Introduction

I'll be the first to admit that I'm no good at this whole 'introductory' thing, but here goes. My name is Kasey, and I've been watching anime since before I could spell my own name. It started with the campy, over-done Speed Racer, and spiraled into Samurai Pizza Cats, Sailor Moon, Pokémon, Dragon Ball Z, and so on. At the time I watched all of these in English, as they were aired on television.

Around the time that I turned ten I began watching Dragon Ball Z in the Japanese subtitles. These were much harder for me to get my hands on, but I had some connections and breezed through the Cell Saga while most people were waiting for new episodes to air (for those of you unfamiliar with Dragon Ball Z, I was probably a good thirty or forty episodes ahead). It was around that time that I started paying attention to the debate of dub versus sub.

Which is to say, whether a show is better when dubbed over in English, or when the Japanese audio is merely subtitled.

So what does this have to do with anything? I would like to think that over the years I've become at least somewhat knowledgeable about this subject. I give each show I watch a fair try in both Japanese and English, both with and without translations. These days dozens of new anime are being brought to the United States, and a good handful of those are being aired on television. My goal is to tell you which ones are worth watching, and which dubs you should avoid.

Right now, the three shows I aim to analyze are these:
Code Geass: Cartoon Network, Sunday 5:00 AM
Moribito: Cartoon Network, Sunday 5:30 AM
Gurren Lagann: Sci-Fi Network, Monday 11:01 PM
(all times listed are in Eastern Standard Time)

Of these, I have the most familiarity with Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, having watched all of it in Japanese. On the other hand, I have only seen a few episodes of Code Geass in Japanese, and have seen nothing of Moribito. For each of these I hope to bring a different approach, as I have a different frame of reference for each.

Unfortunately, a good deal of time has passed since each of these shows began airing, so for those people simply wishing to know more about the show, I suggest going elsewhere. I will provide a general overview of the show's main plot, but that is no exception for actually watching the episodes. For those people who have already seen the show, this is for you.

I especially hope to be useful to those people who, like me, have seen a series in Japanese and wish to know if the English is worth watching. This is particularly relevant in the case of Gurren Lagann, as DVDs are being released without the English language track included. Why bother buying the multilingual DVDs if the dub is simply mediocre? These are the sorts of things I would like to discuss.