Changing the Outlook - The Love Live! Dubs

There's a lot I could say about "cringe culture", how often the term is used and what it means, but I'm really not a fan of that kind of thing. What I am a fan of, however, is Love Live.

If you're a Love Live fan in any capacity, or really just an onlooker curious about the series, it's not uncommon for people to share their opinions about the series, and because of that it's not uncommon to hear stereotypes about the people who are interested in Love Live or even anime in general. There are a multitude of great videos on YouTube that express this (a favourite of mine being someone celebrating You Watanabe's birthday at their school) but it seems to come up pretty commonly in conversation when expressing your interest in the series. While usually caused by differing opinions with people outside the fandom, I don't think the Love Live fandom itself is without these differences. Between fans of Love Live themselves, there's a common topic people seem divisive about, or even claim is cringy, and I want to dive into that. Let's talk about the English dubs of the Love Live anime.

          

Before we jump into this I should say this is more about the Sunshine dub than the School Idol Project (or SIP for short) dub, since I'm not as familiar with the SIP dub as I am Sunshine's. I want to talk about more general aspects of the Sunshine dub, while I have a specific section dedicated to a smaller part of SIP's.

Shortly after I was introduced to Love Live, I found out the anime had dubs and always thought everyone just hated them. It was partially because of the classic sub vs dub debate that fills any anime fandom, but I'd tend to hear people only ever make fun of the dubs. I never found any genuine discussion. I'd often hear people say things like "Don't watch the Sunshine dub, it's cringy".

Looking up clips of the dub online myself, I found a lot of the comments weren't as harsh as I'd heard previously. I saw a lot of variety actually. Some loved the English voices, some hated them, and... okay, most of them just thought the lines were funny. There's a line in the first episode of the Sunshine dub where Chika claims Yoshiko has brain damage and that got really popular. Seeing the clips and mixed responses got me curious, so last March I watched the Sunshine dub and... I loved it. it's Love Live Sunshine after all, one of my favourite anime. Japanese or English, it'd be really hard to not love Sunshine with all my heart.

When I started planning to write this article, I wanted to convince other people to give the Love Live dubs a chance. They're something about the series I think are pretty underrated and often looked down upon. While I still would like to do that, there are a few more topics I'd like to talk about. Most importantly, giving reasons I think it makes sense to both enjoy the dub and be unwilling to watch it.

          

A common reason I hear for people not enjoying any anime dub is that the English voice actors don't fit the characters, or they sound strange. It's something I've previously been confused by, especially by people who don't speak Japanese themselves. Now however, I think a character having a "second voice" will sound really strange, regardless of the languages. Especially if you've associated them with the first voice you've been hearing. For example, if you're a big Kanan fan and enjoy watching the original sub, you're going to be used to hearing Kanan voiced by Nanaka Suwa. Suwa voices Kanan in pretty much all of the Love Live content out there: the music, the mobile games, and any of the live streams or stage events to name some of them. If you start watching the dub, you'll instead hear Kanan voiced by Michelle Rojas, a different voice than what you're used to. Her "hagu shiyou" is gonna hit different. When you think of You Watanabe's voice, you likely won't think of Apphia Yu, you'll think of Saito Shuka.

Yes, I have most of the English main cast for Sunshine memorized.

I think it's hard to introduce what you're interested in to people. When you recommend something you enjoy to a friend, I feel like it's not very likely they'll look into it further. This is something I've thought for a long time and I think it applies here. If someone is already a fan of Suwa it might be hard to introduce them to the dub where Kanan is voiced by someone else. It would mean they would have to actively accept that change, and that depends on the person. It's understanding to have no interest, or even have backlash against the chance of voice. It'd mean changing what you're used to and doing something new.

But isn't starting to watch the sub of a show "doing something new"? Would it be much different to start watching the dub too?

          

On the topic of a second voice, I think a lot of good choices were made in the dubs. If you hear people talk about any voices in a Love Live dub, it's likely going to be either Mari or Yoshiko. Two voices people seem not the fondest of, but I think they're some of the best in the whole series. Stick with me here.

Let's talk about Mari first. The blonde-haired jokester speaks using English in the original Japanese sub to accentuate her being a foreigner. It's hard to go a while watching the show without her saying some funny line in English; There's even a line in the sub where she says "Sorry, I can't speak Japanese" in English.

Mari's an Italian-American character, so it makes sense for her to speak English in the sub due to her knowledge of the language when studying overseas. But when translating all that dialogue to English it presents a problem: Mari can't add English words to her dialogue in the same way when all of the rest of her dialogue is in English. There are two solutions I see to the problem, and I think it justifies the choice they went with in the dub.

The first choice is removing the added English phrases in the dub entirely, and just have her speak normally. It removes the problem entirely, but with the way Mari acts, it'd seem like toning down her character or making her less interesting. It removes one of the main things that's so appealing about Mari: her eccentric personality.

The second choice is simply swapping the English out for another language. Instead of speaking Japanese with English, Mari could speak English with another language. It'd keep her bilingual dialogue and keep her interesting. This could cause a problem if the character wasn't already a foreigner, but Mari speaking Italian makes a lot of sense with her Italian-American heritage.

In the Sunshine dub, Mari speaks English and Italian instead. It makes a lot of sense why she would, and it focuses a lot more attention on her heritage than the original sub would.

Thankfully, "it's joke" is left completely unchanged in the dub, and I love it. I think that shows a lot of care was put into the dub to not change what was so appealing about the characters from the original sub.

Yoshiko's often criticized in the dub for having too deep of a voice or sounding too awkward, but I think her voice is a great fit. In her fallen angel persona she has a way of speaking that's so extra and ridiculous sometimes. I think the dub excellently highlights the difference between this and the way she really feels. Throughout the anime we see how she really sees the whole fallen angel thing, she doesn't genuinely believe it, but it's something to comfort herself with. In these moments, she speaks in a higher tone and often shows her more thoughtful side. Her voice is a lot softer and quieter in comparison to her voice as "Yohane", often loud and deeper.

Hearing this change in your own language can help highlight just how much of a difference there is and help you notice it. There's a misconception with Yoshiko's dub voice with people thinking the deep "Yohane" voice is just the way she speaks all the time when it's really not. Being able to notice that difference between "Yoshiko" and "Yohane" a lot more helps to make the character not only more understandable, but more appealing as well. These scenes are a big reason why I started to like Yoshiko more as a character, and I think that's something an English speaker can't quite experience as much in Japanese.

A lot of good phrases and jokes are kept in the Sunshine dub as well, including a bunch of character quirks people enjoy from the sub. I mentioned Mari's "it's joke!" is left untranslated. Hanamaru has a bit of a vocal tic, saying "zura" at the end of some of her sentences, and it's kept in the dub without sounding too unnatural. An interesting thing is that You's noodle dish is called "Youkisoba" in the sub as well as the dub, a pun on You and Yakisoba, but this is changed to "Niceoodles" in the English translation of School Idol Festival and All Stars, the mobile games. It's a moment where the dub stays closer to the original than an official translation of the mobile games, and it's comforting to see if you're worried about weird dub translations changing the quirks in the Japanese dialogue you enjoy. Don't get me wrong, the dub does have some of those and I could talk about the "Dia-chan" episode all day, but for the most part it's pretty faithful and that's what I enjoy about both Love Live dubs, not just Sunshine. In the School Idol Project dub, Rin still refers to Hanayo as "Kayo-chin", something from the original that's really adorable about their dynamic. On top of that, I think the Sunshine dub adds in a lot of hilarious lines, a famous one being Chika's "If anyone needs me for anything, I'll just be slowly dying inside."

In an unironic way, I think the dub actually makes the show more of a comedy, and some of the lines added in the dub honestly made me laugh. The SIP dub gets some hate for having Honoka say "Awesomesauce" at one point but I think it's not only fitting for her character, it's really funny. Someone once said to me that dubbed lines can sound like a sitcom at some points and I agree with it, while also believing it doesn't take away from the impact of the plenty of emotional scenes the show has. Both are expertly written but I think the humour in the dub can connect better to an English-speaking audience.

          

I want to take a second to go away from Sunshine to talk about a specific part of the SIP dub that I really enjoy. Season 1's Episode 10 is my favourite episode in all of SIP, and the dub is great for it too. After the full group of μ's forms, there's a scene near the start of the episode of the group at the train station. The older members explain to the younger ones that they're not allowed to use the term "senpai" to refer to them, and it's a theme in the first half or so of the episode. The SIP dub does a great job in general of making these Japanese terms like senpai inviting to a western audience in a setting we can understand. English doesn't have honorifics or a real "formal speech" so trying to translate that into English can be a great way to help English speakers understand.

The scene I'm talking about only lasts about a minute but there are a lot of things I think it does really well. Honoka sounds awkward referring to Eli without "senpai" because it's supposed to, as it's something they're trying to change and get used to. The dub explains this by showing this conversation and following it with a joke of Rin and Honoka thinking of Nico as a younger student not only helps the joke land but makes the scene memorable. Whenever I think of the idea of translating Japanese into English, regardless of what it is, I think of this scene.

There are quite a few differences between the SIP dub and the Sunshine dub. I'm not too knowledgeable on the topic, but it's likely to be (at least somewhat) influenced by them being done by different companies, or at different times.

Regardless of those differences, I enjoy both of the Love Live dubs a lot and I'm glad I took the opportunity to watch them after curiosity struck. It seems like a lot of backlash for the dubs come from people who haven't watched them, and the support comes from the people who have. I found something wonderful here and something that's changed my view on the Love Live anime as a whole, and I hope you can find the same.

With Nijigasaki being under Funimation, it means there's the possibility of an English dub dropping eventually. Here's hoping, not only so I can open my eyes to new experiences and opportunities for Changing the Outlook on Love Live once again... but just so I can have an excuse to rewatch a wonderful anime I love.

          

I'll repeat it so many times: "Love Live represents to me the expression of the things you love and are passionate about."

I think so many of us have faced ridicule for the things we love and are interested in. It's part of the reason I'm so passionate about what I am. I love sharing and talking about the things I enjoy for hours after being afraid of being made fun of for what I enjoy. Love Live was the light that cast that shadow away after it'd been there for years.

I decided to write this article because at first I just wanted to convince people to watch an anime dub that I enjoyed. As I started to write, however, I found myself caring less and less about that, and more about something different. I want these things to be able to be enjoyed without ridicule or being called "cringe"

But as I said earlier, I'm not a fan of talking about "cringe culture". What I am a fan of is Love Live, and I'll continue to love Love Live as long as I live.

No, I wasn't going to go a whole article without posting a gif of my best girl. We all know I wasn't.

Thanks so much for reading!

If you enjoyed this, you can find more of me on Instagram and Twitter as @akari_uehara! I post a lot of LL related rambles and even progress updates on things I write!

As I said earlier at first I just wanted to convince people to watch the LL dubs, but this became a pretty big project for me. I've been working on this since the start of January as a sort of challenge for myself. In my first blog article I thanked a lot of people for pushing me to write it and I wanted to show those people that their support meant a lot to me, and that I could work to write on my own now.

I couldn't have done this without all the people who have supported me.

Thank you to Jack, my beta reader and close friend for not only giving me great criticism and advice, but for pointing out what I've been doing better since the last time you beta read for me. You gave me a lot of confidence, and the big boost I've needed!

Thank you to Tommylmao on YouTube for posting a collection of clips from both the SIP and Sunshine dubs and catching my attention! Your videos and the comments in those videos are what got me interested enough to watch the dubs, and to write this in the first place!

Thank you to all my friends who talk about Love Live with me all the time. Em, Jack, Mizu, Lastuli, to name a few. You've not only given me so much enjoyment talking about this thing we enjoy together, but supporting me and keeping me happy through the month-long process of writing this.

Thank you to the people I've been interacting with on Twitter recently about all the thoughts about Love Live I share! Slike, Yel, and all the people who have just been very kind and supportive of my tweets, or eager to talk to me about things. It's been so cool to meet you.

Thank you to the English casts of both of these dubs, I've always loved your performances and I wish you nothing but support from fans. Thank you for being part of Love Live just as much as the Japanese staff, and thank you Funimation for making these dubs available!