I currently have to use Subtitles, kinda annoying. And I despise dubs since the voice acting is so bad, I mean like the emotions in the voice, its so emotionless in English.
I am a English speaker with some fluency in Cantonese and Mandarin.
How difficult is Japanese? Am I gonna waste a lot of time?
Also what’s the best resource to learn?
Consuming media is a great way to supplement your language-learning, but be careful not to confuse the dialog used in anime with actual conversational Japanese. Just like how nobody actually talks like a Western cartoon character does, Japanese people don’t talk like anime characters. Anime dialog is largely dramatized.
Also for what it’s worth; depending on what you’re watching, the English dubs have gotten way better in recent years. There’s a lot of good talent in the dub scene these days, and Japanese directors are getting better at trusting the performance of western voice actors, instead of demanding that the actor sounds the way they think it should sound in English. In my experience, most dubs post-2010 are generally pretty good. Generally.
Every time someone says the dub is actually good this time and I try it out, it sounds like shit. Frieren was the last time I trusted the dubbers and they made her sound like a MILF. She’s supposed to sound like a young woman because that’s what she is by elf standards. There was a whole running gag about whether she’s a MILF which doesn’t make any sense in english because she is definitively a MILF there.
Dragonball super has pretty great dubs. So does cowboy bebop. NGE also is pretty good. FMA Brotherhood also does a great job. So is My Hero Academia.