitive version of the English dub. A lot of them questioned why the series was redubbed to begin with, and felt the Netflix dub was inferior to ADV's. I can't recall seeing any commentary at all about Funimation's or Amazon's.

[yugioh54]

While the demand for dubs isn't as high, there were still a number of great dubs that rivaled the original REMOVED sub. For example Fullmetal Alchemist, Yu Yu Hakusho, Cowboy Bebop, Big O, Naruto and western inspired animes such as Black Lagoon, Berserk all have great dubs. YYH and Eva being the ones that weren't inspired by a western genre yet still found a great english cast and audience.

[Seto Kaiba]

While the demand for dubs isn't as high, there were still a number of great dubs that rivaled the original REMOVED sub. For example Fullmetal Alchemist, Yu Yu Hakusho, Cowboy Bebop, Big O, Naruto and western inspired animes such as Black Lagoon, Berserk all have great dubs. YYH and Eva being the ones that weren't inspired by a western genre yet still found a great english cast and audience.

Good dubs do exist, but they are the exception and not the rule. For every Cowboy Bebop or Fullmetal Alchemist that got a dub cast who fit the characters and voice actors who didn't phone the performances in, there were fifty mediocre-to-dreadful dubs like Angel Cop, Cardcaptor Sakura, Wolf's Rain, or literally anything produced under 4Kids or Harmony Gold.

The low budgets and limited talent pools of the distributors producing those localizations mean that there are far more bad dubs than good ones, a situation that looks set to continue indefinitely.

When I first learned of the Netflix Evangelion redub controversy years ago I actually went and gave the Netflix dub a whirl. My take was that the Netflix dub wasn't much different from the ADV Films dub quality-wise. To me, the main difference was in how closely the dub followed the letter of the original Japanese dialog. Netflix's dub used a new script provided by Studio Khara, which was a lot more accurate to the Japanese dialog but it didn't flow as naturally in English as the more heavily tweaked, and consequently less accurate, ADV Films script.

You're pretty much always gonna get a better, more authentic, higher quality performance if you're watching the original Japanese audio with subs... unless you're watching Ghost Stories or Angel Links, then you're just going to have a bad time no matter what.

[yugioh54]

I admit I like some of the 4kids dubs Pokemon, Ultimate Muscle (which got a season 2 that was co produced by 4kids) Yugioh and its spinoffs and even One piece and Shaman King, they had a good talent pool. Back to EVA, I always heard the dub had some following such as they prefer Gendo Ikari original dub voice, so I thought it was held in higher regard

[Chris]

From what I've heard from those Evangelion fans who care about such things, they seem to consider the ADV Films dub the definitive version of the English dub. A lot of them questioned why the series was redubbed to begin with, and felt the Netflix dub was inferior to ADV's. I can't recall seeing any commentary at all about Funimation's or Amazon's.

I have no proof of this, but it feels like it was redubbed because Khara wanted to have total control of the translation, as they've been doing since the whole debacle with Funimation's delayed release of 3.33. The subs on the G-Kids BD release (same as Netflix), have clunky translation choices like using "Children" when referring to a singular child (e.g. calling Shinji the "Third Children").

[Seto Kaiba]

I have no proof of this, but it feels like it was redubbed because Khara wanted to have total control of the translation, as they've been doing since the whole debacle with Funimation's delayed release of 3.33.

I asked around to my friends who do the convention circuit as fans and a few who used to go as industry hands, and the story they told is that Studio Khara apparrently attended the US convention screenings of 3.0 in 2013 and were absolutely livid when the convention audiences didn't take the film as seriously as they felt it deserved.

That, allegedly, is what drove Studio Khara to demand Funimation re-sub and re-dub the entire movie before release in the US and abroad. They laid the blame for the film's reception squarely on the localization team, who had "disrespected" the film by taking liberties with the translation, and then demanded Funimation redo the whole thing with a "respectful" translation Studio Khara would provide themselves. That "respectful" translation the Studio Khara reps delivered ended up being overly literal and unnatural sounding, but Studio Khara was apparently happy enough with it to make the same decision/mistake for all future releases and re-releases to ensure the integrity of their work was "respected".

I got a couple different versions of the same story from different people, a few of which allege that it was the dub screening that really sent them over the edge because it Kaworu's flirtatious dialog and some of the movie's more nonsense moments got laughs from the audience, but they all seem to agree on the generalities.

[Chris]

I asked around to my friends who do the convention circuit as fans and a few who used to go as industry hands, and the story they told is that Studio Khara apparrently attended the US convention screenings of 3.0 in 2013 and were absolutely livid when the convention audiences didn't take the film as seriously as they felt it deserved.

I've heard that same story, and apparently a few years ago, somebody got their hands on a screener DVD of that first dub and released it online.

[drewdavis]

The dubbing rating is not high but not too bad either!

[Mafty]

I came to Eva later, so the only dub avaible to me is the Netflix one, which I think is decent, though I mainly watch the subs anyway.

[Theodore02]

When it comes to kolkata ff "Neon Genesis Evangelion," the preferred dub often sparks debate among fans. The Netflix version is praised for its updated script and inclusion of diverse voice actors, though some miss the original ADV dub’s nostalgic charm and distinctive performances by the original cast. The ADV dub is favored by long-time fans for its emotional depth and character portrayal. Ultimately, the "best" dub depends on personal preference—whether you value a more modern adaptation or the nostalgic quality of the original ADV dub.

[Quiddity]

I'm probably 90 - 95% a sub watcher these days but when I first got back into Evangelion (around 2000/2001, I feel quite old...) it was mostly dubs that I watched. Eva was the rare outlier for me where I really disliked the dub (the original ADV one was the only option back then). I didn't care for the script, I didn't care for a good amount of the casting (Shinji and Asuka in particular) and in comparison to the Japanese voice actors who I thought did a great job it mostly came off as cringe to me. There were a few stand out performances by Misato and Gendou's actors in particular. I was not only totally fine with the Netflix redub but totally welcomed it although I'll admit to only watching part of it, not all 26 episodes. It was fine for me, aside from some of the awkward translation choices referenced elsewhere in this thread which was also an issue with the subbed version. The dub history of Eva unfortunately also suffers from the lack of care for continuity in voice actors that you tend to see with English dubs given the constant changes in right holders over the years (off the top of my head, ADV, Manga Entertainment, Funimation, Netflix and Amazon have all held rights to at least some of Eva at some point) whereas its fairly consistent in Japanese; at least among the major characters I can't recall any cast changes. As one who welcomed a redub I can't exactly complain about two different actors having voiced particular characters but if I did the research I wouldn't be surprised if many have had 3 - 4 different voice actors over the years.

[Seto Kaiba]

The dub history of Eva unfortunately also suffers from the lack of care for continuity in voice actors that you tend to see with English dubs given the constant changes in right holders over the years (off the top of my head, ADV, Manga Entertainment, Funimation, Netflix and Amazon have all held rights to at least some of Eva at some point) whereas its fairly consistent in Japanese; at least among the major characters I can't recall any cast changes. As one who welcomed a redub I can't exactly complain about two different actors having voiced particular characters but if I did the research I wouldn't be surprised if many have had 3 - 4 different voice actors over the years.

It's not a lack of care, really. It's more to do with the limited talent pool for localization/dub voice actors.

Dubbing anime has long been kind of a fly-by-night undertaking. A lot of the distributors producing dubs for their localizations of licensed anime are running on very thin margins and can't afford to hire voice actors at guild rates. (That's actually a main reason why so many anime distribution firms set up shop in Texas... to get away from the SAG/AFTRA and WGA-W.) So the pay ain't great, and because the production budgets are small it tends also to lead to marathon recording sessions to minimize studio costs. That restricts the talent pool pretty severely right off the bat, making conflicts in scheduling a frequent cause for recasting. Many of the established distributors tend to be a bit proprietarial about their vetted talent pools, so if a license changes hands many or all of the characters can end up recast because the voice actors they had previously aren't on the list.

That, combined with Evangelion's multiple license changes, created a perfect storm where most characters have at least three different English dub voice actors and some have as many as six. (Kaworu wins there, having changed voice actors between the original dub and the movies, then again for the Director's Cut, then again under Netflix, Funimation, and Amazon.)

[Quiddity]

The dub history of Eva unfortunately also suffers from the lack of care for continuity in voice actors that you tend to see with English dubs given the constant changes in right holders over the years (off the top of my head, ADV, Manga Entertainment, Funimation, Netflix and Amazon have all held rights to at least some of Eva at some point) whereas its fairly consistent in Japanese; at least among the major characters I can't recall any cast changes. As one who welcomed a redub I can't exactly complain about two different actors having voiced particular characters but if I did the research I wouldn't be surprised if many have had 3 - 4 different voice actors over the years.

It's not a lack of care, really. It's more to do with the limited talent pool for localization/dub voice actors.

Dubbing anime has long been kind of a fly-by-night undertaking. A lot of the distributors producing dubs for their localizations of licensed anime are running on very thin margins and can't afford to hire voice actors at guild rates. (That's actually a main reason why so many anime distribution firms set up shop in Texas... to get away from the SAG/AFTRA and WGA-W.) So the pay ain't great, and because the production budgets are small it tends also to lead to marathon recording sessions to minimize studio costs. That restricts the talent pool pretty severely right off the bat, making conflicts in scheduling a frequent cause for recasting. Many of the established distributors tend to be a bit proprietarial about their vetted talent pools, so if a license changes hands many or all of the characters can end up recast because the voice actors they had previously aren't on the list.

That, combined with Evangelion's multiple license changes, created a perfect storm where most characters have at least three different English dub voice actors and some have as many as six. (Kaworu wins there, having changed voice actors between the original dub and the movies, then again for the Director's Cut, then again under Netflix, Funimation, and Amazon.)

Yes, good points, I think Evangelion was one of the earlier dubs out there to eschew LA or Canada (the common places for dubbing anime at the time) and doing it in Texas has certainly has become a much bigger thing over the years. Cost concerns and the studio fighting with the actor's union up in Canada is what caused us to have a totally different English dub cast for Zeta Gundam versus Mobile Suit Gundam and Char's Counterattack. Unfortunately for English dubs the voice actors have little to no leverage; they aren't well known celebrities and if anything the hardcore fandom makes it even tougher because so many hardcore anime fans turn their noses in disgust at English dubs and give them no chance. Less of an audience for the dub and hence less monetary benefits from either producing one or putting in a ton of effort to ensure the cast always remains consistent.

[Seto Kaiba]

Yes, good points, I think Evangelion was one of the earlier dubs out there to eschew LA or Canada (the common places for dubbing anime at the time) and doing it in Texas has certainly has become a much bigger thing over the years.

I guess that'd how broadly how you want to define "earlier"... ADV's Neon Genesis Evangelion dub was produced about 2-3 years after some of the anime distributors made the decision to relocate from Los Angeles to suburban Dallas and Houston. Funimation set up shop there in '95, and ADV in '96, if memory serves.

That said, I wouldn't say producing dubs in Texas has really grown as a premise so much as the companies that moved there in the 90's survived the volatility of the market and were able to grow where many of their fellows who remained in Los Angeles did not. Manga Entertainment, Geneon USA, and Viz Media remained in the Los Angeles area. Dentsu shut down its subsidiary Geneon USA in 2007, Manga Entertainment effectively ceased to exist in 2017 when it was folded into Starz and then Lionsgate, and Viz survived by being aquired by and merged with ShoPro (the US arm of manga giant Shogakukan-Shueisha). Dubbing in Texas became the standard because the last men standing in the industry were the ones who set up shop out in suburban Dallas and Houston.

The biggest winner is probably Funimation, now that they've merged with Crunchyroll and are under the umbrella of Sony Pictures while their chief competition, ADV Films, split up into five companies in bankruptcy near the tail end of the recession in '09.

Unfortunately for English dubs the voice actors have little to no leverage; they aren't well known celebrities and if anything the hardcore fandom makes it even tougher because so many hardcore anime fans turn their noses in disgust at English dubs and give them no chance. Less of an audience for the dub and hence less monetary benefits from either producing one or putting in a ton of effort to ensure the cast always remains consistent.

There are some English voice actors who've done alright for themselves. A lot of the veterans of 80's and early 90's dubbing are SAG/AFTRA now and get much better pay and working conditions than the rank-and-file. A lot of them are also much better regarded than newer talent, since simulcasts have increased the profile of subs-only releases. It takes quite a bit of sour public perception of them... like the scandal surrounding Vic Mignogna.

Newer talent definitely don't have much leverage for exactly the reason you describe, and it's harder to gain leverage through traditional means since Texas is nowhere near as friendly to organized labor as California.

Ironically, several of the long-time veterans effectively priced themselves out of the market for a few years there because SAG/AFTRA rates were higher than what the majority of studios were willing to pay and some low-budget productions that were VERY committed to voice cast consistency ended up blowing the lion's share of their budgets hiring legacy voice actors back. (The best/most extreme example probably being Robotech: the Shadow Chronicles, which blew a substantial portion of its less than $1M US budget hiring back the likes of Richard Epcar, Tony Oliver, Dan Woren, Greg Snegoff, and by hiring Mark Hamill and Chase Masterson as guest actors.)