In my occasional perusal of the Anime News Network (ANN) site, I will sometimes against my better judgement dip into the comment sections. Every time I do I am reminded yet again of several things: 1) I am dissimilar in tastes to almost all the usual ANN commentators, and 2) yea gods and little fishes do those motherfuckers hate subtitled anime.

I myself hate dubbed anime.

Well, perhaps not hate them. They are just of no use to me whatsoever.

Now of course as I don’t understand Japanese, I’m going to need at least subtitles. But that is all that I need. I read very fast, and I really can read the words and still see the action of what’s going on in the rest of the picture.

I suppose those sad benighted souls who can’t do that need dubs. Poor bastards. I can even understand them wanting North American licensees of anime to put out dubs so they can get their fix. What I can’t understand — and what I see so much of on ANN — is the dub lovers whining and bitching when an anime is released to the North American market with only a sub.

Nobody owes you dubbed anime, you whiny crackwhores.

We’re lucky to get the subbed stuff sometimes. And the part that so many of them can’t get through their little pea-brains — for some titles, if they dub it, it will be too expensive to put out at all. So for those titles, it’s subs or nothing. The sad thing is, for plenty of so-called fans, if it’s subs or nothing, they want it to be nothing. Well fuck you too, buddy.

Now as I said, I prefer subs. I want to hear the Japanese voices. Because anime is Japanese. That’s the fucking point. It really really is the product of a completely different culture. That’s the interesting part, to me at least.

I read one comment at ANN about an upcoming anime, where said anime was derided as having too much about Japanese mysticism, and how it would not be popular because no one outside Japan wants to watch that stuff.

I want to watch that stuff. It’s indicative of a completely different worldview than that of my own culture. I’ve always been interested not just in the wide variety of beliefs on things that different cultures and peoples have, but why they have them.

But most North American fans just want robots and explosions. Oh, and big floppy titties. Dubbed in English.

Sometimes I don’t think they CAN read. (Yes, they’re posting text on a web board; I assume the worst of them are using voice-to-text and text-to-voice software, because they can’t read.)

Sorry, oh ye Mythical Reader; this has been a rant more than any kind of thoughtful statement. But I’m just tired of being around idiotic subhumans like this. At least ANN provides actual news stories on anime, and their reviews are useful to me — if an ANN reviewer hates it, I’ll probably love it; if ANN loves it, I know it’s shit.