Unpopular opinion: subbed anime is worse than dubbed for action shows

I know everyone online screams that subs are the only way. But I picked Dragon Ball Super to test this. Watched the first arc subbed, then the Tournament of Power dubbed. The subbed version had me reading subtitles during fight scenes. Missed half the visuals because my eyes were stuck on the bottom of the screen. The dubbed version let me actually watch Goku vs. Jiren without looking away. The voice acting is fine in English, not perfect but good enough. I ended up finishing the whole show dubbed and enjoyed it way more. Has anyone else found a specific show where dubs just work better for the action?

2 comments

2 Comments

blair_webb1mo ago

Funny you mention Dragon Ball because I tried watching the original series subbed once and totally spaced out during the Ginyu Force fight. Got so caught up reading the subtitles I didn't even notice Goku was doing the whole body swap thing until like ten seconds later. My buddy had to rewind it for me. Ended up just watching Kai dubbed after that and it was way easier to follow the actual fighting. Weird how missing one line of text can totally mess up a scene like that.

susan6491mo ago

Oh man, I actually read somewhere that the average person reads subtitles at about 250 words per minute but spoken dialogue can hit way faster, like 400 words per minute in action scenes. So no wonder we miss stuff. I remember seeing a study that said your brain has to basically multitask between reading and watching, and during big fights your focus just breaks. I've had the exact same problem with other anime, especially when the screen gets really chaotic.