So, what is the deal with all of the rage against the American distributors of anime (eg ADV). By now, everybody who reads more than a few anime blogs a day knows that there was some type of hoopla over Sazumyia Haruhi no Yuuutsu being licensed by ADV, or possibly some other American R1 distributor. I noticed that almost universally there was no lack of shear hatred and dread at the thought of “X” company getting the show.…(more)…

There were a few non-American bloggers who had the standard line. “I usually don’t care about X title being releasing in America by X distributor….but I just had to comment.” Really, because it seemed like a lot of those who posted actually did care…a lot. I agree, some of it is justified because there are many examples of good shows being butchered by sub par dubbing, overlays, subbing, and whatnot; many of the other blogs on this subject go into great detail about it.

Obviously, the American bloggers were just as upset about the issue, if not more so. I’m not sure how many of them were just catching on some coat tails and riding a good meme for what it was worth. Don’t get me wrong, I do think they were genuinely concerned about a great series getting crappified, but I think most got carried away with the subject. Some of the commentors on those posts were even worse.

In all honesty, I don’t really care who gets the license for SHnY because it really doesn’t matter as long as they put some amount of effort into the dubbing. I’m not a “pure-ist” that believes that the dubbing of a series should be as close to the “original” as possible. That’s not even possible. Translation inherently changes the meaning at a low level. One can hope to get the entirety of the plot across in a translation but it is practically impossible to completely convey every single detail and nuance.

In that vein of thought, maybe we should start to consider dubbing another art form separate from the original work. I’m not saying that dubbing should move away from the translation or that it should actively change the story line. This is what I mean. When a dub is reviewed it should be judged on what it adds or takes away from the show, not how close it is to the original.

It’s fine to judge a work, a dub job is an additional work, one it’s own or in conjunction with the show. However, the pure-ist mindset automatically limits your ability to judge based on merit because the pure-ist view already knows what he wants to see. When impressionism and impressionist artist started to show their work, the reviewers balked at it because it didn’t fit into the mold of what they wanted to see or what they deemed proper. Now I’m not comparing the apples and oranges of painting and dubbing. I’m comparing the mindset of the reviewer. The pure-ist believes in a set method and reasons that there is only one way to do things while the other side gives the “artist” more leeway to examine the subject.