Inuyasha: Sub or Dub?

Either works, and the order matters more than the track. ANN’s critics graded the English dub well below the Japanese on the earliest DVDs, citing miscasting and a stilted “period” script, then graded them level on the third-season set and on both halves of The Final Act, with the sixth-season review still a step behind. The short answer: if the first discs’ English grates, switch to Japanese for those episodes; from the third season on, choose by taste. The Final Act has a different English Kagome, and ANN’s reviewer thought it barely mattered.

Who plays whom

ANN’s entry for the 2000 series credits Kappei Yamaguchi as Inuyasha, Satsuki Yukino as Kagome Higurashi, Ken Narita as Sesshomaru, Kōji Tsujitani as Miroku, Houko Kuwashima as Sango and Noriko Hidaka as Kikyo in Japanese. Its English credits list Richard Cox (Richard Ian Cox in The Final Act’s entry) as Inuyasha, Moneca Stori as Kagome, David Kaye as Sesshomaru, Kirby Morrow as Miroku, Kelly Sheridan as Sango and Willow Johnson as Kikyo, with Paul Dobson as Naraku. ANN lists Viz Media among the licensors and Ocean Studios as the English recording studio, and the series aired on Adult Swim in the United States from August 31, 2002 to October 27, 2006.

What ANN’s critics said, disc by disc

Zac Bertschy reviewed the first North American DVDs in 2003 and graded the dub below the Japanese each time: B against B+ on the first disc, C− against C on the second and C against B on the seventh. On the first he called the dub “arguably one of the worst available on the market today,” singling out Kaede’s “ye” for “you”; on the seventh he wrote that “the Japanese track is perfectly suited to the characters,” while exempting Sesshomaru and Naraku from his complaints about the English cast.

The later record is kinder. Theron Martin, reviewing the third-season box set in 2006, graded both tracks B and wrote that “by the third season all of the VAs have their roles down solid,” adding that Dobson’s Naraku has “an air of constant menace” the Japanese version lacks. Carl Kimlinger’s 2008 review of the sixth-season set still preferred Japanese, C+ against B−, but reported that “the embarrassingly misguided ‘period’ dialogue of the earlier episodes has been abandoned” for modern English that stays “unusually faithful to the direct translation.” He named Cox’s “arrogant punk take on Inuyasha” as the furthest the English cast drifts from the original.

The Final Act’s recast

For The Final Act, ANN’s entry keeps Yamaguchi, Yukino, Narita, Tsujitani, Kuwashima and Hidaka in Japanese, and Martin wrote that the Japanese side “returns nearly its entire principal cast, with Jaken being the most prominent replacement.” The English side changed more. ANN credits Kira Tozer as Kagome and Michael Daingerfield as Sesshomaru, with Cox, Morrow, Sheridan and Johnson returning. In his review of the first Blu-ray set Martin wrote that Ocean “did a remarkably good job of recasting roles with voice actors who sound very similar to the originals,” and by the second set he judged that Tozer had reached “equal standing with Moneca Stori as the definitive English voice for the character.” He graded the dub and the subtitled version the same on both sets, B and then B+.

The English dub of The Final Act came later than the show. ANN reported in 2009 that Viz would simulcast it as it aired in Japan, and a 2019 ANN report says Viz released the English-dubbed version in 2012, with Toonami broadcasting it from 2014 to 2015.

A second English dub

ANN’s credits also list an English dub made for Animax Asia, for instance Mark Muñoz as Inuyasha and Zahn Yu as Sesshomaru in The Final Act. That is a different production from the Ocean dub the reviews above discuss; know which one you are hearing.

For quote hunters

The lines on our Inuyasha quotes page come from Wikiquote’s English transcription. Its section headings use the English episode titles, which ANN’s episode list shows differ from literal translations of the Japanese ones (episode 29 is “Sango’s Suffering and Kohaku’s Life” in English, “Sango’s Worry and Kohaku’s Life” translated literally). That does not tie the transcription to the Ocean dub or to any subtitle release, and we do not claim it does. Where each part of the story sits is in the Inuyasha watch order.