Gag and parody dubs
So let's be real, a lot of dubs don't live up to the original. Stuff gets lost in translation, the actors aren't as good, for some reason they choose a guy who sounds like he's 10 to voice the teenage protagonist (coughanothercough). A lot of people prefer subs for that reason.
But sometimes, sometimes the dubs throw out the original script and go all-in on the hamminess for gag dubs, and by god they can be amazing.
The golden example: the Ghost Stories dub. They got a generic ghost hunting anime that they knew wouldn't sell that well in western markets, and thus gave the English distributors free reign on changing the script. Every episode is like an Abridged series, and so politically incorrect but so amazing for it. The voice actors are very obviously having a blast with all the ad-libbing going on, you can see them developing the characters themselves and loving it.
So what other amazing gag and parody dubs do you guys know of?
Not exactly what you're thinking of (edit: being live action rather than anime), but two comedy movies come to mind that use large amounts of redubbed footage along with original shots:
Kung Pow: Enter The Fist is a kung fu movie spoof using a bunch of redubbed footage from an old kung fu movie ('Tiger and Crane Fists' according to wikipedia).
Hercules Returns is an old movie (Samson and His Mighty Challenge) redubbed in-universe. The framing device is that a cinema is attempting to reopen against commercial competition with a show of said movie but due to circumstances the operators are forced to ad lib all the dialogue.
Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt English dub is worth checking out too along with Crayon Shin Chan. Mike Patton is in Crayon and Ghost Stories... He has an amazing sense of humor.
Yugioh the abridged series is a classic, but the English dub of Yugioh GX is somehow funnier!
A couple clips of GX ended up on my YouTube feed recently. Have to say, did a double take at "Beetron 2: Electric Bugaloo!" Feels like they acknowledged "school just for a children's card game" is a bit of a silly concept and decided to embrace that.
There was also a writer's strike around that time in the US, so the producers and translators just decided to have fun with the show. That's how they ended up with a Schwarzenegger Woolly Mammoth.
Ok, so not exactly an anime, but it is animated. I present to you The Land Before Time: The Scottish Edition. Yes, someone re-dubbed the entire movie in bad Scottish accents and re-scored the whole movie with bagpipes and it. is. glorious. Enjoy!
[Samurai Pizza Cats] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5xkunUF-4w) was sort of like this. The guys dubbing it into English didn't always have access to usable translations of the script. So they'd just watch it and make up dialogue that fit was happening on the screen.
I've heard of that one, haven't seen it yet! I know there's some gems from that time period that had similar issues getting a script or translation, or else just went full-ham with the writing. My main question: Is the voice acting decent in the dub?
It sounds like most other 90s western cartoons.
But the writing is actually pretty good. Since they were just making up their own translation, it has a kind of a snarky sarcastic tone, where the narrator is almost mocking the show itself. I ended up rewatching the 1st episode after linking it before, and there was a quite a few of those "how'd they get to keep that joke in there" lines I completely missed as a kid.
No mention of Team 4 Star?
These guys completely redubbed DBZ using the same voices and made fun of the world of Dragonball
Sword Art Online Abridged is my favorite, the absolute funniest parody dubbing I've ever seen. In my opinion it's the new gold standard for parody dubs.
I fully agree, at the very least it's the gold standard for Abridged series. I've seen many people claim it does a better job telling the story than the actual SAO. It even works actual gameplay elements into the plot like game-breaking glitches or Charisma-boosting hats. Also the motive behind the whole mess is simultaneously hilarious but also makes so much sense.
Not an anime but I remember, sometime in the early 2000s, somewhere deep in the high-numbered TV channels, late at night, watching a dub of one of the Mothra films which appeared to have been done by no more than three or four quite posh-sounding English dudes, probably students, doing terrible voices for different characters (not even consistent ones). The soundtrack was exclusively hardcore techno, mixed way too loud and brought in far too early so you often missed dialogue. It was fantastically terrible.
I have checked with the people I was living with at the time and they all remember it too, and while a lot of the early part of this century is very hazy, the chances of all of us simultaneously hallucinating the same thing is quite unlikely. Last time I looked, I couldn't find any mention of it anywhere on the internet.
This honestly sounds really interesting, spectacularly bad dubs can be just as hilarious as parody and gag dubs. It could be worth sharing with the Lost Media Wiki, they have forums where you can post.
I had a bit of a google around and found a fairly recent forum thread about it, which includes both a link to the full movie on Youtube and, if you scroll down a bit, a short article about it's creation - they weren't students, but they did have one voice actor for every five characters in the film.
Also it wasn't Mothra, it was Gamera: Guardian of the Universe. But in my defence is was (a) a long time ago (b) I'm not a huge kaiju fan anyway and (c) there was a LOT of weed around in that house so it's amazing I can recall anything.
The music is just as banging as I remember though.
Sweet! Glad someone found it. I'll have to check it out!
I haven't personally seen it, but I've heard really great things about the Kaguya-sama Love is War dub