Angel Beats!: Sub or Dub?

Angel Beats! is a fair fight. Theron Martin reviewed Sentai Filmworks' English release for Anime News Network and gave the dub and the subtitled version the same grade, A- each. The dub keeps the Japanese songs, so the Girls Dead Monster numbers sound the same either way. The practical problem is finding the dub, not judging it.

The short answer

Pick on preference. Japanese gives you Hiroshi Kamiya and Harumi Sakurai as Otonashi and Yuri; English gives you a cast that the one ANN critic who compared them thought held up across the board. If a service offers only the subtitled version, that is a licensing fact, not a judgment on the dub.

Who made each track

ANN dates the thirteen-episode broadcast from April 2 to June 25, 2010. Sentai Filmworks announced in March 2011 that it had acquired the series and would dub it, with the dub premiering at Anime Boston that April. Days later Sentai confirmed to ANN that the dub would keep the original Japanese-language music. ANN credits Steven Foster as ADR director, and Jackie McClure with the translation and, with Foster, the English script.

Principal cast as credited by ANN

Character	Japanese	English
Yuzuru Otonashi	Hiroshi Kamiya	Blake Shepard
Yuri Nakamura	Harumi Sakurai	Brittney Karbowski
Kanade Tachibana	Kana Hanazawa	Emily Neves
Hideki Hinata	Ryōhei Kimura	David Matranga
Yui	Eri Kitamura	Hilary Haag
Iwasawa	Miyuki Sawashiro	Luci Christian
Naoi	Megumi Ogata	Greg Ayres
TK	Michael Rivas	Adam Van Wagoner

Two English roles changed hands partway through: ANN credits Kalob Martinez as Takamatsu for episodes 1 to 7 and Illich Guardiola from episode 8, and splits Hisako between Elizabeth Bunch and Jessica Boone. The encyclopedia entry has the full lists.

What the critic heard

Martin's July 2011 review of the complete DVD collection said the dub showed "Sentai dubs are back on track": filler dialogue used seamlessly, performances "uniformly smooth," and no inappropriately wacky voices. He called Karbowski's Yuri "a welcome surprise," Shepard "a particularly good fit" as Otonashi, and newcomer Dylan Godwin "perfectly-cast" as Takeyama, and approved of Sentai leaving the insert songs undubbed.

His one real question was TK, who in Japanese "mostly speaks in seemingly random English." ANN credits that role in the Japanese track to Michael Rivas. In the dub, Van Wagoner still has TK speaking randomly in English, with a tone Martin thought fitting for the character. That is the one place where the two tracks cannot do the same thing: a character defined by speaking English stands out less when everyone does.

What the English release left out

Martin noted that Sentai's DVD included the comedy OVA but not the two-and-a-half-minute alternate epilogue, and that it left the character names in the opening untranslated. The Angel Beats! watch order explains where that epilogue and the later extra episode belong.

Where each version is

ANN's encyclopedia now lists Sentai's license as expired and Aniplex of America as licensor from 2019. When the series arrived on Netflix that year, ANN reported that "only the Japanese version, with English subtitles, is available." Availability changes, so check your own service, and check older Sentai discs for the dub.

A note on quoting

Our best Angel Beats! quotes page says which English rendering its lines follow; the full Angel Beats! quote list has every checked line with its source. The ending explainer covers the final episode, with spoilers.