< Superlative Dubbing

Superlative Dubbing/Spanish Dubs

Note: there are two kinds of Spanish dubs. Latin America Dubs (or "Lat Am" Dubs)[1] which uses Neutral Spanish, and Spaniards dubs which uses Spaniard Spanish. They usually are very different, and they can generate a lot of angst between fan of one or the other.

  • Many Hanna-Barbera series, which were met with little enthusiasm on the U.S., became absolute classics on Mexico, thanks to the quality and creativity of their dubs. Noteworthy mentions include Top Cat, The Flintstones and Pixie And Dixie.
    • In Pixie And Dixie's case, Pixie speaks with a cuban accent, Dixie's voice is that of a Mexican, and Mr. Jinks became a hilarious Spaniard from Andalucía. The script changed for the better, too: comical add-libbing was at the order of the day, and scenes that had no jokes -or not dialogue at all- in the original version were spiced up to no end.
  • The Simpsons in the Latin American dubbing, was absolutely hilarious and considered a cult classic by many!! Anyone who understands Spanish, aside from some wordplay that can't be translated, will have a better time watching this dub. The Seasonal Rot of the later seasons became more evident in the Latin American when Fox decided to change (most of) the dub actors in season 16. The dub has not been the same ever since.
    • Look on the bright side. Marina Huerta, the original voice of Bart, returned after a hiatus. She also became Marge.
    • This holds especially true since the voices are brought down from their cartoon-ish English interpretations to a more down-to-earth style. While many other cartoons would suffer from this change, in the case of the Simpsons it worked perfectly!. The only sad thing that for every 200 awesome translations and Woolseyism there was one glaringly obvious bad translations (Robo-Richard Simmons was translated to Lorenzo Lamas)
    • Also something that improves the series is that each character has his own dubber (except for very minor characters). This also helps to avoid goofy voices, which are necessary in the English version since every voice-actor makes 6 to 10 roles.
  • Actually, the The Simpsons dubbing from Spain is also spectacular. Matt Groening himself recognized it as the best European dubbing of the series, by far. Too bad its level dropped severely when Carlos Revilla, the voice acting director, script adaptator and Homer Simpson's voice, passed away in 2000. However, up to this day it's still pretty good.
  • Spain is not only famous for good voice acting in animation, but in live action as well. Take for example House. The voice acting and translations are almost always between "pretty damn good" and "spectacular". The best example is House's voice actor, Luis Pórcar. He's so good that most dubbing haters don't even dare to speak bad about his performance. And those who do, are incapable of finding a good argument beyond the fact that Pórcar's voice doesn't sound quite like Hugh Laurie's.
  • Almost no important dubs were made in Argentina, save for one: Serial Experiments Lain Latin American dub is nothing but a master piece, to say the least. Not only did it translate perfectly the content of the original Japanese series, but it also expended it! Besides, the voices were perfectly choosen.
    • The Spaniard dub of SEL, while not as impressive (YMMV), it's also exceptional and very well done.
  • Spanish Latin American dub of Yu-Gi-Oh!, couldn't not be described as anything but awesome. This troper in particular can't see this anime in English or Japanese, simply because he saw the LAm Dub.
    • Since YouTube deleted all the [[Latin America]n] Dubbed episodes, you can use this clip of YuGiOh the movie as an example. , which was dubbed by the same people. (The quality of the dubbing in the movie is A LOT poorer than the series' quality, but it's best than not showing anything)
    • Here you have a part of episode. The quality of the filming is horrible, and the scenes are not really active, but you can see how good the voice acting is.
    • Even Little Kuriboh included parts of the Latin America Dub in his Abridged Series.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! was not the only series to be saved by the Latin America dubs from the clutches of 4Kids. The Spanish dub for Shaman King was not only uncut, the portrayal of the characters are also spot on. It's not surprising therefore why so many fans end up watching their episodes en español due to the 4Kids Cut And Paste English dub (even if it faced less cuts than One Piece and Yu-Gi-Oh!) and the So Okay It's Average Japanese original.
  • Until the Digimon4 (which was not awful, but not really good), Digimon got excellent Latin America dubs, particularly for the first [2] and third seasons. The series was translated from the original Japanese version and not the American Dub (thing that not always happens), so the script were intact and so where the openings.
  • Latin America dub managed to pick up an obscure series full off untranslatable-puns like Dotto! Koni-chan and turn it into a cult classic for Spanish speakers. Since there is no way to translate the puns, the series was chock-full Woolseyism, making the plot 50% Woolseyism and 50% Widget Series.
    • On a weird subversion, most of the Spanish Dub puns are untranslatable to English as well. So there is no way in which not-Spanish-speakers can fully understand this awesome Dub.
  • Futurama's Spain Spanish dub is hilarious. Iván Muelas (Fry), Olga Cano (Leela) and Abraham Aguilar (Bender) are on the same level as Billy West, Katey Sagal and John DiMaggio, if not better. Specially Bender, who in the Spanish VA speaks as he is talking between his teeth (his original accent is impossible to reproduce in Spanish, after all). It's impossible not to laugh with him.
    • The same can be said about Latin America dub. It's considered a cult classic in Latin America, not as big as The Simpsons, but still great.
  • The European Spanish dub of Elfen Lied is damn fine, especially considering that Spaniard dubs, due to their weird accent, are quite unpopular in Latin America. Hear Lucy when she's busy gouging out Bando's eyes: "¿La pasas bien?... Bah, me aburres". Although the dub of Burst Angel is sometimes weak, it has some jewels like giving Jo a little bit of Tourette's syndrome:
      • In the Spanish dub: "Fuck dammit, if you say one more fucking word I'll kill you!" ("¡Chingada madre, si dices una sola pinche palabra más te mato!").
  • In Spain, the first Metal Gear Solid game is considered up to this day as THE example of good videogames dubbing. There even is some fierce debate about whether Alfonso Vallés was a better Solid Snake than David Hayter. The catch is, though, that the following games in the series were not dubbed to Spanish, while David Hayter improved his acting and Snake's character with each new instalment. Hence, the debate is totally pointless (and unfair) by now.
  • South Park has some really good Spanish dubbing, both for Latin America and Spain.
    • Radlum: I am not able to watch the series in the original language; if there are jokes that have to be in English to be understood then I use close captioning to read them.
  • In Spain, Kingdom Hearts II had an unexpected great dubbing. At first there was some suspicion, since Sora was voiced by Adolfo Moreno, Spanish voice actor of Pokémon's Ash Ketchum. But he nailed the character, despite the comments of some people. Some secondary characters were a little bit off (Roger Isasi-Isasmendi was a disappointing, emotion-less Cloud) and some Disney characters didn't have the same voice actors as in the movies (this was specially evident in Jack Sparrow's case), but the general level of the voice acting was really good. Too bad it's the only Spanish dubbed game in the whole series.
  • In Spain, Bleach is one of the top examples of a Superlative Dubbing unfairly brought down by sheer Fan Dumb. The series had some of the best voice actors in Spain that truly nailed almost every single character. The script translation was also amazing. However, fans in Spain still prefered to not pay not even the slightless attention to it. Hence, they stopped dubbing the series at episode 108.
  • User:Orihime: The Slam Dunk Latin American Spanish dub (made in Mexico) is brilliant. Special mention goes to René García as Sakuragi, where he basically blows Takeshi Kusao (whom I love as a seiyuu, but this was not his best role) out of the water. Also, the Cardcaptor Sakura Spanish dub is just as good as the original Japanese. Cristina Hernández was an adorable Sakura, Enzo Fortuny plays a pretty good Yukito (which I prefer to Megumi Ogata's performance), and Alfredo Leal as Eriol sounds much less forced than Nozomu Sasaki's.
  • Lequinni: The Latin (Chilean) Spanish dub of You're Under Arrest! is one of the few times where the tranlated opening themes were so similar to the original songs and sounded even better than them. And the acting was very good too. And how isn't the mexican dub of The Simpsons here yet? At least the one of the first 17 or 18 seasons.
  • In Spain Rurouni Kenshin stands as a weird example of this trope. The translation and adaptation of the script had A LOT of mistakes, partly because it was translated from the first English dubbing (aka, "the bad one"), keeping all the mistakes from it, like the character names (Kenshi instead of Kenshin, Kori instead of Kaoru and Yoshi instead of Yahiko). Some dialoges were completely different form what they were supposed to be (From time to time, Kenshin talks about KILLING the villains), the Kyoto arc takes place in Edo (¿?) and some lines were totaly anti-climatic or right straight stupid ("¡Basta, basta, basta, basta!"). But on the other hand, the voice actors work were, for the most part, spectacular. Nacho de Porrata is arguably a way better Kenshin than Mayo Suzukaze (even though his lines are more aggressive), Carmen Ambrós nails Kaoru, Sanosuke in Spanish just feels wrong without Mark Ullod's voice, Alfonso García Zambrano pulled off one hell of a Shishio, and so on. Is one of the few Spanish anime dubbings that not only really reproduce the infamous "emotion bursts" and "cool yellings" that Japanese voice actings are so famous for, but also surpass them in many scenes.
  • Libertista: I'm a Spaniard, and the Spanish language is widely-spoken and varied enough to account for 2 sorts: the Latin-American Spanish dubs and the actual Spanish ones (from Spain). Thus I can say I've enjoyed many dubs from both sources, though mileages vary heavily and there is a lot of pointless and chauvinistic strife among the fandom. For the Spain-Spanish side, I'd list Outlaw Star, Cowboy Bebop, and Crayon Shin-chan as excellent. Outlaw Star's and Crayon Shin-chan's dubs are superior to the original ones, as they portray the characters' personality more accurately (Shinnosuke Nohara is a meme of his own right (¡¡¡Trooooompa!!!). Biker Mice From Mars is very decently adapted too. For the Latin American-Spanish side, I must say I find them usually more suited for comedy, for it appears that ham and other pork derivates are the usual diet among voice actors: the dubs of Drawn Together and Samurai Pizza Cats are absolutely fantastic and hilarious.
  • The Latin American dub of Cats Don't Dance. In particular the songs. I don't know what it is about Latin dubs -- as I've heard a lot of very talented Latin American singers -- but it's just rare to find a dub with the singing on the same level as the original. Observe.
  • I do not speak Spanish. But I caught an episode of Justice League Unlimited in Spanish, and I've gotta say, it was awesome. Batman and Luthor were spot on, Superman sounds a little deeper but still very good, and whoever was playing Darkseid...holy shit the man was terrifying. He manages to be even lower than Michael Ironside, and has an absolutely Darth Vader-esque menace to his voice. If anyone can tell me who that was...
  • Dragonball Z anyone? That one anime that has become a cult classic almost in the whole entire world, specially in Latin America to the extend of Saint Seiya in Brazil. Its is often praised for having perfect dubbings For Goku, Piccolo, Vegeta, and everyone else doing great. Sadly Adverted in Dragon Ball Kai were mentioned characters had their voices changed for the worse.
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  1. ↑ Please note that All The Tropes does not use abbreviations as a matter of policy. Please spell out "Latin America" if your example needs to be distinguished from a Spaniards dub.
  2. ↑ save from some goofy voices
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