Dogasu's Backpack Discussion

[Antiyonder]

Just some other translation based questions regarding the stuff we got comparisons on:

1. So we know that the Squirtle Squad were threatening to kill Misty VS dyeing her hair.

But what is being said when Ash finds that she's okay? Was it literally that they wouldn't harm a girl or something? (You know, cause Japan)

2. So one moment I look at a bit differently cause of Suede's former vids is "Ash Catches a Pokémon" regarding Misty's annoyance at him after the capture of Pidgeotto. Well as he suggests, it seems like a calling out of protagonists who can just get by with luck and such VS say being skilled.

That said, is her comment pretty close to what she says in the Japanese version?

The bit I am mainly speaking of for context:
Misty- With Pokémon, you've got to use strategy. Pidgeotto is a bird. Caterpie is a worm. Birds eat worms, Mr. Pokémon Master!

Ash- Well, if you just try hard enough, things will work out, won't they?

Misty- No, Ash, I'm afraid things won't just work out if you try hard enough. The Pokémon trainer's judgment. is more important than anything else, and unfortunately for you,
the trainer has to have a brain!

 

[darksteel6]

Saw Dogasu's tweet about Pokemon Heroes and i'm blown away to find out the U.S. version had a blue tint over the entire film. Honestly I never noticed that as a kid, crazy that I had no idea for all these years. This isn't the only time something like this has happened as the U.S. release of Dragon Ball Super Broly has a green-tint over the entire film, though that one is definitely less noticeable and fortunately the Manga UK release(which I was able to find on Usenet) does not have that problem so i'm hoping the U.K. and Australian/New Zealand releases of Pokemon Heroes are tint free.


I've seen some people in replies saying they don't remember the blue tint, maybe it was only present on the DVDs and not the VHS? Cause I swear I don't remember the film being that dark when I rented it as a kid.
Fortunately there is a fan-edit out there that syncs the English dub with the Japanese visuals and includes the cut storybook prologue.

 

[AgedVeteranofShow]

Meh, they may have over-emphasized “this isn’t a goodbye but a see you soon” kind of thing but the meaning was the same.

Sucks we had to wait until the final episode for it to happen but we got the bird back.

Agree, I didn't have any real issue, and it's been vindicated by time somewhat here regardless (then again, you could say that for the 4Kids dub for the main Series in terms of music handling all around in particular beyond just the opening themes/intros for the TV Series, given it never hit the lows objectively the TPCi dub did in XY, SM & JN at any point- the modern dub is so egregious in more than one aspect that it is only helping redeem the entire original English run in comparison in most facets now IMO).

 

[snowmint]

Saw Dogasu's tweet about Pokemon Heroes and i'm blown away to find out the U.S. version had a blue tint over the entire film. Honestly I never noticed that as a kid, crazy that I had no idea for all these years. This isn't the only time something like this has happened as the U.S. release of Dragon Ball Super Broly has a green-tint over the entire film, though that one is definitely less noticeable and fortunately the Manga UK release(which I was able to find on Usenet) does not have that problem so i'm hoping the U.K. and Australian/New Zealand releases of Pokemon Heroes are tint free.


I've seen some people in replies saying they don't remember the blue tint, maybe it was only present on the DVDs and not the VHS? Cause I swear I don't remember the film being that dark when I rented it as a kid.
Fortunately there is a fan-edit out there that syncs the English dub with the Japanese visuals and includes the cut storybook prologue.

People probably don't remember cause now they just follow the fan edit with Japanese BD.

 

[AgedVeteranofShow]

I think that people really wished that 4kids did not have the license to Pokémon because they want respect from a company that cares about the anime.

I'm personally fine 4Kids had the license to Pokémon dubbed for as long as they did, IMO: TPCi treated it genuinely worse on the whole and I like the first 8 years in English compared to what came after in the last 17 years for the most part, IMO (the only real issues I had were James' later portrayal due to Dunstan's VO direction, but JCC's take overall was much worse than that ever was as time went on as is the current one- despite being better than JCC's from XY-JN136, Chronicles & M01, but that's it- everything else was tolerable enough at worst, pretty good at best).

It would've been much worse had Saban, DiC, Nelvana, or Early FUNimation before their 2007-present years had licensed it back then in 1998, in fact, none of the OST would've been kept, the script writing would've taken even more liberties, the VA would by large be worse, and OPs worse too. Maybe less visual edits/censors, but that's the only benefit, to that trade-off with so many drawbacks in comparison.

It was the one Series I would argue 4Kids obviously did care about the Anime a lot in comparison to...really everything else they touched, outside TMNT 2003 which is a cartoon not an Anime (Yu-Gi-Oh's dub has aged far worse from them, objectively, the only thing I like there is the VA casting vs Odex's dub in Singapore).

A notable fact is also that 4Kids never replaced as much of the OST even at their worst in the "main Series" as TPCi has from XY onward into JN, at any point: credit where it's due, it never hit the lows of the modern dub there. It's a shame they went so downhill in later years once they lost Pokemon and went bankrupt by 2011, really, I think their VAs in particular had legitimate talent.

4Kids also had longer OPs/intros than TPCi has had, for over a decade now: some have tried to handwave away TPCi's handling of those at only 30 seconds in length, but it's a creative choice, because the Yokai Watch dub and Beyblade Burst dubs had 45 second-1 minute long OPs when they aired on Disney XD like SM's dub, like 4Kids' tenure with Pokémon so no, that's on TPCi as well. Add in TPCi returning to 4Kids-tier censorship from SM onward, and there's a legitimate argument to be made, the dub has regressed under TPCi vs even the worst of 4Kids overall these days.

Also, JCC's script writing style is actually still a little worse than what 4Kids churned out due to especially TPCi's TRio, IMO (I would go on about the VA work, most tend to agree the original English VAs were better but it's a heated debate as some do like the current English VAs, but I'm sadly not included in that group though).

(Dogasu thinks the entire dub is bad over 25 years, agree to disagree there though, but I can see why someone would think that: that said, he won't even touch TPCi's JN dub with a ten foot pole, but is still analyzing the 4Kids' Orange Islands dub, so it has to have had more merit than what we've had for years now for it to still be entertaining enough to watch if nothing else)

 

[AgedVeteranofShow]

Well I think 4kids is Dogasu’s worst enemy.

They don't even exist anymore though (that said their studio still dubs Yu-Gi-Oh as 4KMedia under Konami's wing, and Sarah Natochenny aka current TPCi dub Ash, even does voices for Yu-Gi-Oh for their Arc V dub as trivia). It's a bit much to call someone an "enemy" over an Anime dub for children regardless, that's ridiculous, come on now.

I honestly thank God they had the rights as long as they did in hindsight, if the dub was like it is these days (Goldfarb's BGM and OPs are the common complaint, but I think the current dub had a lot more issues than just him though, personally) or when TPCi first took over (BF & early DP were probably the worst of the entire English dub, before XY-JN overall), I would never have become a fan of the Pokémon franchise IMHO.

4Kids did a decent, to even good, job with Pokémon compared to most everything else they touched. Still flawed? Absolutely, they still did some dumb things every now and then because it's them, sometimes the scripts were good and other times bad, the sandwich edit, M01, etc. But overall I'll happily re-watch their dub over TPCi's modern day current dub, any day. I'll always be grateful for the dubs of the first 3 Seasons of the Anime in particular, and the last 3 Movies they did, especially, nothing after those has made me feel much of anything in the English run in comparison across various media incarnations: and I still prefer their VA choices, compared to what they were recast with, to this day.

Check out what fans have had to say when polled on the Pokémon English dub as to whom most felt did better if forced to choose, pic related.

I don't know why 4Kids treated Pokémon better than everything else they touched save arguably the 2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon (their VA work is faring worse for that than Pokémon in voice comparisons on many sites, though), but I'm grateful nonetheless for it given dubs as a whole were much worse in the 1990s-early 2000s than they are today as a norm & it could've been far worse given that time period (this Series is currently one of few exceptions, IMO).

 

[InfiniteBakuphoon]

Saw Dogasu's tweet about Pokemon Heroes and i'm blown away to find out the U.S. version had a blue tint over the entire film. Honestly I never noticed that as a kid, crazy that I had no idea for all these years. This isn't the only time something like this has happened as the U.S. release of Dragon Ball Super Broly has a green-tint over the entire film, though that one is definitely less noticeable and fortunately the Manga UK release(which I was able to find on Usenet) does not have that problem so i'm hoping the U.K. and Australian/New Zealand releases of Pokemon Heroes are tint free.


I've seen some people in replies saying they don't remember the blue tint, maybe it was only present on the DVDs and not the VHS? Cause I swear I don't remember the film being that dark when I rented it as a kid.
Fortunately there is a fan-edit out there that syncs the English dub with the Japanese visuals and includes the cut storybook prologue.

People probably don't remember cause now they just follow the fan edit with Japanese BD.

You mean that absolutely no one in the West noticed that tint back then!? I found that so hard to believe at first, honestly! Even without directly comparing it to the original Japanese version, that blue tint was pretty damn conspicuous, being as useless and out-of-place as it was (looking at it alongside the original Japanese version shows such a staggering difference!). That said, I suspect that most likely explanation for this is simply because, for anyone who didn’t live in Japan or have access to a Japanese theater in 2002 (99 percent of us here, in other words), that was basically the only version available, and there was therefore nothing to compare it to; that was Pokémon Heroes, for us. Plus, most of us who wanted to see a Pokémon movie in theaters in 2003 were probably very young; how many ten-or-something-year-olds were scrutinizing the image quality of the movies they watched back then? More than likely, the blue tint simply didn’t register to the majority of the film’s target audience as anything other than “that’s just what it is”. People like Dogasu diligently reporting on the differences between dub and sub are probably what caused most people to notice things like that, really; without him, it likely would’ve been years before the blue tint problem became common knowledge across the fandom, and at least just as long before it was considered to be a problem at all.

(Although, now that I think about it, does anyone even remember if the dub theatrical release had the blue tint or not? That release was so limited, I wouldn’t be surprised if no one remembers anymore. If it didn’t have the tint, then perhaps that’s where all of the confusion is coming from. But if I had to make a wild speculation, I’d say that the tint was probably always there, even in theaters; I don’t think that Miramax cared enough about the Pokémon movies to agonize over image mastering choices multiple times in a row. Take all of that with a massive grain of salt, however, as I’m certainly no expert in that super-obscure subject; one quite possibly lost to time at this point.)

@AgedVeteranofShow
I don’t like 4Kids as an organization or their often conceited, holier-than-thou attitudes when it came to their editing of foreign productions (including suggestions that they even saw some of their changes as improvements, ugh). But for all of the sins they committed back then, those were all par for the course in the 1990s and 2000s, for better or worse, when anime was seen by the majority of people as, well, for kids, with the job of Western localizers being to cater as much to an often infantilized view of them as possible. And for all of things that 4Kids did back then that we see today as ridiculous — painting over Japanese text, the jelly donut meme, “fighting is wrong!”, and such — it could’ve been much, much worse (see: Warriors of the Wind, an unrecognizable hack job of the legendary Miyazaki film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind that makes 4Kids’ version of Mewtwo Strikes Back look like Shakespearean-tier tragedy in comparison). Furthermore, they were at least competent, if not actually pretty damn good, where it counted, namely in the voice acting and music departments. Nothing they did ever surpassed Rica Matsumoto’s best performances or Shinji Miyazaki’s finest pieces, but there’s a reason why the likes of Veronica Taylor, Rachael Lillis, Eric Stuart, and Maddie Blaustein are considered to be voice acting royalty by a sizable portion of the old-school fandom, or why the original “Pokémon Theme” is considered by many to be the anthem of the anime — if not the entire franchise — in the States. 4Kids’s work wasn’t true to the original by any means — and it was frequently quite disrespectful to it — but a basic level of quality was still met to the point where it was still a pretty decent production in its own right, if you had absolutely no clue about what the original Japanese version was like. The opening themes kicked nearly as much ass as their Japanese counterparts (including, again, that classic “Pokémon Theme”), the scripts were competent and even quite funny in spite of — or even because of — their changes (with Team Rocket being perhaps the most sterling example of that), and the heart and soul of the characters and their stories were still more or less accurately conveyed (well, as long as you don’t watch the first few movies, haha).

And perhaps speaking more personally here: even in some alternate universe where 4Kids’ version of the anime actually ended up being a Yu-Gi-Oh!-level hack job or a One Piece-level disaster, all of that — let alone what we actually got — can be forgiven by the fact that we indeed have access to the original Japanese versions now (if unofficially). Therefore, I can’t hate them too much for providing the sole Western representation of a Japanese anime in an era where it couldn’t be helped, because that was, again, par for the course at the time, and fans have since made right what they did wrong, so that’s that. (Well, that and the fact that 4Kids is dead now, so what’s done is done at this point.)

Speaking of that “unofficially” part, though: that’s where I think the real difference lies between 4Kids and the powers that be who control the anime in the West now (TCPi, TAJ, DuArt, whoever you want to call them), even before we even argue about the actual quality of their respective dubs. What I mean is: 4Kids did some very questionable things back then, but that was all to be expected in those times, which, again, couldn’t be helped; that’s their excuse, anyway. But here and now, in the year 2023 when the standards for dubs are significantly higher for literally any other anime property in existence and where subs are requirements, not requests, TCPi sticks out for that alone, when we still have no officially sanctioned way to access the original Japanese version of the anime, and when what we do get continues to make so many liberties from said original, often of an extraordinarily painful variety even by 4Kids’ old standards. Dialogue changes, paint edits (including of Japanese text), sweeping music replacements (including opening and ending themes), sub-par voice direction… every sin that you can imagine from the dark ages of anime dubbing, and then some, is all here. And then to add insult to injury, you have to wait months after the original Japanese versions have already aired to watch this objectively inferior version of it (to which I concur with Dogasu that it makes the anime rather pointless in its ostensible purpose as a marketing tool in the West, a point that even TCPi themselves seem to agree with if its spoileriffic English tweets are any indication). And again, this is all happening in 2023.

To get a real idea of just how bad English-speaking fans of the Pokémon anime have had it and continue to have it, imagine how many pitchforks would be raised if the kinds of things that TCPi have been doing to the Pokémon anime were being done to something like Demon Slayer, or Vinland Saga, or Oshi no Ko, or the modern dub of One Piece, or literally any anime made in the past twenty years, including other anime aimed at a younger audience like Pretty Cure or Yo-kai Watch. Actually, you don’t even need to imagine, because speaking of Pretty Cure, from that spawned Glitter Force in the West, a hack job dub of that series that harkened back to the “good old days” of changing Japanese names and locales, making sweeping cut-and-paste dialogue and characterization changes, censoring supposedly “scary” and “violent” content, and ripping out the original soundtrack in favor of replacements of questionable compositional worth. Oh, plus some new tricks that would’ve made even 4Kids blush, like removing entire episodes for no discernible reason! No, not for censorship à la “Beauty and the Beach” (that was at least arguably justified for its time), but just because they could, apparently. And for all of that, the fans did indeed raise pitchforks — all for a series that didn’t even have an official sub at the time, mind you! — and to this day, the fandom, let’s just say, does not speak of it, to the point where even mentioning it is considered to be a major offense in some circles. That’s how unthinkable TCPi’s practices are in the modern era of anime, and that’s how utterly inexcusable they are, that even something like Pretty Cure — a series literally made for kindergartners! — is held to a certain standard that TCPi can’t meet… or rather, refuses to meet. It’s not for lack of resources, as Pokémon has enough sheer financial inertia from being one of the most successful media franchises in history to make even modern-day Crunchyroll look like a small-time outfit in comparison… they just refuse to do it. However you feel about the dub in its current state, it shouldn’t even be a thing, by itself; there should be, at minimum, an accurate and readily accessible sub made immediately available alongside it, plain and simple. And if TCPi refuses to meet even that bare minimum, then they should at least have a dub that’s reasonably accurate and respectful to the original in every single category; if anything, such accuracy would be even more important than ever in such an already unimaginable case. Anything less than that is just… inexplicable, really.

With that said, I don’t want to sound like I’m riffing on TCPi exclusively here, as if they’re the only ones who have sinned greatly with this franchise. I do have my specific niggles with them, namely that I don’t think that they’re nearly as good dialogue writers as 4Kids were on a good day and that their average voice acting and direction — especially that of legacy characters — fails to meet the standard that 4Kids set on even one of their bad days (think Kanto character-of-the-day level, barely, and you have a good idea of just how bad I’m talking about here). And TCPi’s particular flavor of anime dub sinning does rub me more the wrong way more on average than 4Kids did with theirs, because for all of their sins, I at least found them to be more entertaining in their butchery of the original Japanese version, again because of their stronger grip on dialogue writing that led to some very funny — and even iconic — moments that, in my opinion at least, have stood the test of time. But in an alternate universe where 4Kids still existed and continued to handle the dub up until this very day, all while continuing to do the same kinds of things that they’ve always done, I’d be riffing on them too, and demanding that they and the other powers that be release an accurate and timely sub like every other anime released in the West does, or at least provide an accurate and timely dub if they’re unwilling to do that. The problem isn’t really who is doing what more so than what is being done and not done; the only difference between 4Kids doing it all and TCPi doing it all is exactly what we get in lieu of what we as fans of this anime deserve, or indeed just what any watcher of anime in the modern era deserves; it’s unacceptable either way. To use an analogy, it’s like comparing vanilla cake and chocolate cake; they taste different, and some might really prefer one over the other based on whatever perfectly valid feelings that they have and need not justify to anyone, but fundamentally, they’re still both cake: different yet simultaneously the same. And in the end, we really shouldn’t have to choose in the first place, when we all should be eating apple pie instead. I don’t have my hopes up that things will change based on the kinds of decisions that TCPi have been making with this franchise as a whole lately (see: the utter and shameful fiasco that was Scarlet & Violet’s launch state), which disappoints me as a fan of this franchise who knows that things can — and should — be better. But perhaps, like with that old backwards attitude towards anime way back then that led to practices like this still happening in the first place, it can’t be helped…

 

[snowmint]

Remember... Nintendo of America wanted to Americanized the designs...

 

[Dogasu]

You mean that absolutely no one in the West noticed that tint back then!?

We noticed

M05: Pokémon Heroes: Latios & Latias

Japanese Movie #05: "The Water Capitol's Protector Gods Latias and Latios" American Movie #05: "Pokémon Heroes" In the city of Alto Mare, the legendary pokemon Latios and Latias protect the people. When a group of thieves decide that they want the pokemon's treasure, it's up to Satoshi...

forums.bulbagarden.net

Cartoon Network "Pokémon Heroes" Review Thread

Japanese Movie 05: "The Water Capitol's Protector Gods, Latias and Latios" American Movie 05: "Pokémon Heroes" Cartoon Network, 11:00am The final movie to premiere on Cartoon Network has finally arrived! When famous thieves Annie and Oakley threaten to capture the protectors of Alto Mare...

forums.bulbagarden.net

 

[AgedVeteranofShow]

@AgedVeteranofShow
I don’t like 4Kids as an organization or their often conceited, holier-than-thou attitudes when it came to their editing of foreign productions (including suggestions that they even saw some of their changes as improvements, ugh). But for all of the sins they committed back then, those were all par for the course in the 1990s and 2000s, for better or worse, when anime was seen by the majority of people as, well, for kids, with the job of Western localizers being to cater as much to an often infantilized view of them as possible. And for all of things that 4Kids did back then that we see today as ridiculous — painting over Japanese text, the jelly donut meme, “fighting is wrong!”, and such — it could’ve been much, much worse (see: Warriors of the Wind, an unrecognizable hack job of the legendary Miyazaki film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind that makes 4Kids’ version of Mewtwo Strikes Back look like Shakespearean-tier tragedy in comparison). Furthermore, they were at least competent, if not actually pretty damn good, where it counted, namely in the voice acting and music departments. Nothing they did ever surpassed Rica Matsumoto’s best performances or Shinji Miyazaki’s finest pieces, but there’s a reason why the likes of Veronica Taylor, Rachael Lillis, Eric Stuart, and Maddie Blaustein are considered to be voice acting royalty by a sizable portion of the old-school fandom, or why the original “Pokémon Theme” is considered by many to be the anthem of the anime — if not the entire franchise — in the States. 4Kids’s work wasn’t true to the original by any means — and it was frequently quite disrespectful to it — but a basic level of quality was still met to the point where it was still a pretty decent production in its own right, if you had absolutely no clue about what the original Japanese version was like. The opening themes kicked nearly as much ass as their Japanese counterparts (including, again, that classic “Pokémon Theme”), the scripts were competent and even quite funny in spite of — or even because of — their changes (with Team Rocket being perhaps the most sterling example of that), and the heart and soul of the characters and their stories were still more or less accurately conveyed (well, as long as you don’t watch the first few movies, haha).

And perhaps speaking more personally here: even in some alternate universe where 4Kids’ version of the anime actually ended up being a Yu-Gi-Oh!-level hack job or a One Piece-level disaster, all of that — let alone what we actually got — can be forgiven by the fact that we indeed have access to the original Japanese versions now (if unofficially). Therefore, I can’t hate them too much for providing the sole Western representation of a Japanese anime in an era where it couldn’t be helped, because that was, again, par for the course at the time, and fans have since made right what they did wrong, so that’s that. (Well, that and the fact that 4Kids is dead now, so what’s done is done at this point.)

Speaking of that “unofficially” part, though: that’s where I think the real difference lies between 4Kids and the powers that be who control the anime in the West now (TCPi, TAJ, DuArt, whoever you want to call them), even before we even argue about the actual quality of their respective dubs. What I mean is: 4Kids did some very questionable things back then, but that was all to be expected in those times, which, again, couldn’t be helped; that’s their excuse, anyway. But here and now, in the year 2023 when the standards for dubs are significantly higher for literally any other anime property in existence and where subs are requirements, not requests, TCPi sticks out for that alone, when we still have no officially sanctioned way to access the original Japanese version of the anime, and when what we do get continues to make so many liberties from said original, often of an extraordinarily painful variety even by 4Kids’ old standards. Dialogue changes, paint edits (including of Japanese text), sweeping music replacements (including opening and ending themes), sub-par voice direction… every sin that you can imagine from the dark ages of anime dubbing, and then some, is all here. And then to add insult to injury, you have to wait months after the original Japanese versions have already aired to watch this objectively inferior version of it (to which I concur with Dogasu that it makes the anime rather pointless in its ostensible purpose as a marketing tool in the West, a point that even TCPi themselves seem to agree with if its spoileriffic English tweets are any indication). And again, this is all happening in 2023.

To get a real idea of just how bad English-speaking fans of the Pokémon anime have had it and continue to have it, imagine how many pitchforks would be raised if the kinds of things that TCPi have been doing to the Pokémon anime were being done to something like Demon Slayer, or Vinland Saga, or Oshi no Ko, or the modern dub of One Piece, or literally any anime made in the past twenty years, including other anime aimed at a younger audience like Pretty Cure or Yo-kai Watch. Actually, you don’t even need to imagine, because speaking of Pretty Cure, from that spawned Glitter Force in the West, a hack job dub of that series that harkened back to the “good old days” of changing Japanese names and locales, making sweeping cut-and-paste dialogue and characterization changes, censoring supposedly “scary” and “violent” content, and ripping out the original soundtrack in favor of replacements of questionable compositional worth. Oh, plus some new tricks that would’ve made even 4Kids blush, like removing entire episodes for no discernible reason! No, not for censorship à la “Beauty and the Beach” (that was at least arguably justified for its time), but just because they could, apparently. And for all of that, the fans did indeed raise pitchforks — all for a series that didn’t even have an official sub at the time, mind you! — and to this day, the fandom, let’s just say, does not speak of it, to the point where even mentioning it is considered to be a major offense in some circles. That’s how unthinkable TCPi’s practices are in the modern era of anime, and that’s how utterly inexcusable they are, that even something like Pretty Cure — a series literally made for kindergartners! — is held to a certain standard that TCPi can’t meet… or rather, refuses to meet. It’s not for lack of resources, as Pokémon has enough sheer financial inertia from being one of the most successful media franchises in history to make even modern-day Crunchyroll look like a small-time outfit in comparison… they just refuse to do it. However you feel about the dub in its current state, it shouldn’t even be a thing, by itself; there should be, at minimum, an accurate and readily accessible sub made immediately available alongside it, plain and simple. And if TCPi refuses to meet even that bare minimum, then they should at least have a dub that’s reasonably accurate and respectful to the original in every single category; if anything, such accuracy would be even more important than ever in such an already unimaginable case. Anything less than that is just… inexplicable, really.

With that said, I don’t want to sound like I’m riffing on TCPi exclusively here, as if they’re the only ones who have sinned greatly with this franchise. I do have my specific niggles with them, namely that I don’t think that they’re nearly as good dialogue writers as 4Kids were on a good day and that their average voice acting and direction — especially that of legacy characters — fails to meet the standard that 4Kids set on even one of their bad days (think Kanto character-of-the-day level, barely, and you have a good idea of just how bad I’m talking about here). And TCPi’s particular flavor of anime dub sinning does rub me more the wrong way more on average than 4Kids did with theirs, because for all of their sins, I at least found them to be more entertaining in their butchery of the original Japanese version, again because of their stronger grip on dialogue writing that led to some very funny — and even iconic — moments that, in my opinion at least, have stood the test of time. But in an alternate universe where 4Kids still existed and continued to handle the dub up until this very day, all while continuing to do the same kinds of things that they’ve always done, I’d be riffing on them too, and demanding that they and the other powers that be release an accurate and timely sub like every other anime released in the West does, or at least provide an accurate and timely dub if they’re unwilling to do that. The problem isn’t really who is doing what more so than what is being done and not done; the only difference between 4Kids doing it all and TCPi doing it all is exactly what we get in lieu of what we as fans of this anime deserve, or indeed just what any watcher of anime in the modern era deserves; it’s unacceptable either way. To use an analogy, it’s like comparing vanilla cake and chocolate cake; they taste different, and some might really prefer one over the other based on whatever perfectly valid feelings that they have and need not justify to anyone, but fundamentally, they’re still both cake: different yet simultaneously the same. And in the end, we really shouldn’t have to choose in the first place, when we all should be eating apple pie instead. I don’t have my hopes up that things will change based on the kinds of decisions that TCPi have been making with this franchise as a whole lately (see: the utter and shameful fiasco that was Scarlet & Violet’s launch state), which disappoints me as a fan of this franchise who knows that things can — and should — be better. But perhaps, like with that old backwards attitude towards anime way back then that led to practices like this still happening in the first place, it can’t be helped…

I generally agree completely with all of this, and a well-thought out analysis (thanks for that!). It also dismays me TPCi has chosen to more or less take all the wrong pages out of 4Kids' book in recent times on censorship (it came back to the dub in Sun & Moon), EXTREMELY overboard on music changes (it's worse than 4Kids ever was these days, believe it or not, even they never had only 6 pieces kept of the OST as their best episode in any of the 8 Seasons they dubbed & the dub keeps less than 18% of the OST on average so far in MPM-- that's how bad it has gotten, it's not just Ed Goldfarb's very questionable music changes but how MUCH of the OST they excise is more than ever before, which make John Loeffler's seem heavenly in comparison, and he already came under fire for those from Dogasu etc. here back in the day), and then they compounded all of what you've said as flaws with 30 second intros for the remainder of this Series, etc.

All of this would've been ameliorated had TPCi, in the first place, decided to not mimic their predecessors (arguably badly) and did their own thing when they took over from 4Kids in Season 9. For a time in Season 14, I felt like they were FINALLY going to dub things the way most Anime are dubbed these days and stop that, but it quickly went back to business as usual in Season 15, and I have no comment for the XY onward dub because it's combined both individuals dubs' flaws, in one package these days.

Why they couldn't give the dub rights to FUNimation or Viz Media etc, I'll never know, I definitely agree Pokémon deserves better than this overseas. In 2023, it's really unacceptable it's STILL being dubbed this way, I could understand the late 1990s-early 2000s period a little more since Saban, Nelvana, and the like were still kicking besides 4Kids with Digimon and such...but now? Only this Series and Yu-Gi-Oh continue to mainly suffer from this treatment, really, every other prominent franchise is up to speed with modern dub standards now (Digimon is still also doing dub-exclusive OPs, though, even the 2020 Adventure Reboot that said, and there was a thing Saban did with Pretty Cure called Glitter Force that went nowhere thankfully w/similar practices).

 

[AgedVeteranofShow]

I think that because Pokemon was not meant to be taken as seriously as Sailor Moon or Dragon Ball Z back in the 90s and 2000s.

DiC/Cloverway Sailor Moon and FUNi's DBZ dub (before the Uncut release/Orange Bricks when they put the Kikuchi score option on them) are actually worse dubs than 4Kids' Pokemon, ironically enough, not sure that's why.

 

[snowmint]

I think that because Pokemon was not meant to be taken as seriously as Sailor Moon or Dragon Ball Z back in the 90s and 2000s.

TPCi wanted to take the dub "in house..." Giving it to another 3rd party company is not "in house..."

 

[BigDocFan]

The next addition of Dogasu's backpack will be an interesting one

 

[Antiyonder]

The next addition of Dogasu's backpack will be an interesting one

I'm especially looking forward to the one after that as the beginning actually states that he had a victory over Prima (Lorelei).

 

[AgedVeteranofShow]

I'm especially looking forward to the one after that as the beginning actually states that he had a victory over Prima (Lorelei).

The episode where she debuted was one of the bad days on the scripting IIRC, but a good day musically, for the dub.

 

[InfiniteBakuphoon]

We noticed

https://forums.bulbagarden.net/index.php?threads/m05-pokemon-heroes-latios-latias.4486/

https://forums.bulbagarden.net/index.php?threads/cartoon-network-pokemon-heroes-review-thread.10978/

Wow, the rabbit hole I just went down with that… it seems that the fandom was more aware of things twenty years ago than I gave them credit for, haha. Lots of interesting anecdotes there, including a few suggesting that the original Australian DVD releases of the movies were in widescreen (which, while I certainly wouldn’t want to challenge the actual Australians there that made that claim, is something that I definitely want to research for myself, because if that’s true, then that’s fascinating; why on Earth did the powers that be make an exception there?). Plus at least one suggesting that the blue tint wasn’t there for the dub theatrical release of Heroes (but respectfully, that’s still just one claim that can’t be confirmed; without more, I suspect that we may never know for sure, for whatever it’s worth).

I think that because Pokemon was not meant to be taken as seriously as Sailor Moon or Dragon Ball Z back in the 90s and 2000s.

Unless your name was Disney, animation in general — let alone anime — wasn’t taken seriously at all by the powers that be back then and continued to not be taken seriously for a very, very long time. See AgedVeteranofShow’s response below you for the consequences of that attitude, which, as they noted, make 4Kids’ work on the Pokémon anime look almost reverent in comparison. No property was safe back then, not even more “serious” works like Dragon Ball Z and most certainly not magical girl series like Sailor Moon (which tended to get the short end of the adaptation stick for reasons that you can probably guess; see also Nelvana’s hack job of Cardcaptor Sakura — known as Cardcaptors — if you want to know just how extreme things could get back then).

As for the most likely reason for the Pokémon anime remaining in TCPi’s hands…

TPCi wanted to take the dub "in house..." Giving it to another 3rd party company is not "in house..."

This is pretty much it. As for the deeper reasons why they wanted things “in-house”, there’s been much speculation about that, with some claims being more believable than others. That’s all I’ll say about the matter here, I think; endless discussions in these forums alone await you if you want to come to a conclusion for yourself.

Remember when Weinstein butchered the Magical Roundabout movie back in 2006? To me, that was way worse than what 4kids did to the foreign media that they imported. Al Kahn would never have stoop that low because he’s no Harvey Weinstein.

Perhaps the only thing that Al Kahn has going for him as a CEO is that he isn’t either of the Weinsteins, but that — for obvious reasons that we need not get into here — is hardly a high bar to clear. I can’t say much about Al Kahn as a man, but as the leader of an organization handling media, well, for kids, I find that his presumptions about his products’ target audience — including that infamous “children can’t read/don’t want to read” sound bite — are emblematic of some of the worst attitudes that corporate types have about children… depending on how optimistic you are about the average intelligence of children, at least. My personal opinion, meanwhile, is that children, for all of their naïveté and proclivity for making absolutely terrible decisions, are not stupid, and above all they are extraordinarily curious and resourceful. Or in order words: if you try to hide things from them — like say, the horrors of ~gasp!~ another country’s culture — then they’ll find out about them regardless, and then hold adults to the fire for it in their own little ways. And certainly, today’s children are perfectly aware of Japanese media and its origins and are more than happy to consume it, if the massive explosion in mainstream popularity of anime and manga in the States is any indication. And that’s to say nothing of the multiple anecdotes that others have shared about kids’ knowledge of the original Japanese anime which they also seem to have no problem with, and in fact actually seem to be quite fascinated with. I’m pretty sure that these anecdotes aren’t one-off things even if they might not necessarily reflect mainstream awareness; at the very least, though awareness is growing, and it’s most certainly not going away. And above all, I believe that it does show that Al Kahn was wrong, and that crappy attitudes — not some inherent qualities in children — are what got in the way in Japanese media taking as long as it did to get the respect that it deserved.

(Digimon is still also doing dub-exclusive OPs, though, even the 2020 Adventure Reboot that said, and there was a thing Saban did with Pretty Cure called Glitter Force that went nowhere thankfully w/similar practices).

I know, and I mentioned Glitter Force in my post, haha (don’t feel bad for missing it). That kind of painful blast from the past is hard to forget! (And again, the Precure fandom sure wishes that they could.) The irony of an anime that was originally aimed at kindergarteners to begin with being edited down for an American audience is delicious, really. Pretty Cure, of all things!? Hilarious.

 

[AgedVeteranofShow]

This is pretty much it. As for the deeper reasons why they wanted things “in-house”, there’s been much speculation about that, with some claims being more believable than others. That’s all I’ll say about the matter here, I think; endless discussions in these forums alone await you if you want to come to a conclusion for yourself.


I know, and I mentioned Glitter Force in my post, haha (don’t feel bad for missing it). That kind of painful blast from the past is hard to forget! (And again, the Precure fandom sure wishes that they could.) The irony of an anime that was originally aimed at kindergarteners to begin with being edited down for an American audience is delicious, really. Pretty Cure, of all things!? Hilarious.

Regarding the in-house claim, the company they used was per se I suppose "3rd party" TAJ Productions again who had done the dub with 4Kids Entertainment originally from the start at Buttons Sound in Kanto, through most of late Johto, Movies 1-5 included (they also were the ones who scored AG001 & AG002, as exceptions to this rule from Season 6, as the sneak preview for AG's dub aired while they still recorded), which was literally cheaper than 4Kids back when they existed at the time of the change-over (the irony is they dubbed Slayers first, and that was the first foray into VO for Eric Stuart, Lisa Ortiz, Veronica Taylor & Crispin Freeman no less).

Basically, 4Kids got outbid, and when TAJ took back over (there was a tug of war beginning in late Johto, basically 4Kids kicked TAJ out of the picture beginning with "Address Unown" in Season 5 and took the rest of their dub including M06-08 and Gotta Dance! Pikachu Shorts etc in-house as well, then TPCi kicked 4Kids out of the picture in early Battle Frontier & gave it back to TAJ, and that's why we got stuck with the current dub cast permanently as Armen Mazlumian of that now defunct studio is who cast them apparently).

From there, DuArt kept the TAJ cast mains (personally, I hated this choice, as back then it was still at the height of the controversy period and we could've feasibly changed back but for "consistency" with 2 seasons instead of 8 seasons, BS at the time-- IMO) and ironically brought back random 4Kids VAs (liked this one, otoh), but in minor roles.

TAJ was basically PUSA's de facto "in-house" studio until TAJ like 4Kids, went defunct after early DP's dub just 2 Seasons later in 2008 (then they handed it to I guess another "3rd party" DuArt which had never dubbed any Anime before ironically IIRC & that's when the 4Kids dub music was eliminated outright in DP053 from the Series that had been with it since EP001 in English & survived the controversial recast purge).

Even DuArt has gone out of business now, and the dub is now dubbed by Iyuno Group/SDI (I'm shocked it's the same studio as Origins, they did well on that in 2013 compared to JN in 2023 IMO, the JN dub's insanely high levels of music replacements are on this studio besides TPCi). That said, I don't get what Dogasu saw in Hebert's Oak, I like most thought it was painfully average (I'll take it any day over almost everyone but Stuart Zagnit's, though, not saying I wasn't grateful as it was a MASSIVE upgrade from JCC's for me at the time).

tl;dr History lesson on the Pokemon dub apparently!

Some have speculated they took it in house to protect TPCi's reputation as 4Kids' took a gigantic hit after One Piece that quite honestly I think led to their demise between that and losing their beloved crown jewel in this Series (TPCi clearly don't care about it now obviously because, well, Pokémon sells no matter what for better or worse- tons of fans on YouTube are irate at SCVT and were at SWSH beforehand, compared to the BW2 & SM days of the games as well-- but with the gigantic sales SCVT have they likely see no reason to change current course), others as the popularity waned & they were looking to cut corners on production, but YMMV, either way a sad event regardless IMO.

Thanks: yeah, I saw it later, my bad!

 

[snowmint]

I thought the current digimon 2020 reboot dub actually dubbed it's openings from the Japanese version?

 

[darksteel6]

The funny thing about this is that Nelvana did dubbed all 70 episodes of Cardcaptors and they were shown in Canada, the UK, and Australia. While in the US, it was Kids WB that cut it up to 39 episodes and try to made the show appeal only for boys and make Li the main character.

Yeah and there was one 4Kids dubbed episode of One Piece that had a violent scene uncut on DVD, which proves at least some of that shows censorship was more due to TV network censors then 4Kids themselves.

 

[snowmint]

Same thing with some wacky kidswb only edits to pokemon.