A Brief, Non-professional Look into Anime English Dub Scriptwriting

Voice actor Seán Schemmel (Goku, King Kai) recording for Funimation's English dub of Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods film

Video property of Funimation

English vocal tracks (or dubs) for Japanese animation (or anime) have had a checkered reputation over the years, with many fans criticizing the voice acting, writing, and other creative choices that go into their production. While a lot of these criticisms are valid for many dubs from the ‘90s and before, which were plagued by wooden acting, questionable writing, and sometimes even altered music and visuals that attempted to obscure the shows’ Japanese origins, the fact of the matter is that most dubs from the 2000’s and beyond are extremely well-produced and respectful towards the Japanese source material. The industry has grown to the point that more experienced actors can be brought onto shows. Modern technology has allowed for more precise audio editing and multiple line reads so that directors can get the perfect take. Most importantly, most dubs are no longer run by executives who want to mold anime properties into shows that appeal to the lowest common denominator but by people who respect the works as they are and try to faithfully represent those works in English. This does raise an important question, however - what exactly goes into producing a faithful English anime dub? I’ve already touched on a few of these things - leave the visuals and music alone, have good acting and writing. My personal philosophy is to let the show speak for itself - a dub should preserve everything that was great about the original show, only providing an English audio track so that English speakers who don’t want to read subtitles can follow along. That sounds simple on paper, but it’s actually more complicated than one might think. In fact, the writing for anime dubs alone is a pretty challenging process, so that’s what I’m going to focus on today. With that said, ladies and gents, this is my brief, non-professional look into how to write a good anime dub script.

First, I should explain why a faithful script is important in anime dubs. The fact of the matter is that dubs can have a huge impact on how international audiences view a work and the themes it conveys, so an inaccurate dub script could lead audiences to read a work in a way that runs counter to how it was originally intended. A great example of the consequences of an inaccurate dub script can be seen in the Wisecrack YouTube channel’s video analysis of the philosophical themes of the Dragon Ball anime series. Funimation’s pre-2010 Dragon Ball dubs tend to have inaccurate scripts, so using them as a basis for deeper analysis of the series like Wisecrack did is rather problematic. While Funimation’s Dragon Ball Z (DBZ) dub is far more inaccurate than their dub of the original Dragon Ball, that original series dub still has plenty of its own issues. To be fair, Wisecrack seemed to be doing okay so long as they were talking about the narrative in broad strokes rather than focusing on specific quotes. However, it was when they tried to use the “I am” speech from DBZ’s dub to argue a point about Goku’s journey towards enlightenment that the channel’s entire analysis fell apart.

Video Property of Wisecrack

Video comparison of the various versions of Goku's "I am" speech by TotallyNotMark

Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball Kai are Properties of Shueisha, Toei Animation, Akira Toriyama and are currently licensed in the US by Funimation

The problem with the original dub's version of this speech is that it was completely rewritten. The original speech, as written by manga author Akira Toriyama and faithfully rendered in the animated adaptation, had more to do with Goku coming to terms with this Saiyan heritage than the “protector of the innocent” approach that the dub went with. The American writers seemed more concerned with projecting Western superhero ideals onto Goku for mass appeal than preserving the original narrative. To put it simply, any argument using the dubbed version of the speech as evidence about anything pertaining to the philosophical themes of Toriyama’s work is fundamentally flawed. With that in mind, accurate scripting that doesn’t mess with characterizations is important, because any changes are liable to be conflated with the original author’s intent. Of course, it’s perfectly fair to hold Wisecrack accountable for neirher doing proper research nor directly referencing the original version for their analysis, but it’s also fair to criticize an inaccurate dub for perpetuating incorrect ideas about Dragon Ball’s story and characters.

Okay, so accuracy is important. So why even bother scripting at all? Shouldn’t the script be as easy as having the actors read the subtitle translations of the Japanese dialogue? Well, no, not really. The only thing that the subtitles in anime are meant to do is tell English speakers what the Japanese-speaking characters are saying. Because of that, the translation doesn’t take into account the characters’ lip movements or whether a particular sentence flows well in spoken English. Because of that, good adaptive scriptwriters need to come in and rephrase the dialogue in ways that fit the characters’ lip movements and flow naturally in English while still conveying the same meaning as the original Japanese version. The importance of fitting lip movements is easy to explain - if the dialogue doesn't fit with how the characters' lips are moving, it can break a viewer’s immersion in a show or movie. I’m sure we’ve all laughed at badly lip-synced kung-fu movie dubs, after all. Explaining what I mean by "a natural flow in English" requires going into a little more detail, however. To use an example, let’s take a look at Alphonse’s opening monologue from most of the episodes of Fullmetal Alchemist. Here’s the original Japanese version:

Fullmetal Alchemist property of Aniplex and Hiromu Arakawa, currently licensed in the US by Aniplex of America

While these subtitles read well as a translation of Al’s dialogue, lines like “We believed that was the truth of the world when we were young” may come across as a little stiff if spoken aloud by an English speaker. This is due to the more technical nature of translation - a translator's primary job is to convey what was said in the original language as closely as possible to maintain clarity and reduce confusion. While some translators take natural flow into account, others may try to stay more literal for the sake of accuracy. With that in mind, the subtitles here are meant to be more of a guide to help us stay engrossed in the narrative and in Rie Kugimiya’s vocal performance rather than to be intricately crafted dialogue in their own right, so using the subtitles as-is for the dub script wouldn’t necessarily carry the same sense of dramatic weight that the speech requires. Let’s see how Funimation's dub handles the monologue:

Fullmetal Alchemist English dub produced by Funimation

Here we see a perfect example of a dub conveying the meaning of the Japanese dialogue, only rephrasing it in a way that flows naturally in English. Take note of the dubbed version of the line I mentioned earlier: “In those days, we really believed that to be the world’s one and only truth.” The way this line is written gives Aaron Dismuke more to work with as an actor, allowing him to give the intro a greater sense of gravitas in his delivery. It maintains the intent of the original dialogue not only in the information conveyed but also in style, allowing the actor to deliver it as dramatically as required. In short, the dub script successfully adapts Al’s monologue in a way that gives it poetic grandiosity while also preserving the integrity of the original dialogue. This is why it’s important to have good writers who can toe the line between a faithful representation of the original version and a clever adaptation to give the dialogue a natural-sounding flow in English.

While this look into how English anime dubs are written is nowhere near exhaustive, I hope I’ve successfully outlined some of the goals of good dub scripting such as faithfulness to the source material and adapting the dialogue for lip movements and natural flow. I won’t lie, though, it isn’t as easy as it sounds - I’ve written a few scripts for fun, and writing dialogue that’s faithful, fits the mouth flaps, and flows naturally is tricky. Dub writers have to think outside the box to hit that sweet spot. Thankfully, most anime dubs today have great writers, so for the most part we don’t have awkward, Godzilla-esque dubs nor do we really have the dilemma of heavy rewrites anymore. Even DBZ has received a more accurate dub through the show’s modernized recut, Dragon Ball Kai.

Interview with voice actor/director Chris Sabat (Vegeta, Piccolo, Yamcha) and Seán Schemmel on how the Kai dub is different from the DBZ dub

Video Property of Funimation

Funimation took Kai as an opportunity to start fresh and fix most of the problems with the original DBZ dub, treating the show like a modern anime dub in their approach to the script and other creative decisions. Because of that, Kai is without question the best (and, if you ask me, the only) way to watch the show in English. The dubs for modern Dragon Ball material have followed suit: the latest movies, Battle of Gods and Resurrection 'F', and the new show, Dragon Ball Super, all have high quality, well-written dubs. The main takeaway here is that anime dubs are in a much better place than they were before the 2000’s, and improved scriptwriting is a huge part of that.

UPDATE 4/14/2022: Fixed changed a link to one of the videos since the original video was down and cleaned up some mistakes and wording.