Emmisary of Despair...that's simply not true.
For the examples I cited, the original voice for Ken Nakashima was shouting--shouting!--at Miyuki & Natsumi, and he sounded angry.
Now, if you and I spoke different languages, and I started shouting at someone, and I sounded angry at that person...would you assume I was angry at the person, that I was embarrassed before the person...or would you not know what to think, since you couldn't understand what I was saying?
Like I said, it was the wrong emotion for the scene. Ken Nakajima was busy watching adult videos in the scene as part of evidence gathering against this on-the-run pornographer forcing young women into said videos. As Natsumi & Miyuki give their young groupie a tour of the precinct, they open the screening room...and see what Ken is watching in there.
In the original Japanese, Ken then proceeds to scream at the others at the top of his lungs. But in the English dub, Ken expresses despair at the discovery with more of a hurried explanation.
Given that Ken is a demure character, given to quieter and more intimate scenes...the English dub fit him more than the original Japanese.
Also, in the case of Nabeshin...when Watanabe asks Hyatt who she is, Nabeshin then appears on the screen. In the original Japanese, Nabeshin gives his name in a quiet soft-spoken manner--which doesn't fit a scene-stealing moment. In the English dub, Brett Weaver gives a booming "It's Nabeshin!!!"--which fits the scene better.
And those are just two examples.
I'm not saying that all dub is better than all sub; don't give me words I never said. But I am saying that when one can take the time to record the voices separately and beldn them together like the putting-together of a jigsaw puzzle, one can take the time to get the voice right for the scene.
On the other hand, if all one has is the script and few if any directions for any given scene...one has to be darn lucky to have the voice fit the scene every time.
Like I said before, not all dubs are good. Right Stuf gave one of the cops in Assemble Insert a whiny falsetto--and that disrupts the enjoyment of the video for me whenever that character speaks. (Fortunately, he has very few lines.) And MMG, with its two-person dubbing for their videos? Please! What did they do, cast the receptionist and video editor?
I've listened to videos in the original Japanese before. I've seen subbed videos. Some are okay...and some aren't.
I just prefer dubbed better because it seems to me that the American companies take more time on the dialogue than the Japanese companies.
It is a "talkie" cartoon, after all; the dialogue should be considered as important as the visuals. Otherwise, the Japanese companies would be making their own "Angel's Egg"s.
Just my opinion. Some subs are good. Some dubs are good. One should try a little of both, get the best of all of them.
(Of course, this leaves aside the idea of some of the puns and jokes in anime being composed for an English-speaking audience. For example: in Serial Experiments: Lain, Ep.4, the teen boy Lain encounters in Fantoma asks her "Are you a PK too?"
In that setting, he was asking if she was another "player-killer", or character in an MMOG who hunts other players' characters.
Later on in that episode, in a fit of anger, she glares at the Men in Black--and the hi-tech goggles worn by one of them explodes into pieces. It was a PK burst from Lain, showing that she is a PK...but in the sense of being a psychokinetic.
Now I seriously doubt that the Japanese terms for "player-killing" and "psychokinesis" have the same initials. The pun doesn't work for the Japanese...but it does for the American audience.
Then again, SEL was made primarily for an American audience...so maybe it doesn't count in this discussion.)
