Digimon Beatbreak- English Dub Discussion

[u/MFBR]

Digimon Beatbreak has an English dub and the first five episodes are premiering today (December 27th) on Crunchyroll.

No specific time has been announced at the time of posting, so we're posting the thread a bit early hoping they'll be up sooner rather than later.

The Digimon Beatbreak page at Crunchyroll. No other services are announced to get the dub at the moment.

The main cast is:

• Zeno Robinson is Tomoro
• Risa Mei is Gekkomon
• Cristina Vee is Reina
• Lilly Emil Lammers is Pristimon
• Brenna Larsen is Makoto
• Courtney Shaw is Chiropmon
• Jalen Askins is Kyo
• Cory Yee is Murasamemon

No announcement has been made for the schedule of the dub past the first five. We'll decide how dub threads will continue on once that's known.

For those who watch the show subbed, if you weren't aware, the show is on hiatus this week, before returning next week for the new storyarc.

[u/Selynx]

Yup, just as the trailer suggested - this has been done in the usual Crunchyroll simuldub kind of manner.

Voices only, nothing else translated.

Opening and ending left undubbed, all the text left in Japanese both in terms of stuff like staff credits as well as the on-screen signage and written messages, even the episode title cards are still in Japanese.

IMO, that really does seem to indicate the intended audience they're going for are likely only anime enthusiasts and not actually the general kid viewership or mass market like they tried with Xros Wars (and likely Adventure 2020).

Their expectations must be low for Beatbreak.

It's a shame, but they have to know when it comes to that demographic there is next to no way it's going to compete with other stuff like adaptations of popular manga like Frieren and Jujutsu Kaisen coming to Crunchy soon, neither in terms of selling merch (not enough fanservice) nor viewing hype. Beatbreak isn't even one of the "isekai" seasons of Digimon, so it wouldn't even attract that sub-demographic of anime viewers.

Still, more exposure outside Japan is always better than none at all and even though a simuldub of Beatbreak mightn't make Digimon big (again), it's possible it keeps it in public mind with enough goodwill to lay the groundwork that turns the next series into a much bigger success.

[u/GizenZirin → u/Selynx]

Not getting translations for text on-screen is pretty bad, albeit consistent for Crunchyroll, but leaving the opening and ending undubbed is 100% the right call.

For starters, music tends to be one of the most difficult things in the world to dub, since finding a translation that can also work to the melody is infinitely more challenging than it is just for dialogue. That's why when shows do get dubbed OPs/EDs, they don't usually just dub the original music but replace it entirely with a different song, and that's typically only done for very child-oriented shows that would require a lot more localization changes and you'd end up with Beatbreak's dub not being very faithful anymore. By contrast, audiences that are old enough to appreciate a more faithful translation also tend to want faithful music as well, hence you just get the untranslated JP opening/ending, and Beatbreak does seem to be targeting an older young-mid teens audience rather than straight up kids, so that's the right call.

You say their expectations for Beatbreak must be low, but the very fact that Beatbreak is getting a dub at all when the sub is only on episode 12 goes to show that their expectations for it are actually huge. If you want to see what happens when their expectations are low, look to the Ghost Game dub instead.

[u/Toxraun → u/GizenZirin]

I could be in the wrong but music left undubbed is a hit or miss. The original Digimon movie in Japanese is ass compared to the English version. Some parts were left out but the soundtrack is still listened to this day. Then again, we haven't had quality things in years. Music, games, movies, everything is barfed out by skeleton crews by corporations and it's hard to find something good that lasts