How Playing Games in Japanese Made Me Appreciate English Dubs
A short time ago, I could play JRPGs in subbed and dubbed forms no problem. JRPG voice actors are high quality in both Japanese and Western voice tracks nowadays, and I was lucky to be playing subbed JRPGs at all, right? There are certainly characters I have a voice preference for, such as Tharja from Fire Emblem Awakening's low creepy voice in the Japanese version and pretty much anything Erin Fitzgerald does a cartoon-style voice for in Western JRPGs including Chie Satonaka from Persona 4, but this usually never stopped me from enjoying the other version. My opinion on subbed or dubbed games changed after I played Final Fantasy X HD in Japanese for fun study. I chose Final Fantasy X to play because I knew the story so well and could already play the game well enough to focus on the language learning for my Japanese . I found it really interesting hearing the Japanese voice track and actually preferred quite a few of the Japanese voices, not because the English voice acting was ba...