Anime on Hulu: Not all that bad, surprisingly
03. Oct, 2008
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Now, you will almost never see Tofugu talking about anime on the site, at least not directly. But how could I not pass this up. I’m not particularly interested in the fact that Hulu has anime. Who cares about that? The most interesting thing is that they aren’t dubbing (most of) it. It comes in Japanese, and they provide subtitles. Considering that Hulu is very similar to watching normal television programming, their decision to not do sucky dubbed versions of shows surprised me. Well done, Hulu, well done. I’m actually impressed.
I should probably introduce Hulu. Basically, it’s a legal, free, internet service that lets you watch television shows online. The great thing about it is that you can watch new tv shows (just watched season 3, episode 3 of Heroes), and, if you get the hunkering to do so, watch old shows as well (been watching me some A-Team. I pitty the foo’!). There are commercials, but they’re very manageable, usually only 15 seconds long, and only a few times a show.
Recently, Hulu added an anime channel. Granted, I’m not really interested in the shows themselves (Conan O’Brien keeps me busy enough!), but the decision to keep the Japanese audio, and just do subs. There are a couple of anime on Hulu that are dubbed too, and surprisingly, they even manage to get this right. Speed Racer and Astro Boy just aren’t the same without their silly English voices. Embarrassingly, I’ve been watching Speed Racer and enjoying it immensely. I just love how fast that kid talks, then how he randomly jumps into the Mach 5 and drives away, for almost no reason at all…
They also seem to be adding to their collection. Recently it looks like they added Death Note and Bleach, though it doesn’t look like they have a ton of episodes yet. I imagine that if they keep doing what they’re doing, it will get more popular.
Personally, if you want to see some Japanese programming on Hulu, I would suggest Johnny Sokko and his Flying Robot, but that’s just me.
Update: If you’re outside the U.S. you can’t use Hulu…or can you? Check out this article to learn how to watch Hulu even if you aren’t in America.
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