You should be aware that even the Japanese voices aren't lip synched. The "lip flaps" last the same lenght of time as the line does, but they don't make any effort to match the movements to the sound the way that American animators do.

This thread is getting old. People who like English dubs should watch dubs. People who like the Japanese audio with subs should watch that. People who think that it's anyone's business but your own what you watch should GTFO. Everybody wins.

Forgive me for posting on a older thread, but I really wanna say this.

I have to admit I was one of those people who think that the original Japan voices have to be better cause its original. After watching Bebop I realise its not always the case. In the end its all about the performance of the voice actors.

Though I will say that just cause we don't fully understand the language doesn't mean we can't feel the emotion. Thats like saying that foriegn songs can't convey emotion just cause we don't understand the lyrcis, its about the feeling the song or the line gives and not nessacary the words. I mean, how do you think body language works? Just certain ways people speak or the flow of the dialouge or the volume and intensity he or she speaks can convey alot of emotion. Combine them with translated subtitles and you have characters that you understand despite language barrier.

Of course there are bad dubs out there (4kids, please just die), but there are also bad Japanese voice acting as well, most of them are filtered out before getting localised or lisenced or course, and the bad ones don't get known anyway.

Though there are cases of well known anime with bad Japanese voice acting. (Sakura from Tsubasa Chronicle comes to mind, god she was so dull in the first episode when shes supposed to be arguing with Touya, no spirit or anger at all, just fake girly annoyance in her voice and you can barely even feel that, god. Just cause she's a princess instead of a Cardcaptor now doesn't mean she lost her spirit, she defintly has it in the manga version)

And there are examples of the English dub better and make more sense than the Japanes version. (Cowboy Bebop, c'mon, the whole style and direction was very American, along with ethinicity in differenct characters.)

To me these factors in the end result whether a dub or sub is better.

1. The directon, casting and performance of the actors. (MOST important)
2.Where the anime takes place, if Japan then Japanese makes more sense in context, if American, or at least American style or even Eurpoean, English fits the context. If fantasy, see point 1.

In the end, its all about who did a better job with the voices and context. Along with personal taste, but we should aknowlege at least that both dubs and subs can potentially be better than the other, cause nothing its 100% certain in the world.

Having a good dub is kind of important to me, since I usually do stuff while watching and don't always want to listen for the Japanese or give the show my undivided attention and read the subtitles constantly. I've found some really good dubs (Galaxy Angel, Slayers, Conan, You're Under Arrest, Outlaw Star, Cowboy Bebop, most anything involving the Ocean Group or the guys who do the majority of ADV titles), I've found some dubs that are more of a satirical bonus feature (thinking of Love Hina, Project Ako and Divergence Eve specifically...Anytime they try to add distracting accents to the main characters is an immediate death note for the dub track). I'm happy the quality of dubs has gone up during this period where anime has become more popular.

Now if all of the English voices from those ADV titles didn't all sound alike...

Actually GoldfishX, Kitsune with the southern accent in Love Hina was weird at first but became one of the best voices in the English dub as you got used to it. The rest of the characters were pretty meh. Characters with Kansai dialects are usually given a southern or northeast city accent. It's probably the most comparable way to do it in an English dub. Sure, you could try to mimic the Japanese accent if you wanted to with limited success but really those two american sets of accents tend to do the job granted the performance doesn't suck. Most of the minor characters including Kitsune in Love Hina had really good voices in the English dub. It's too bad the main characters couldn't carry the same oomph.