Neon Genesis Evangelion — -dub- __link__
To complicate things further, the Rebuild of Evangelion films (1.11 through 3.0+1.01) saw a mix of both worlds. Initially handled by Funimation with much of the original ADV cast, the final film’s release on Amazon Prime Video led to a "unified" dub that brought back several legacy actors while maintaining the modern, literal translation style. Which One Should You Watch?
The biggest trigger for the fandom was the translation of the Japanese word Kodomo-tachi . The VSI script, heavily supervised by Khara (Studio Gainax’s successor), insisted on the literal translation:
The debate over the Neon Genesis Evangelion dub is one of the most contentious and enduring wars in anime fandom. It is a story of 1990s localization ethics, VHS tapes, redacted scripts, and a "director's cut" that arrived twenty years too late. Whether you love it or loathe it, the English dub of Evangelion is inseparable from the show's legacy in the West. Neon Genesis Evangelion -Dub-
Neither is wrong. But the fact that we are still arguing about the Neon Genesis Evangelion dub in 2025 shows that this isn't just a cartoon about robots. It is a Rorschach test. And how you want to hear Shinji scream "Congratulations!" at the end reveals just as much about you as it does about the show.
You cannot discuss the original dub without mentioning the ending. Every episode of the ADV release closed with Claire Littley’s ethereal cover of “Fly Me to the Moon.” It provided a melancholic, jazzy comedown after the psychological horror. Netflix stripped this (due to licensing), and the absence is felt. The original dub lives and dies by that 60-second outro. To complicate things further, the Rebuild of Evangelion
While the Netflix version is technically "cleaner" and benefits from modern recording standards, some fans argue it feels colder—though others contend that this coldness actually fits the show’s clinical, bureaucratic setting. The Amazon/VSI Redux: The Rebuild Era
If you want precision and fidelity , watch the Japanese with subtitles or the newer VSI/Netflix dub (which is cleaner but sterile). The biggest trigger for the fandom was the
Let’s not pretend it’s perfect. The ADV dub is loose . Localizers in the 90s took wild liberties. Kaworu’s famous “I love you” to Shinji becomes “I like you,” subtly changing the romantic subtext to platonic ambiguity. The translators also consistently missed the nuance of “Ikari” (anger/fury) as a surname.
This release includes English dubs on the same disc:
