So I recently finished watching Magikano. I picked it up from best buy a while ago. They were running some kind of special on it the SAVE deal or whatever. So I popped it in. I remember when I tried to watch subs on The Slayers and that failed miserably. So I watched the dubbed version of Magikano. I have to say one of two things happened. Either the US is figuring out how to dub anime or this was a fluke.

Magikano is not that interesting of an anime. When I step back and think about the anime itself. It is rather empty, read my bad about it. What really saved this anime for me was the dubs. Seriously, I never thought I would say this, but the dubs made this anime worth watching. Just to see what the characters would say next. I guess this is where fansubs fall short. They often times literally translate the anime. Preserving the Japanese side as much as possible. Problem is that can clash with a different culture. However, then there is the fluke side of things.

The fact that I found this as a SAVE edition means that Funimation clearly did not care that much about it. Funimation as been waging a war against Fansubbers ever since ADV lost. They grab up anything that they can and sub it and dub it. So there is the chance that they found so crazy Japanese majors at a college and said "Here is $50 translate this for us". Then they found some English majors and said "Here is $20 make this work for Americans". Through and through the whole thing came together nicely. It has been a while since I have actually felt this way about a dub.

Either way this has given me a little bit of hope for the future of anime. I know that most voice actors might be insulted by this post. However, a lot of their acting sucks. Maybe after 20+ years of doing dubs something finally clicked. Well that or a new generation of managers has taken over. You know one who is closer to the demographic buying the stuff. Either way I was shocked.