Yash
CHOCOLATE
- Joined
- Dec 18, 2007
- Messages
- 697
- Reaction score
- 312
What always killed me about 4Kids was, much like TPCI, they proved themselves capable on quite a few occasions of “doing it right.” Even the original Pokémon dub in its really early days was often held up in the online anime fandom (at least among those who cared about this sort of thing) as a gold standard for anime dubs on American TV. Obviously it still had a lot of problems but compared to something like Saban-era Dragon Ball Z, or DiC-era Sailor Moon, it’s pretty easy to see why.
Like I don’t know why their dubs of Yu-Gi-Oh, Sonic X, One Piece etc. are considerably worse than Pokémon’s both in terms of censorship/localization and overall production value, but they clearly are (like Dogasu said, One Piece is especially bad, setting aside any fanboy gripes of mine). You’d think they’d just try and do what worked for Pokémon, but maybe Nintendo kept them on a tighter leash.
Also disagree hard that 4Kids was the secret to Pokémon’s success. Funimation could have dubbed it from the beginning and it would have done just as well. The anime being a hit had more to do with Nintendo’s marketing blitz, and later WB rescuing it from syndication than anything else.
Like I don’t know why their dubs of Yu-Gi-Oh, Sonic X, One Piece etc. are considerably worse than Pokémon’s both in terms of censorship/localization and overall production value, but they clearly are (like Dogasu said, One Piece is especially bad, setting aside any fanboy gripes of mine). You’d think they’d just try and do what worked for Pokémon, but maybe Nintendo kept them on a tighter leash.
Also disagree hard that 4Kids was the secret to Pokémon’s success. Funimation could have dubbed it from the beginning and it would have done just as well. The anime being a hit had more to do with Nintendo’s marketing blitz, and later WB rescuing it from syndication than anything else.