The Shrine

It's actually pretty good. It's somewhat different than what I'm used to on the series, but I think I could get used to it. I think Mugen sounded pretty cool when he got into his rude and playful mode. I was kinda surprised that they still translated Jin saying "piece of shit". ("shit" was replaced with a record stratch, but they still used it as part of the dialogue. I thought it was a better effect when it was censored.)

Ugh, really? I watched most of the first ep dubbed and wasn't a big fan.

I think a lot of it has to do with watching the Japanese dub first for a while and then switching over to English. You get used to one and it feels strange switching to another. I'm trying to figure out if I can remove that from my objectivity. It makes me wonder how I would feel if I watched GitS or FMA in Japanese first, before switching to English, because I feel that those are examples of excellent dubs.

It's not just that, but I'm sure that has an affect. I mean, if I go back now and watch the Robotech or Akira (old) dubs, they're excellent. Mononoke is great, aside from Gillian Anderson and Billy Cudrup. Spirited Away was quite good. It's not that there are no good dubs, it's just that they're often far behind the Japanese ones. Same for games. Look at the difference between Lunar and Mega Man X4

I thought they both were a bit too menacing. Mugen doesn't sound as fluent and relaxed, and Jin sounds extremely deep as hell, as opposed to his soft spoken japanese counterpart.

Fuu (sp?) is a bit annoying

Actually, I didn't mind Fuu in the English dub. Fuu's voice in the Japanese dub is definately annoying.