Anime fans: English subtitles or English Voiceovers?

[Words Of Wisdom]

iclim4 said:

Words Of Wisdom said:

Depends on the show.

I've watched tons of anime and I can honestly say that there are a fair number of English dubtitles that show up their Japanese counterparts. There is also the latter. Listen to both whenever possible and then make a judgment.

Agreed

I liked fullmetal alchemist, Inuyasha and Full metal panic eng dubs.
their voices fit so well that when i heard the japanese dubs, the jpn dubs seemed awkward.

though the majority of the eng dubbings suck for other animes. 

Full Metal Panic is an example of an excellent dubtitling job.

I've watched the original series and Fumoffu in Japanese and English (every episode) and TSR in Japanese only.  I can honestly say the English voice cast is superior to the Japanese one for every character except the main character (Sousuke Sagara) where I will give a nod to the Japanese VA and his excellent rendition of the line "Nan demo nai."  Despite that, Mike Kleinhenz as Kalinin and Vic Mignoga as Kurz Weber of the English cast alone put the entire Japanese cast to shame with their terrific voice acting.

Onegai Twins is another anime where the English cast is clearly better than the Japanese cast with exceptions for maybe one or two characters (Ichigo).  Read or Die OVA would another very well English cast anime.  Of course if you check the casts, you'll notice that Crispin Freeman is in both; I'd say in general that most anime dubbing he participates in turns out extremely well so his name is one to look for.

That said, I pretty much hate the anime purist who thinks that subs are always better than dubs and refuses to actually listen to any good dubs.  It's an egotistical position born of ignorance to me as I feel that most people who take this position wouldn't even know bad Japanese voice acting and line delivery if it bit them.