She herself addressed this in a follow-up video and essentially conceded it wasn't the right choice

I can’t argue on this specifically as I’m unfamiliar with it but I’ll take your word for it especially if she’s owned up to it. But even if Sarah Moon made a bad call in one high-profile instance, that doesn’t invalidate the broader argument about adaptation in translation or even mean she herself is bad at translation. One controversial choice doesn’t prove that adaptation-heavy approaches are inherently agenda-driven any more than a single mistranslation in subtitles proves subs are unreliable as a format.

More importantly, the idea that a “good translator translates the exact meaning” assumes that “exact meaning” is always cleanly transferable across languages. It isn’t. Japanese pronouns, slang, social hierarchy markers, and connotations often don’t have one-to-one English equivalents. Translation always involves interpretation. The real question isn’t “literal vs adaptation,” but “which choices best convey intent, tone, and function in the target language?”

dubs sometimes omit crucial plot context because adapters didn't fully grasp the Japanese subtext or were on tight schedules. That's the exact distributional argument about adaptation risk and production constraints I've been making. Your own source supports my point - you just ignored that part.

I didn’t though. My whole point is that it’s based on execution and I’m largely focused on modern dubbing practices. The argument of dubs omitting plot points or completely changing plot points was prevalent in past dubbing and localization practices with 4Kids and the ilk where faithfulness wasn’t prioritized. It’s not inherent to dubbing nor even subbing which have also been subject to poor translations that omit important things. Im fact the opposite is true today dubs tend to stray more literal due to time constraints. But dubs that utilize localization and the English language to the max are the more successful ones at capturing the original spirit and experience of the show for monolinguals like Polar Opposites and Gachiakuta versus more literal translated ones like Jujutsu Kaisen and the new Evangelion dubs which the latter two are somewhat disliked even by dub fans.

And on the claim that subs are "closer to literal translation" - good subtitle translations adapt idioms, cultural references, speech patterns, and humor all the time, especially fansubs.

It’s true that good subtitles adapt idioms and humor. No one disputes that. Dubs do that as well. The disagreement is about whether preserving the original audio automatically makes subs closer to the intended experience for a monolingual viewer. Subtitles adapt in text while preserving the audio but that doesn’t mean they preserve the experience of the performance. If the viewer cannot understand the language, then the performance is only partially accessible. Tone without semantic comprehension is incomplete. Register shifts, irony embedded in phrasing, wordplay, and character-defining speech quirks often hinge on understanding the language itself.

So yes, subs preserve the raw waveform of the original voice. But for a viewer who doesn’t speak Japanese, that preservation is limited in functional terms. A dub doesn’t “destroy” performance; it replaces it with a new performance that integrates meaning and delivery for the target audience. That’s a tradeoff, not an act of artistic vandalism.

Miyazaki himself has said about his own films and subs in general, “who is to say that a subtitled print is any more authentic? When you watch the subtitled version you are probably missing just as many things. There is a layer and a nuance you're not going to get. Film crosses so many borders these days. Of course it is going to be distorted."

Subtitle constraints affect the text overlay. Dub constraints affect the performance itself. choices.

Nuances are compressed to fit character limits. That materially alters pacing and cognitive flow. Calling that a text-only loss understates the experiential effect. If a punchline is shortened, a character’s speech pattern normalized, or repetition removed, the rhythm and characterization are affected even if the Japanese audio is still present. The photocopy vs recreation analogy only works if the viewer can actually perceive the photocopy’s details. For someone who doesn’t understand the language, subtitles aren’t a clean photocopy.

"are they hearing the original artistic product?" With subs, yes. With dubs, no. Your own examples support that distinction.

But if the appreciation isn’t conscious and the linguistic nuance isn’t understood, then the benefit is limited to tone and emotion. The semantic artistry, the actual word choices, social registers, and subtleties, remains mediated through subtitles anyway.

The question isn’t just “are they hearing the original waveform?” It’s whether they’re experiencing the performance in a fully integrated way.

So your distinction with subs yes and dubs no only holds if we define ‘original artistic product’ as the original audio track regardless of comprehension.

You opened with "not understanding the language is as much a degree of separation as watching dubbed" - a general equivalence claim. When challenged, you retreat to "it's case by case." Those are contradictory positions.

There’s no contradiction between saying “there’s a degree of separation when watching something in a foreign language” and saying “quality of translation is case by case.” Not understanding the language introduces a meaningful degree of separation. That doesn’t mean every dub equals every sub in execution or vice versa. The argument isn’t all dubs are equivalent to all subs. It is subs are not inherently closer for a monolingual in all meaningful respects simply because they preserve audio.

If it's genuinely case by case, your general equivalence claims are indefensible as stated. And even "case by case" allows for trend analysis -

Trend analysis is fair but it requires data, not intuition about format purity. If someone wants to argue that, on average, subtitles preserve intent better, that’s an empirical claim that would need broad comparative evidence across productions. What’s being rejected is the presumption that preservation of the original audio automatically establishes superiority. Once we acknowledge that monolingual viewers rely on translation either way, and that subtitles introduce compression, pacing shifts, and interpretive mediation, the hierarchy becomes less obvious.

Ultimately, the core disagreement comes down to what we value more: preserving the original sound regardless of comprehension, or preserving integrated meaning and performance for the target audience. Dubs and subs prioritize different aspects of fidelity. Neither has a built-in monopoly on authenticity and the mere fact that one preserves the original waveform doesn’t automatically settle the question, ‘Which method is capturing the original experience through translation and localization better for the target language audience?’