There's that and the fact that the overdubs were done by seasoned, professional voice-actors who know their chops. Talking of anime, off the top of my head the dubbed versions of Akira and Paprika were pretty good too.

All in all dubbing doesn't bother me some of the time, but bad dubbing really takes me out of a movie. As most dubs I've ever heard are pretty awful, I'm a sub kinda guy, especially when it comes to live action movies. I remember seeing the dubbed version of Time Crimes and marveling at how cheesy the voiceovers were when those brain cells should have been figuring out what the hell was going on in the movie.

By the way, if anyone wants to see dubbing at its absolute worst, check out Roberto Benigni's Pinocchio and Garzey's Wing.

That's weird, I always thought the dubbing for FMA was really good. In general, i actually think that dubbing in anime is much more watchable than in live action films cause it doesn't look as bad when animated mouths are out of sync.

In anime, I think it's much more important for the voice actors to have charisma and fit with the general vibe of the character than be dubbed correctly. Having both is nice too though.Hayao Miyazaki - IMDb

i actually really liked the dub on Slayers....i love the voice for Lena

Did you see the subbed version before the dubbed, as a matter of interest? Have you seen the subbed since?

i compared the subs to the dubs on films like Let the Right One In and Salon Kitty

the subs are actually more intricate than the dubbed dialogue

I prefer my foreign content subtitled as well. You lose so much of the character, the actor's expression, when it's dubbed over by someone in a studio. There's such a great disconnect between what you're seeing and hearing, you can't immerse yourself in the plot. Dubbing is a distraction, and often really tarnishes the original intent of the plot, characters, and film as a whole.

There's also the added amusement when you have a basic understanding of the language, and those inevitable moments occur where the wording of the original statement is totally lost in the subtitles :P

Subtitles obviously, dubbing is so hilariously awful, even in cartoons. I'm so glad we don't dub anything in Sweden, otherwise our English would be on the level of the Germans or the French.