Back in the 60s, anime began to show up in the states. While not the first “official” anime to release stateside, Astro Boy was easily one of the most recognizable ones to be seen by Americans. Other series to follow were anime shows like Speed Racer—Mach GoGoGo—and in the 70s, Lupin III. These shows were just the forefront to anime becoming popular in America but that’s in large part due to their accessibility. While the English dub to these series were…corny to be kind, if they didn’t have English dub the shows would need subtitles which would cost tons of extra money for networks to do and probably wouldn’t appeal to TV watchers who weren’t too use to foreign shows on American television.

If you were an anime fan in the 90s and/or early 2000s, you knew the struggle of telling classmates about anime. Most would say rude comments—of which we won’t mention here—and it often led to confrontations in school. As time went by, anime became more and more popular making these incidents in school less likely to occur. Mainstream anime—shows like Death Note or Sword Art Online—were enjoyed by even those who didn’t love anime because they will well-acted and approachable by all. If anime wasn’t dubbed though, anime wouldn’t have truly become well known and the school yard would still be full of ignorant people…which is a nightmare when we think about it.

Speaking about mainstream anime, you know why most westerns watched mainstream anime? It was because these shows had dub. Go to a dozen forums and you’ll see some anime viewers who won’t watch sub because they don’t like to read. If you had no English dub in anime guess what readers, there would be no mainstream anime. Unless those same viewers decide to watch subs—many don’t—anime wouldn’t have popular shows in the west and would be still relatively unknown.

Without mainstream anime, without English dub and without anime being popular in the west, the anime community would suffer…greatly. Anime communities—as good and bad as they can be—are only getting more popular as anime ramps up in the west and worldwide. Anime without English dub wouldn’t obviously be popular in the USA and other countries might not have their own dubs thus making the anime community a lot smaller. This theme is a truly hypothetical statement because maybe anime would still be popular in places like Europe, Australia and so forth, but would they be willing to dub anime in those countries if America didn’t do it? We’d have to think probably not though.