Watching Anime Subbed Using Closed Captioning

This has been on my mind for a few days. Notice how you will see a discussion on an anime message board about Subbed or Dubbed anime? I’ve been into anime for a long time. The first anime I watched was dubbed in English. Basically I grew up watching dubbed anime. About the same with the rest of the anime otaku out there. People who watch anime for less than four years, on fansubbed anime, will ALWAYS diss on the English dub. This is not “statistically” true, but I’m sure if one did some research, we would have something to talk about for the next few years in anime magazines and on podcasts.

In this promo video for the US premier of Bleach on [AS] is an example. Listen to how “Kurosaki” is pronounced.

Back to the point: People say that watching dubbed anime is better than watching subbed anime, because it reduces stress from looking at the subtitles. Some disagree on comments such as this. For me, however, it’s the opposite. Watching 2 or 3 episodes of Bleach almost everyday, including the one on [AS], has taken a toll on me. I can’t watch an episode of the Bleach dub without some sort of subtitle. Closed Caption is a good alternative for instant subs. The reason I feel like this is because in the English dub, the characters call each other by their first name. I know the Pacific Asian custom of calling people by their last name, e.g. Kurosaki Ichigo: last name first, first name last, as opposed to Ichigo Kurosaki: first name first, last name last. Not only the “localization” that throws me off, it’s the pronunciations of character names.