Well, I got the first DVD set (episodes 1-13 of season 1) as one of my Christmas gifts and I just now got around to watching it. I – obviously if you used to read my blog or know me – have seen all of H&C and season 2 of it, and it’s one of my favorite shows, but this was the first time I heard the dub.

As for comments on it, well it’s not horrid shit but it’s far from being acceptable.

I mean that in two ways; 1. The actors tend to not speak with the flaps often, more often than they usually do in dubs…it just seems like they did a piss poor job sometimes. And 2. the typical ‘the voices are shit and dont fit’.

The problem here is H&C has a lot of monologues, so you hear the voices – A LOT – and they are actually important in how they sound and fit the character. They aren’t very good at all and don’t really fit their characters, some of them kind of do (not very well even then), but for the most part its like VIZ just used whatever actors they had at random instead of caring about anything else. I guess this is the ‘norm’ in dubs these days – just reusing and type-casting people “you usually play main characters so you be the main character here too”…but just because it’s normal doesnt mean I have to like it.

My biggest complaint, which really does annoy the shit out of me, is that they call Morita “Shinobu”. I know that’s his name and all, but first off they don’t call him that because of the culture. They made a big deal to even have cultural notes on the dvd yet they decided to have everyone on first-name terms when they are VERY obviously not in the Japanese audio?

This isn’t just me bitching about bawww i don’t like them calling him that – it’s actually relevant as now a character just about EVERYONE who has seen the show knows is now …not the same person. If someone who loved H&C years ago talks with someone just now watching the dub and says their favorite character was Morita…the person would have no idea who the fuck they mean. I mean seriously, they havn’t said his full name more than once or maybe twice in the first few episodes of the dub.

So if you ask me it’s actually important and shouldn’t have been touched. Both for the cultural reasons and showing how their closeness is, but more importantly for the whole ‘who is morita?’ reason.

All-in-all though I’d say the dub is tolerable if you’re trying to make normalfags or people who aren’t really into anime watch the series. Honey and Clover is definitely the type of show you could use to get someone who isn’t into anime, into it – or at least get them to watch some (usually they only will watch if its in English), so this is a good thing as you won’t be to the point of jamming a pen in your ear hoping to bust your ear drum, but just pulling your hair out over how bad it is instead. But aside from that, keep to the Jap audio track – as usual.