

You can easily, and legally, stream anime for free from services like
Crunchyroll, Hulu, directly from the licensing companies (such as from
Funimation), and whatnot.

But the catch to that free access to the content is that it is subbed, not
dubbed; you have to pay an actual fee if you want to watch the anime dubbed.

Why is dubbed anime considered a "premium" that you have to pay for?

I ask this because a fairly substantial amount of the anime fan population
actually prefer to watch subbed anime anyways, even to the point of inciting
some ridiculous subbed vs dubbed arguments in Youtube comments sections and
other internet forums...

Why charge for just dubbed anime when you can also charge for subbed as well?
What makes dubbed so special that you have to pay for it, but not for subbed?


CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-03-10T08:15:08.500
30384
2016-03-11T03:56:31.850
14010
question
anime-production
Why is dubbed anime commercially considered a "premium"?


Creating anime [costs a **_lot_** of
money.](https://anime.stackexchange.com/a/4179/102) I admit that the numbers
in that answer are more than likely ballparks, but you get the gist - per
episode numbers are in the neighborhood of 11M yen (or ~$97,200).

Add on top of that the work that has to go into localization for release:

  * Certain scenes may ~~have to~~ be omitted, cut, shortened, censored or removed due to the difference in what is acceptable to broadcast in that country. (I'm thinking of DiC for their [creative dub of Sailor Moon](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DubText), and 4Kids for just about everything they touched. There were also scenes from various other series that had to be removed; you can read more about that [over here](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DigitalBikini).)

  * Certain jokes just don't translate well, no matter what you do.

The cost to do this adds on top of the original production costs, since there
is the very strong likelihood that it's not just voice actors and actresses
coming in and doing the work.

Above all, the series actually has to be doing sufficiently well in order to
earn a dub, or there has to be sufficient demand to deem it profitable to do
one. One of the best examples that comes to mind is
[Toradora!](http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/press-release/2014-03-12/toradora-
to-be-released-with-a-full-english-dub-and-on-blu-ray-in-premium-and-standard-
edition-formats-this-july), which had its original version broadcast and
released back in 2009, and had its dub come out about **five years later**.
It's safe to say that yes, there was enough demand for this series to come out
with a dub.

Suffice to say, the cost to produce the non-dubbed, often subtitled series is
sufficiently less than hiring more staff to do essentially the same thing.
This is why dubbed anime is definitely at a premium - because the work being
done _is_ a premium service for non-native Japanese speakers.


CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-03-11T03:56:31.850
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2016-03-11T03:56:31.850
2017-04-13T12:54:48.523
-1
102
30384
answer