The Japanese Star Guardian theme song puts the English version to shame

It took a while for us to finally notice that the Japanese League of Legends YouTube channel uploaded their own version of the Star Guardian music video, and dang, the Japanese version is much better than the English version.

To avoid sounding like a whiny anime fangirl who thinks anything Japanese is instantly better than its dubbed version, I will clarify that I tend to prefer dubs in most situations, as long as the situation includes it being past year 2010 and that the dub isn’t produced by 4Kids Entertainment.

The upbeat tempo of the Japanese version just fits the music video better. Though we can’t really tell what the singer is saying, we don’t need to know to understand the narrative of the music video. (The English version doesn’t add much on via lyrics to begin with.)

Given that the skins are very obviously based off of magical girl anime, we’re kind of shocked that Riot didn’t just run the Japanese version.

The English version isn’t terrible. The high-pitched singing and cringe-y lyrics are extremely reminiscent of dubbed magical girl openings from the early 2000s. We don’t really see dubs like that anymore, but something in me feels like Riot did it on purpose. They could have made some amazing banger song, but they wanted it to be nostalgic and kind-of bad, I think.

Take a look at this old school cringe-fest and tell me you don’t somehow get the same vibe.