I’ve never thought that dubbers treated the material very seriously, and had a distinct tendency to treat everything like a western-style cartoon: e.g. kid oriented.

Witness, for example, Tenchi Muyo and the Kermit treatment.

Granted, I’m kind of a purist and my experience with anime hearkens back to the days when the only thing you could get State-side was an Nth generation VHS of 3 episodes of Maison Ikkoku subtitled by Artic Animation — and that was only if you knew a guy, who knew a guy, who knew a guy, who …

I speak Japanese well enough to get by without subtitles so of course I’m biased.

To its credit, you could certainly argue that dubbing does expand the fan base of anime by an order of magnitude; bigger fan base = more incentive to bring things stateside = more anime for everyone = hurray!

But yeah. Not a big fan of dubs here, either. I wish to god they would subtitle games (e.g. Final Fantasy) as well. One of the (many) great things about the Disgaea games is that you can keep the Japanese audio … the dub job there is enough to make you want to break the disc into little pieces and burn them.

But back on topic : Basilisk is a good series.

Repulsive characters are treated sympathetically; some of the attractive characters are pretty ugly inside. Pretty much all of the characters have their own lives, loves, hatreds, and motivations. It’s difficult to “take sides” between the two clans.

Also, lots of ninja fights!!1!11!one!!1!

If I had a choice between English dubs and a cheaper DVD to produce, I’d definitely choose the cheaper DVD.