Why is dual audio such a necessity for people?

[Magical CC]

As someone whose mother language is neither English or Japanese, I prefer Japanese over English simply because the Japanese voice actresses/actors do better job than English ones.

[Splodge]

For a lot of people, there's a purity aspect to it. Some people want to experience something as close to how it was originally intended as possible. I treat things on a case by case basis, but unless the English VA (like in Xenoblade) is really good, I'd much rather have that sense of "purity". That's not just Japanese either, no matter what it is, I'd much rather experience something in it's original accent. I think that there is, most of the time, a real sense of loss in something that has a dub. That's nothing against dubs, but take a film like Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky (as I'm sure you all know), is an incredibly Russian film, and just thinking about watching in anything but Russian is a simply perverse. Then take something like Persona. It's highly rooted in Japan and it's culture (somewhat), and it just sounds jarring to hear people talk about Japan in English. I don't remember any examples in Persona, but it's like whenever someone in some High-School Anime talks about "failing English" or anything else along thse lines. I just think "oooh, no stop. You're embarassing youself".

Of course that's just my opinion. Which is literally the only deciding factor here. I can justify my perferences all day long, but at the same time, giving reasons for why English VAs are better is equally right. There's nothing wrong with having an opinion, and I think it rather bigoted to have an actual distate that some people have a fucking peference.

[Zera]

Have you seen the difference between the English and Japanese VA for Klonoa Wii? Klonoa's voice is SO different that it's not even funny. I want a proper sounding cat-that-looks-like-a-rabbit, and the Japanese VA portrays the character much better.

[Pete Rose: Baseball Legend]

The English voice acting will be good enough for me most of the time. Voice acting performances in games aren't usually amazing so good enough will suffice.

I'm also perfectly fine if they don't dub something over at all. I can then practice my crappy Japanese at least.

The Japanese voices seem more natural the majority of the time(mostly due to them not having to match lip movements and being able to record the voices before production), but unless it's a really stellar Japanese performance or the English dub is really awful I stick with the English.

I do hate how they always seem to draw from the same pool of English speaking VAs though. I like a lot of these actors but a little variety wouldn't hurt.

Maybe we'll start seeing different VAs now that a lot of the established ones went on strike. I'd be suprised if the strike does anything though tbh. Voice acting is very competitive so publishers will probably just hire people that aren't any worse outside the union and the old VA's will come crawling back eventually.

[Skynstein]

Voice acting can be good in any language ok maybe not in Portuguese of Portugal, the quality comes from the effort that goes into it.

I usually prefer Japanese, though, because muh waifus sound better in it.

[DragonFlames]

I really don't mind the English dub for most things. A prime example would be the Tales games. They usually have FANTASTIC english voice acting, but sometimes the voices just don't really fit the characters. One such example would be Lloyd's voice from the original Tales of Symphonia. The japanese voice just fit his character better in my opinion and I prefer his Dawn of the New World english voice over the original (english) one as well.

A counter-example is Jude from Tales of Xillia. His english voice actor fits the role better than the japanese one.

Another example is Marta from Dawn of the New World. I like both voices, but it is funny to see Rie Kugimiya, also known as the queen of tsundere (Shana, Aria, Taiga among others) voice act a clingy fangirl.

The same can be applied to Fire Emblem Awakening, too. I prefer Sully's english voice over her japanese one, but I like Lissa's japanese voice better than her english one, which doesn't really fit her to be honest. And then there's cases like Chrom, Sumia, Frederick, Lucina, Severa and Lon'qu where I genuinely think that both versions are equally good.

Fun fact: The same guys that voice Chrom in Awakening also voice Alvin in Tales of Xillia and its sequel (That being the almighty Tomokazu Sugita and Matthew Mercer, respectively). I now picture Chrom saying: "Oh Jude, hold me tight and let's tether all night long." *shudders*

And that's exactly it: A matter of preference.

EDIT: Also, british english sounds cool. I'd love to be able to speak it properly. I would be able to piss off so many English teachers where I come from...

Edited December 4, 2015 by DragonFlames

[Phoenix_Kensai]

In my case, I like having dual audio just because I often find Japanese voice acting to be better than English. Poor voice acting hurts the experience for me, even if it's only occasional, while relying on subtitles doesn't.

I don't know Japanese, so I'm not in the best position to judge the quality of acting, of course. That might be a part of why I it sounds better to me. Still. I don't mind English dubs when they're good, but I like when I'm given the option to choose, just in case.

[angienessyo]

For me it ultimately depends which I experience first. Having been into anime for years and years, I've gotten pretty used to Japanese vocal tracks. But I still prefer to experience things in English because it's very important to me that I can focus on the action on screen without needing to read subtitles. It's a bit different if it's a text heavy game or anime that involves a lot of standing around. But if there's a lot of dialogue during really well done action scenes, I want it in English. And of course if the dub is just garbage, it's nice to have the Japanese vocals available.

I remember playing through Awakening with the English vocal track on and then switching over to Japanese for fun randomly. And I was very disappointed that my female Robin went from having the deeper adult female voice in English to having something super high pitched in Japanese. The same with Cherche. I loved her English voice, but found her Japanese voice way too high pitched and squeaky for the character. So yeahhh, I stick with the English voice track, even though it cracks me up that Lucina in Japanese=potato girl in Attack on Titan.