I’m glad to hear that C-netizens hate the voice dubbing for the new Meteor Garden 2018 remake as much as I do. I think Chinese viewers and even many older Taiwanese drama viewers are used to dubbing, it’s a fact of life that that standard Mandarin is the default language on television and accomplished via dubbing when there are thousands of dialects and accents across the Chinese-speaking world. But accepting dubbing doesn’t mean accepting BAD dubbing where the voice doesn’t match the actor/actress or sounds just theatrically silly like someone trying to act via the voice alone and overdoing it.

That’s what it sounds like for the voice of Dao Ming Si/Domyouji played by Dylan Wang in MG2018, everyone else is not ideal but bearable but his just makes me cringe. Leading lady Shen Yue has the typical C-actress dub that I hear everywhere from Zheng Shuang to Zhao Li Ying and second male lead Guan Hong lucks out with the best dub. Other than the voices, the preview is awesome and looks so on point as a modernized version of Hana Yori Dango. Hopefully the MG2018 version that airs in Taiwan will strip out the voice dubbing and give us a chance to enjoy the original as it was meant to be. Continue reading →