Dub vs sub for serious emotional scenes - does one lose impact?

I was watching Attack on Titan season 3 with my friend who only does dubs. We got to the scene where Eren finds out about his dad and she just nodded along. I watched it subbed first and was wrecked for like an hour. The voice acting in Japanese hits different for raw emotion, right? But she said she doesn't feel a thing if she's reading subtitles during a big moment. So which side actually loses the emotional weight? Is it the translation gap or the acting quality that changes things?

2 comments

2 Comments

tarajenkins2d ago

Wait, she said she doesn't feel ANYTHING during emotional scenes with subs? That's wild to me. Good voice acting cuts through language barriers, and the Japanese cast in AoT pours their guts into those moments. Dub scripts have to match lip flaps and often lose the rawness of the original delivery.

craig.tessa2d ago

Subs let you catch the raw breath cracks between lines, @tarajenkins...