Joostin

There's a reason this happens, and it's a very funny one. English dubbing has adopted this "imitate the Japanese" fumble because of the dub vs. sub debate. While it's largely framed around the culture war these days, dub vs. sub has been around for decades, and the old sub-only crowd was far more Reddit about it, even though Reddit didn't exist yet. They were the comic book guy, but weebier. At some point, English dub directors started taking their angry ravings on /a/ to heart. Previously, English dubs would hire theater actors, and just let them act. You'd occasionally get dubs using the JP voices for reference, leading to awkward performances like in the OG Gundam dub. But, for the most part, actors were told to act, the main caveat being to match the lip flaps. But the old sub-only crowd saw the very notion of Japanese media characters speaking in the same language, cadence, and tone as the people in their lives that rejected them as annihilating their escapism. You especially saw this in their reaction to the English voices of anime girls. Hearing their waifu speak with the same voice as the girls who rejected them was a genuine, honest-to-god trigger. I have personally seen some of the most absolutely unhinged and mentally ill forum posts over how a girl sounds in a language track. Haruhi discourse alone... Because these people were so vocal (and by god were they vocal. Even today a sub-only fan can't go a day without reminding you they're sub-only), dub studios assumed this is what the fans at large wanted: sound more like the Japanese performances. English dubbing got worse for the oldest reason in the book: trying to appeal to an audience who would never buy your product in the first place. To this segment of the anime fandom, Japanese wasn't the language of the nation of Japan, it was the elven tongue of their happy place. No English performance would gain their approval. And yet studios tried to cater to them. Now this is what we get.