Subbed vs Dubbed fight pit my anime club into two camps for 6 weeks

We meet at the library in Portland every Thursday, and last month someone put Death Note on the screen with English dub. Half the room walked out within 10 minutes, calling it fake anime. The other half stayed and said the dub actually makes Light sound more calculated. I tried to run a vote to switch to subbed, but that just made things worse. Two people stopped coming, and one guy started his own meetup at a coffee shop downtown. I ended up making a rule that we alternate subbed and dubbed each week, and it took six weeks before everyone came back to the same table. Has anyone else had a format argument split their group this hard, or did we just pick the wrong show to test it on?

1 comments

1 Comment

noahpark16d agoOG Member

You ever read that article about how the dub changed a bunch of Death Note lines to make Light sound more like a mastermind, while the sub keeps him more cold and distant? That probably explains why half your group dug in so hard, cause they were basically watching two different characters. You handled it well with the rotating rule though, most clubs would've just split for good.