02-22-2012, 06:27 PM
I think English dubs get a lot of unfair criticism as a whole. Most are quite bad, but there is a rather good reason for that. It comes down to money. On the whole, anime studios earn a much higher proportion of their profits from inside Japan (partially due to the fact that anime is a lot more expensive there), and thus they are less likely to spend large amounts of money hiring very good voice actors when they can get okay or plainly bad ones for much cheaper. However, there are a few productions where this is not the case. Gainax, for example, tend not to use sub-par voices for English dubs, and hire voice actors such as Yuri Lowental (known for Prince of Persia). Ghibli, too, usually has exceptionally good voice actors (such as Mark Hamill, and if you don't know what he's famous for, go and die in a fire). That's my theory, in any case.