I prefer the English dub. I think that in anime's early days, there were some terrible dubs. Anime was just emerging, it wasn't from America, and because of the classic American definition of animation as purely kiddie shows, voice actors and directors had a hard time taking it seriously. Same goes for Japanese cinema, like the Godzilla movies? I love Godzilla, but because it's from another country, I think the American voice actors just couldn't take it seriously. So I guess they just thought, "Screw it, I just want to get payed" and started pulling dubs out of their arse with as little effort as possible. So, over time I guess people started thinking it's the same for all dubs. And I'll agree wholehartedly, the farther back you go the worse dubbing of Japanese anime and movies gets. But these days, as anime has become a more respectable and well-known medium for entertainment, voice actors and directors have started putting more effort into their work. Only every once in a while is a dub made that's absolute ear-rape (Unless it's 4kids, of course).
I believe there's no argument that English voice actors can emote. People say all the time that Japanese voice actors can emote better than English voice actors, and I don't think that's true. I think English voice actors can put as much if not more emotion into their roles as Japanese ones. But what I hear alot of people say is that the work is Japanese, therefore the creators intended for you to watch it in Japanese. If the creators of an anime really wanted you to hear it in Japanese only, why would they let it get licensed and dubbed in the first place? Even if they don't let the show go dubbed (although it's hard for me to think of a time where that happened), do you think the creator intended for you to watch their show with text on the screen that distracts from the animation they had to painstakingly draw, frame-by-frame? I seriously doubt it. The only way you could watch an anime the "real" way is if you knew how to speak Japanese. Watching the anime in English would be the best thing to do, because that's a language you don't have to read to understand.
I love Japan, and I love anime, but I really think that anime can be best enjoyed in English. Watching it in English, you can understand what they're saying without having to read and hear good voices from your own language.
