Bad English Dubbed Anime

I wasn't expecting it to happen, but I seem to have run out of good English dubbed anime to watch. And I'm not talking about the plot of the story itself because a handful of the anime I've been watching lately have somewhat decent storylines, but the voice acting, voice quality of the English voice cast (and also the way they pronounced words), and overall sound mixing sounded terrible! Now I understand why a lot of people say that English dubbed anime sucks. They probably watched the same ones I saw recently.

Why do I say the voice acting was terrible? Well for one, the characters sounded like they're reading from a script. They over-enunciated each word and spoke so slowly that they just sounded unnatural if not flat. Their voices did not contain the emotion portrayed by their character's face or body during some scenes. Their voices were annoyingly shrill at times probably in an effort to make the character sound young. Then there's that "pausing at the wrong time in the middle of the sentence" habit that they seem to have. My poor heart (and ears) can't take it!

Examples of anime I've seen recently which were, in my opinion, horribly dubbed although I've never seen the original Japanese versions:

• Ayashi no Ceres
• Kyo Kara Maoh!
• Weiss Kreuz

Too bad, because these anime had a few hot guys in them. Hehe.

Weiss Kreuz (Knight Hunters) Anime Summary and Review

(Warning: This post may contain spoilers.)

I had started to watch Weiss Kreuz today but didn't get past the third of twenty-five episodes. I couldn't get over the really bad voice acting. Yes, the English dub sounded terrible but I hate having to read subs so it's bye-bye Weiss Kreuz a.k.a. Knight Hunters. Then again I probably would've at least given subs a chance if the story was really good. But it wasn't. It felt forced and the events seemed too contrived. I don't know... it just didn't "flow".

From what I gathered from the first two episodes, Weiss Kreuz is about a group of assassins for hire. These assassins, all men of different "genres", cover up their activities by being florists during the day. (I say "genres" because it feels like they intentionally engineered each guy to appeal to a different group of viewers - there's the innocent young boy, the older somewhat apathetic man, the seemingly emotionless guy who also happens to wield a sword ala samurai, and the generic one you don't notice too much.) All the girls in the neighborhood swoon and fawn over them because they're so handsome and cute, and they have no idea that these guys are really assassins. How's that for contrived? Then there are the events that unfold...

The samurai guy visits a mystery lady friend in the hospital where a little girl mistakes him for her brother who she hasn't seen for some time, and later on the samurai guy discovers that this girl's brother has been killed by the man they were ordered to assassinate. This lady friend he had visited in the hospital was a victim of a hit and run and the samurai guy happened to see the face of the man in the car that hit her. Later on he happened to stumble into that man on an unrelated assignment. Too many "coincidences" for my taste.

The only good thing I could find about the anime is that the main characters are hot guys, which is such a waste really. I would not recommend watching Weiss Kreuz unless you find yourself totally bored with absolutely nothing better to watch.