I read something somewhere that totally opened my eyes. Something that I ignored up until now. Something concerning my own beloved Death Note.
I learned the truth about Death Note earlier today. The truth regarding its English dub. For you see, I found a person who has seen the show both in Japanese, and in English, and he had this to say about the English dub: "Viz totally butchered Death Note."
After some research, I learned, he was right. All this time, I've been watching a watered-down version of a modern classic. Normally, I would've ignored such people in the past, branding them, "Dub haters." and thinking they were retarded asshole fans. But in truth, they weren't the retarded assholes; I was the retarded asshole fan! My close-mindedness led to ignorance, and my ignorance led to me not seeing the truth until now.
And that truth is this; if you see the English dub of Death Note; they don't use the original Japanese actors! And they don't use the original Japanese voice track, they all speak in modern English! And, nobody uses Japanese honorifics at all in the English dub! It's true! Not once does Light ever say, "Ryuzaki-san" anywhere on the Cartoon Network broadcast. This is a travesty, a tragedy of the televised art form.
In the past, I disregarded such criticism, because Death Note was largely un-altered from its Japanese iteration. The English dub has the same exact animation, music, and roughly the same dialogue from the Japanese original. I never cried foul because characters weren't changed, character named weren't changed, music wasn't changed, scenes were not edited nor deleted, the story was not altered, attempts at Americanization weren't made, censorship did not take place, and the voices were not radically altered from their Japanese counterparts. Oh, what a fool I was. These anime companies are just as bad as 4kids, and Funimation when it was dubbing DragonBall Z. It's just a little less blatant nowadays; that's why I hadn't noticed until now.
Now I understand when anime fans say corporations who bring anime to English-speaking countries in the Occident are evil. They remove the fucking honorifics! This aggression will not stand. I will not be made a fool of any longer. I'm gonna restart watching Death Note, the way it was meant to be viewed right now, as to purge myself of the god awful attempt at "dubbing" it suffered, if you can even call that a proper dub job.
So fuck you, Viz. Fuck you, Funimation, both of the present, as well as the past. Fuck you, ADV. And fuck anyone else who's ever removed the Japanese dialogue of these otherwise fantastic properties.
By the way, if you couldn't tell I was being sarcastic throughout this entire post, then you have no sense of humor at all. Death Note, in fact, has one of the best dubs I've ever heard, I don't mind the removal of Japanese honorifics, I personally have nothing against Viz, Bandai, and ADV, and although I used to despise Funi, I feel they have redeemed themselves, and they too have my respect. The only anime company I do consider "evil" is 4kids, and whoever was responsible for porting CardCaptor Sakura, er, I meant Cardcaptors over to America. And the guy who said, "Viz totally butchered Death Note" actually is a really retarded asshole troll, who needs to get a fucking life. GAWD!
