This is going to be another rant post from me, sorry. I rant because I’m passionate about anime but depressed about the current state of it. Most people on this forum probably aren’t dub fans, so I don’t know if anyone will care about this topic but it’s important to me.
For those who don’t know what a simuldub is, it’s a term made by Funimation for an English dub that comes out while the anime is still airing on TV (in it’s original run) in Japan. It’s short for either or both simulcast dub or/and simultaneous dub.
Simuldubs are overrated and have become bad for dub fans. It has one benefit, we get dubs earlier rather than having to wait a year or two for the home release like we used to. That benefit comes with a lot of drawbacks though, and the main one makes simuldubs entirely not worth it. I’m talking about the total lack of what have become known as backlog dubs.
Backlog dubs are basically any dubs that aren’t simuldubs. Some of the most commonly requested backlog dubs include Bocchi the Rock from Crunchyroll, So I Can’t Play H? from Sentai, and of course the big ones from Aniplex, Nisekoi, Saekano: How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend, and especially Monogatari. What baffles me is that instead of dubbing the older shows that people really care about like these ones, anime companies would rather dub some random show no one wants just because its a simuldub. Crunchyroll has been doing this a lot lately.
This season, Crunchyroll are dubbing a Super Sentai anime…in English. Despite basically nobody who speaks English caring about Super Sentai at all, Tojima Wants to Be a Kamen Rider is somehow getting an English dub. Why Crunchyroll, are you dubbing that show instead of the massively popular Bocchi The Rock? Because it’s new and Bocchi isn’t? Why should that matter when a Bocchi the Rock English dub would fly off the shelves, and almost no one will watch Tojima Wants to Be a Kamen Rider, dubbed or subbed.
Or for Sentai Filmworks dubbing Flower and Asura because it’s new but we can’t get a dub of much more popular anime like Noucome instead? Or Yuushibu, Maoyu, Rail Wars, or Engaged to the Unidentified, or the Hentai Cat and the Stony Prince, or of course So I Can’t Play H? It’s honestly maddening. Sentai has the most interesting group of shows that haven’t been dubbed yet, and they never make use of it. I’d gladly take a dub of Triage X (which is only 10 episodes, come on Sentai it’s right there!) over something boring like Hero Without A Class, but Hero Without A Class has a much better chance of being dubbed, just because it’s new.
It honestly seems like it doesn’t even occur to these companies that they could be dubbing more popular shows instead of these random new ones. Like their so caught up in simuldubbing that they don’t even think about what their doing. If I were Crunchyroll, I would stop doing simuldubs for every show that isn’t either a sequel, or obviously going to be a hit. This is how I think Crunchyroll’s Fall 2025 English dub season should look.
- All Sequels
- All Continuing Dubs
- My Friend’s Little Sister Has it in For Me
- May I Ask For One Final Thing?
- This Monster Wants to Eat Me
- My Status As a Hero Obviously Exceeds the Assassin’s
- Let This Grieving Soul Retire (Season 1)
- I’m The Lord of an Intergalactic Empire
- Takopi’s Original Sin
- Can a Boy-Girl Friendship Survive? (No, It Cannot!)
- I’m Getting Married to a Girl I Hate in My Class
- Bocchi the Rock!
That’s 18 shows, the same amount that Crunchyroll are dubbing for Fall, except every single one of them actually deserves to be dubbed. Every one of those shows would make people excited. It’s a mix of popular Isekai, popular High School anime, and other popular shows that people have wanted dubbed for months or in Bocchi’s case for years. It would get people way more excited than dubbing random stuff like A Gather’s Adventure in Isekai, The Dark History of the Reincarnated Villianess, The Banished Court Magician, Tojima Want’s to Be a Kamen Rider, and Let’s Play. If one of those shows were to get popular, you can always dub them in a later season.
Dubbing unpopular shows just because their from the current season, when you have a ton of sub only anime in your companies “backlog” that are way more popular makes absolutely zero sense. Getting rid of the “simuldub or bust” mentality would also mean dubbing Let This Grieving Soul Retire season 1 first, instead of what Crunchyroll is doing which is ridiculously dubbing Season 2, without ever dubbing the first season (at least yet), just because season 2 is airing now.
Other drawbacks of simuldubs include the fact that simuldubs are the censored TV versions of anime. This no longer matters much because very few anime make any changes to the home release version in the 2020s, but it used to be a big deal when simuldubs were new. Anime prior to the 2020s used to have a lot more nudity and fanservice on the home release. Those shower scenes with steam covering the nudity on TV used to almost always actually show the nudity on the home video. Before simuldubs, English dubbed anime were always the uncensored or least censored version of the show, since they were always the home release version. Simuldubs lead to dub fans watching the censored TV versions of anime which, at least for those of us who like fanservice, was a big negative.
Simuldubs also lead to dub fans caring for the first time about “seasons” of anime. The Fall 2025 “season” is coming up, and with it, a lot of new anime are coming out. Before simuldubs, dub fans really wouldn’t care what season was going on, since we were always way behind. This was actually good in my opinion. Following the seasonal release structure has lead to dub fans only caring about what’s currently airing or directly ahead of us. It felt like we used to appreciate older anime and keep them relevant for much longer, and a large part of that was the fact that we weren’t watching them until a year or more after they aired. Now it feels like anime are becoming disposable, no one seems to even care about anime from 2023 or 2024 anymore where as before simuldubs, we’d still be talking about anime from at least a few years earlier on a regular basis. Now it’s all about the latest episode released this week or the future episode next week.
I also feel like the dubs themselves have gotten worse as a result of being rushed for a simuldub release. Companies now only have a week to get each episode out and I think the dubs are of inferior quality to before simuldubs when they could take their time and release shows all at once. A simuldub may also lead to rushed casting. How can you properly cast actors for roles when you barely have any time? Especially a character who debuts after the first episode, you only have a week to not only cast that character, but record all of their lines as well.
Anyway thanks to anyone who reads this, I just wanted to vent a little since no one really ever talks about any of this stuff.