this post was submitted on 29 May 2026
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This has to be sampling bias or something; most classic dubs sucked.
Or it’s just nostalgia. MS Gundam Wing, Trigun, YuYu, DBZ, Tenchi, Bebop, all those Toonami era shows feel right dubbed. Tho watching stuff like DB Super I prefer the sub now.
rewatch and compare closed captioned (Japanese with Japanese text). Then localized on your own, and review how Toonami butchered a LOT.
whole ass episodes they omitted.
As bad as the translation and other changes in Pokémon were, the voice acting was great (English and German dubs)
Probably because it was actually a show for ~10 yo kids, so the style the 90s dub studios were doing was appropriate.
It also helps that the voice actors for the Rocket Trio in every language seen to have a blast.
Specifically the 4Kids dub and early TPCI dub (up until XY Kalos Quest) for me.
And then there was Ghost Stories.
That was either the best or the worst dub to exist, depending on how you look at it. They somehow managed to insult every person on the planet regardless of race, gender, nationality, political view, or anything. Yet its still hilarious at least to me.
Ghost Stories is literally the only one I'll watch dubbed.
As someone who just watched Trigun dubbed for the forst time a year oslr so ago.... I would not call it a great dub. It wasn't awful by any stretch, but it doesn't hold up against something like Cowboy Bebop either. The truth is, there have always been, and there continues to be, really good dubs, but they have also always been few and far between. It takes more money than most are willing to invest to make them good, but there's always a few gems that are willing to pay up and make them work.
Yeah, the ones that made it to TV in the late 90s and early 00s had mid to decent dubs. But anything else was localized as cheaply as possible. There's some gems in there, but mostly the dubs sucked until business realized how deep the market was. Evangelion is a good example. Great show, but it was clear when it was brought over they thought they were doing some cartoon and not a generational existential crisis.
Dubbed is the only way to watch Yu Yu.
It's all in Tuna’s title:
Anchoring to nostalgia is one hell of a bias.