A Stream Angel's Thesis - Evangelion on Netflix

Books, comics, TV, music
1

Netflix has secured the US streaming rights to Neon Genesis Evangelion. Probably the most popular Anime that is not available to stream (or buy)

Bad news, rumor is that they will redub.

Which is Uggh. The original dub is bad in that 90s anime way, but also quite iconic. Why bring a show back only to redo the cast?

Redubbing a show feels like when George Lucas decided the Original Trilogy needed more CG. Yeah sure we could redub, but why should we?

Well, I will always have my 400 dollar DVD boxset I guess.

2

Or you could watch it with the original cast. You know, the Japanese one. :P

3

Yeah, Netflix is pretty good about having OV. Why watch a dub at all?

4

Does this include the new movies.

I’ve been holding on those waiting for the final one, and it seems not that far now.

5

I watched it originally in Japanese, since the original dub was bad. Hey, if this dub is good, I’ll give it a try. A good decision by Netflix, IMO. Why keep a dub which is known to be bad?

6

I do not believe so. In the news about this release, I only saw mention of the two movies that came out right after the series first aired, not the new movies that are set to complete in 2020.

7

It isn’t bad, people like to complain about it, but it isn’t bad, there are far worse, and most of the main original cast were used again and continue to be good in the new movie series. It isn’t amazing, or great, but it isn’t “awful” there are far worse offenders than NGE.

But I guess the reasoning is, why mess with something that they are touting the historical significance of. To people like me, NGE was one of the first anime experiences I had. Watching my VHS copy over and over again. I think even if that dub isn’t great (outside the main cast, it is spotty, I get that) it is fondly remembered. I think that NGE gets a bit lumped on because it is so mercurial in its nature, and suffers from a lot of the bad VO work done in the 90’s, but I think a lot of the fans have nostalgia for that kind of clunky VO. And I, again, don’t think it is all that bad. You could make the same arguments with Cowboy Bebop, or any other fondly remembered 90’s anime. There was good and bad both.

I am against re-dubbing as a whole. It is unacceptable when restoring something to throw out a part of the hard work and effort that was put into the original I think redubs are only acceptable if they do what DBZ did with Kai and call the new series Evangelion EX or something. Removing part of an original work and replacing it with something “better” (which is subjective, it might be worse? Who knows.)

It is also a really bad thing to go back and mess with previous historical works of art. Changing the VO isn’t quite the scale of change Lucas took on his original trilogy in 1998, but we can all agree that with all of the warts (bad effects, minatures, etc) we all would prefer to at least have the option of the originals.

This wouldn’t be as huge of an issue if it were possible to purchase the original VO, it is very out of print, and DVD sets go for 200-500 depending on the version you get. If they want to re-dub, fine, but like with the Star Wars re-release, give us the originals too.

To me, and at least from reddit, a large portion of EVA fans, a show without Spike Spence, Allison Keith, Amanda Winn-Lee and Tiffany Grant (who aside from Amanda, do the movie VO) just wouldn’t be the same show.

Netflix has options for multiple VO’s on anime, so you will be able to switch between english and japanese without issue. All animes now I watch the Japanese, but for the shows where I fondly remember the clunky VO, I like to listen to the originals.

8

…but it’s all redubbing. Because the original VO in all of these shows was Japanese.

9

Yeah, dubbing in itself is throwing out a (huge) part of the effort that went into the original…

10

They should redub it so some weirdo buys my DVD set for a silly markup.

11

Yeah, but when you do a dub, the original (like on the DVD’s) is still available to listen to, with subtitles.

12

From what it sounds like, the original cast has gone silent for the moment. Some have been cryptic about auditioning for a part that they are already doing. It would be pretty ridiculous not to bring back most of the original cast (they are in the new movie dub) if they are game.

That is preferable to bringing in new actors. They can shore up the translation work, and fix some things.

I guess I am really just super into media preservation, and creating a re-dub of a show that already has a dub with a wide audience, redubbing is basically throwing away the original forever. If they can get the original cast back, that is at least something, but it just seems wrong.

I again compare it to the Star Wars special editions, fine if you want to meddle with it, but at least present us with the originals for those who want it. Otherwise we will have to live with the crappy old versions we have saved (I have the Star Wars laserdiscs, ripped).

And honestly this wouldn’t even matter that much at all, if they just had the original english dub available anywhere, but it is gone, lost to the nearly 15 year old DVD sets.

Though, I have now begun re-watching my DVDs through plex, and I am just itching for that re-master, as this original transfer is just horrible. Shaky, jumpy cuts, just bad mastering all around.

Here is hoping they don’t screw this up.

13

fuck yes gimme money

14

I am in the same boat here, I have like 600 dollars worth of DVDs I bought for like 80 bucks in the early 2000s

15

This is the thing that keeps hanging me up. It’s not like the Star Wars special editions. It’s like you getting upset because the classic special edition experience has been marred by some further meddling. Like, if you like the dub, so be it, but it’s already not the experience that was intended when the show was made.

16

But, like the Star Wars original versions, they are what I grew up watching. They aren’t obviously physically the same situation, but in terms of my experience of the media they are the same. Han shot first, Spike Spencer is Shinji.

I get what you are saying, as the original is the Japanese cast, but my original experiences (and probably watching through like 20 times wearing the VHS tapes thin) was that original cast. Just like my original adolescent obsession with Star Wars was the non extra CG versions Lucas decided to make, because he wasn’t happy with the originals.

So, at least, to me, it feels the same.

For those who would like to be further anime-dub heartbroken… check out this video about the Kiki’s Delivery service re-redub.

I hand’t even realized that through my childhood, I had listened to 2 dubs of this movie (I remember the original) and that Disney fucked with the Phil Hartman dub.

They cut Phil Hartman’s ad-libbed lines from the orignal dub!!!

Again, fine if they want to re-do the dub, but at least give us the original as well.

17

To me, dubs or subs are just a way of interpreting the original experience in a format that the local audience can understand. There’s nothing being lost if that interpretation is revised to more accurately convey the original. I’d absolutely be up in arms if they were revising the actual original material like with Star Wars, but they aren’t.

18

I grew up watching Robotech, and I liked it.

And Samurai Pizza Cats.

19

Animation is always dubbed. It’s just a matter of one group of voice actors over an other. Plays have different casts all the time so I don’t get why anime is some special exemption from ever having a different cast.

That said, as animation gets more detailed I can see where mouth movements can be off from one language to the next. Though I can’t say I’ve really noticed this, it is something I can see being a problem with ‘dubs’

20

I mean, plays are meant to be seen live. If Netflix had a recording of a japanese play, and decided to change the dub artists, I would be mad too.

Make a new thing, fine, re-animate the movies with a new cast, fine. But keep the original dub available. Adding extra tracks to video is pretty cheap.

I love DBZ Kai, and it was fun watching that show over from the beginning as a Redub, but I didn’t mind too much because they had 90% of the original cast back, and you can still watch the original DBZ lots of places, DVD’s, streaming etc. It is a differentiated different product (Kai).

And while the original DBZ dub is bad in some places, it was fun. DBZ Kai removed “Over 9000” and “Mondo cool” those are bad lines, in a really fun way. Why mess with this shit? If you are going to do a “remaster” and a “redub” don’t call it Evangelion, call it Evangelion+ or something, because to a lot of people, it won’t be the same thing.

It wouldn’t be as bad if you could actually obtain the original english dub in some form. It is kind of lost, like the original Kiki’s dub (with more Phil Hartman lines, a bad intro song, and better audio quality) This is compounded by the fact that the DVD releases of Evangelion were notoriously bad transfers and suffer video quality issues galore.

Like, if this came along with a re-release of the original dub remastered in HD, I wouldn’t give a shit. This is not an argument about the dub, but an argument over the preservation of media history. And that is the difference between plays and TV.

Part of the allure of seeing a play is that it is live, and that it is a fleeting experience, you can only see this cast perform until they stop, or actors leave. It is living and breathing. Media can be preserved, and should be preserved. Part of what I expect of media companies is to preserve their products, that shows and movies aren’t just abandoned. Media preservation is a bit of a hobby of mine, I like to find old VHS movies, instructional videos, etc, and rip them to my PC, to upload and share. So it bothers me when big companies decide to just throw out what they have already in favor of something new, leaving it up to people to preserve the media on their own.

Also, this is totally near the top of Google’s search for Netflix Evangelion Redub. So, hooray.