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Old VHS anime rips used to be my holy grail, now I hunt for the awful DVD sub tracks
I spent years collecting those grainy 5th-gen fansub tapes from conventions in Ohio, chasing that raw feel. But last summer I grabbed a Taiwanese dub of Gundam Wing on a two-pack DVD for $8 and the subtitles were nonsense, like 'I am the boy who loves the moon' during a fight scene. That accidental find made me realize the bad dubs with mistimed subs are way funnier and more rewatchable than any clean rip. Now I hit up flea markets and thrift stores near Akron specifically for those cheap multi-language discs. Anyone else ditched the tape hunt for the joy of translations that barely make sense? What's the worst subtitle line you've caught?
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the_lee8d ago
I gotta be honest, I don't get the appeal of the broken sub thing. Half the joke dies for me because I actually want to follow the story, and when the subs say stuff like "the moon loves the boy" mid battle it just yanks me right out of it. I had a bootleg set of Ranma years back with subs that drifted about four seconds behind the mouths, and after two episodes I was more annoyed than amused. There's a difference between a silly line here and there and a whole track that makes zero sense, and most of those flea market discs lean hard into the second one. So I'll take a clean rip with subs someone actually cared about over a funny mess any day. If you want the comedy, just watch a bad dub with the sound on, at least then the weirdness is part of the performance.
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