Japanese ‘King of the Hill’ Fans Have Been Arguing Over Subs vs. Dubs for Decades

King of the Hill is a big hit in Japan, but its localization in the Land of the Rising Sun has its controversies — and not just because of everything Cotton said about and did to “the Tojos.”

American nerds, cinephiles and animation enthusiasts have long fawned over the many amazing cultural exports from Japan. From samurai movies to sushi, everything that Americans consider stereotypically Japanese has a huge fan base over in the States, but in today’s America, perhaps no corner of Japanese culture is more popular than imported anime and manga. And within the American anime community, there is one enduring debate in which no single Naruto, One Piece or Berserk fan is on the fence — the war between watching these anime with English subtitles with original Japanese audio versus an English dub that erases the work of the original voice actors. 

The question of “subs vs. dubs” can be unique to each anime, but never is the answer as simple and uncontroversial as “either or.”

It may surprise American weeaboos to learn that, just as they obsess over every frame of an episode of Kaiju No. 8, Japanese animation fans are equally as fond of a few special American series, with King of the Hill holding a particular place in their hearts despite Cotton’s hard feelings over the loss of his lower legs.

However, just as we Americans debate the best way to translate anime, the Japanese King of the Hill fandom still can’t decide if subs beat dubs or vice versa:

As an admittedly unilingual American, it’s hard to listen to the Japanese voice actors for Bobby and Hank and hear them as anything other than poor impressionists. Hank’s voice is a little too high for such a stern, serious, red-blooded Texan man, and while the Japanese Bobby does capture the curious childishness of Pamela Adlon’s performance, she’s decidedly missing Adlon’s signature rasp, especially in a scene centered around smoking.

The Japanese dub also struggles to deal with the unique issue of other characters in King of the Hill being deliberately incomprehensible. Even though Boomhauer is speaking Japanese in this clip, the Japanese voice actor is almost more coherent than Mike Judge’s performance of Boomhauer to my American ears:

However, on the other side of the debate, the most crucial element of comedy is timing, and it’s hard to get a sense of the distinct, slow rhythm of King of the Hill while quickly scanning kanji at the bottom of the screen. So, some Japanese King of the Hill fans may feel that, even with ill-fitting performances from the Japanese voice cast, hearing the jokes will always be better than reading them.

At the end of the day, though, it’s hard to hear the Japanese Hank read the lines straight without any of the character's signature ad-libs — even Junichiro knew how do deliver a decent “Bwah!”