u/zechroa

Yeah... Localizers in general can be pretty awful in that way.

Indeed, simple as that.

That just sounds like excusing poor quality work. Whether it's because the directing is bad or the actors are new, a bad dub is a bad dub.

As for ZLS specifically, it really exemplifies why most dubs are bad, beyond mere voice acting quality (which I find to be questionable at best). There is zero effort to convey characters' personalities, mannerisms, or ways of speaking.

It starts with casting. You shouldn't cast somebody with a completely different type of voice altogether from the original actor. It affects the portrayal of the character at the most baseline level. As was mentioned, Sakura is a good example of this. She's originally a cheery and hopeful girly-girl who's flighty under stress. The higher pitch voice fits that personality and helps convey it properly. Dubbing her with a deep voiced woman who sounds wisened and middle aged immediately breaks that image of her character, no matter how good that actor may be. When live action dubs are done like this, it's extremely off-putting because you're seeing the words "come out" of a real person's mouth that you are absolutely certain doesn't sound like that. I and many others find this equally off-putting for fictional characters, but for some reason many seem to be unphased by this horrible mismatch.

Then there's the script. Even when it's not overtly political, as in the worst cases, dub script writers (specifically in the anime industry) seem to love to insert contemporary western slang into their scripts that you know the original character wouldn't say. And aside from insertions, there's often unnecessary script changes galore, ruining jokes and subtly changing meanings and characterizations. Beyond that, there's no effort put into conveying ways of speaking. Sakura is again a great example. As was mentioned by OP, she originally has a slight hick accent. This is simply dropped altogether in the dub. She now sounds like an average suburban woman. Kotaro is likewise flattened from an incredibly bombastic character who alternates between highly professional business speech and over-the-top words-slurring hysterics... To a normal everyday dude who sometimes yells.

I could go on and on about the lack of contextual cohesion between the lines' delivery and the scenes they're in, badly paced dialogue... So many dubs are terrible in all these ways, including ZLS.

And it doesn't have to be this way. There are great dubs out there. Games seem to get it right more often, but anime too. Persona 5. Final Fantasy VII. Sing a Bit of Harmony's dub was pretty good, and even included dubbed songs that are far, far better than ZLS's. They're close in quality to the original, as a good dub should be.

There's even other dubs that make significant alterations to the source material on purpose, which can be good and respected as their own thing, but they should never be considered more important than the original or forced as the only option. Lord of Mysteries, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Ghost Stories come to mind. All absolutely fantastic. But if in the modern era where consumers very obviously are accepting of east Asian media they are still offered as the only viewing option, it's still ridiculous.

It's so offensive that I'm cancelling my membership.

The dub is actively bad. Offensively bad. It turns one of the most unique and entertaining characters in anime into a boring, mediocre side character, acted with the enthusiasm of a dead slug. No way in hell am I going to go watch the conclusion of a series I love with a dub that ruins it.

Don't worry fam, some of us don't hate you at least. Have fun!! I know I'm enjoying it.

Oh I'd fully agree that the anime adaptation was a butchering of the novels, so that certainly wouldn't help when judging its quality. But even looking at the arc as it existed in the books, while it's a "fun" story if you're into the premise (as I know I very much was reading it at 14 years old), it's not particularly deep.

In volume 1 the characterization is kept pretty light, though there's the occasional cursory reference made to other events like the deaths of the Black Cats that would later be expanded upon. I'm sure this is partly because the web novel was cut down when making the transition to light novel form, though the greatly improved pacing of the story was worth detaching the chronologically disconnected side stories into volume 2... But even then, Red Nosed Reindeer adds a bit of depth to Kirito's character but not so much that it has any tangible effect on the way he comes across in the later side stories, and would only really be capitalized on later in the series.

By contrast, Abridged does far more than making it "easier to understand". It more or less fundamentally rewrites Kirito into a different person, which for a parody would be perfectly fine to enable the comedy even if they didn't make him a cohesive character... But they went above and beyond to actually make his new character undergo a far more connected and cohesive character arc, utilizing the same basic plot beats as the original story but juicing as much meaningful character growth as they could out of them. They do this by greatly expanding on the dialogue, using Kirito's new alternative wry and sardonic persona to bounce off of other characters that give him pushback frequently and eventually cause the shell of that persona to crack. Rather than merely existing as relatively generic allies to support our protagonist on the rare occasion they have the opportunity to do so, Agil and Klein actively call him out on being an asshole, but also see in him the sore and sensitive loser geek that Kirito is and try to be kind to him regardless. This is doubly true for Asuna, whose new (again fundamentally different but well appreciated) sociopathic and machiavellian personality serves as a direct foil for Kirito. Their clashes reveal each other's insecurities and both serve as great comedy and as an opportunity for the two of them to grow closer in a way that feels truly genuine, and makes their eventual romance more believable. It's as though the two of them were perfectly crafted (in hell) for each other.

For as much I tried to elaborate on this, Explanation Point made a couple really great videos breaking down Abridged's writing, which I'll go ahead and link. He insults the original writing a bunch in ways I really don't agree with, but his points about Abridged still hold water.

Even as a fan I think abridged has better writing for the original Aincrad arc tbh. Progressive is way better though (at least in book form, second movie was... Pretty bad).

How do you roll it back to 11? I desperately want to do that.

I'm wondering the same thing. I don't get notifications from several apps anymore either, and the notification shade literally glitches out and displays only half of itself about 40% of the time.

I was rewatching the 1.1 story cutscenes and oh boy, I think I realized something big. It certainly seemed like Tartaglia was pulling on some other power than Hydro, and that's when I noticed: he's using a different vision.

What does this mean?!? It's clearly a new element we haven't heard of before. Plus it would imply that a person can have more than one vision! Or that someone can use another person's vision. Either way that's huge for lore!!!

"Experience the anime!"

Dual blades are just sooooo fast with Firebolt active!

For the dual blades skills, you have to add an input on the end of the first swing. So for Inferno Raid, when they finish one slash, press the button again. Same with Double Circular. If you miss it, Inferno Raid will play its finishing swing, and Double Circular will just stop.

Yeah, because she doesn't give a crap about human standards pretty much.

It's in the tutorial, actually. I think it's one of the very first ones. People just don't like to read them.

Since they never did explain that, and at one point in chapter one Kirito had died and I ended up with Eugeo and Sortiliena as my primary and secondary characters, I thought I'd seriously been softlocked. Was a lifesaver to eventually figure out the switching mechanic.

Probably affects sacred arts effectiveness but it's hard to say.

I found at least one at the small ruined building on the hill near the city ruins in the first Sothercrois area (unfortunately I can't remember the name at the moment).

Definitely expend skill points to give yourself at least four distinct sword skills. You'll do yourself a huge favor by at least having three, since you can then chain combo from one into another into another. The max skill connect count is 3 by default I think, but can be increased to 4, so you could go from your combo-end sword skill into three of your pallette assigned skills and do a lot of damage. This is amplified greatly by giving all three allies a sword skill order (you can press LB to open Soul Linkage for the first character and order a sword skill, then left/right on the d pad to get to other characters).

It has a chance to trigger when hitting a blocking opponent in a duel. It's not anything in particular you or the opponent is doing in sync really, just hit their block and it's got a chance to pop. They specify that in one of the tutorial screens but it's easy to miss.

I've started to win more consistently by trying to press the button only once the circle appears, but before it encloses on the button icon. It's extremely tight and you really have to feel it out, but it seems like if you get it "right" you can see the circle turn from blue to green, and if you get around half you win. The not pressing it before it appears part seems obvious, but I found that after the first strike I was jumping the gun slightly on most, and holding myself back helped.