Dubs vs Subs

[Lefire]

?? I usually don't bother risking dubs. Some of them are so hammed up I can barely listen to them without cringing, and besides, I can usually understand most of the Japanese anyway.
??Recently, though, I tried watching some Kanon with the English dub/no subs setup, and for the most part, I was pleasantly surprised. The voice acting doesn't burn my ears, and most of the voices fit the characters fairly well. Even Ayu's uguu~ is... well, okay, it's fairly awkward, but at least she tried. The major exception is Nayuki. Arguably her most prominent character trait is that she's lethargic, and that's reflected even in the way she talks in the original Japanese. Essentially everything she says is very slow, drawn out, and sleepy. That's completely lost in the dub, though, and to make it worse, they pulled extra lines out of nowhere to artificially fill up the dead time created by having her talk at normal human speeds (or faster).
??They even did a good job overall on the dreaded Things That Don't Translate, the prime example being in episode 20 when Yuuichi teases Ayu about her characteristic "boku" (a boyish "me/I"). The subs handle it by adding notes about the various pronouns used, and that works well for the subs, but wouldn't work so well for voiceovers. So, they adapted the scene into Yuuichi making fun of Ayu for being like a "spazzy little lost boy", which works quite well actually. It's in character, it keeps the same basic concept, and it makes perfect sense in English.
??Somehow, they still managed to foul up the alarm clock Nayuki gives Yuuichi to use, though. It's supposed to be a (typically sleepy) recording of her voice. Not only is it not groggy at all in the dub, killing the joke about it putting him back to sleep, it sounds nothing like Nayuki, even having a different voice actor. This wouldn't be so bad by itself, except that even in the dub, he looks around saying "Nayuki?" in confusion, now with no explanation. Worse, many episodes later, when the alarm clock makes another appearance, Nayuki talks about how much trouble she had recording the message. The message that still sounds nothing like her in the dub. You'd think they'd notice something like that.
??Oh well, at least it's not as bad as a certain video game sequel in which the English version has cameos of characters from the first game with completely different voices, not to mention mangling "Leila" (from the first game and unchanged in the Japanese) into "Moira" (!?) and other incredibly glaring inconsistencies between games and even within the same game.