Post by spiritmage234 on Jun 5, 2008 14:59:51 GMT -5
In response to Horyo's "Theory on Dubbing" thread (which I recommend that you all visit and post your opinions), I have decided to post another dubbing discussion that is centered around the atrocities of the American dubbing company known as "4Kids Entertainment".
This certain dubbing company - as we all know - came to power around the 1990s with their leader Alfred "Al" Kahn, when they dubbed the Nintendo series Poke'mon, making it into an American kiddie anime cult. Most of us were only tykes when this happened... I was only seven. Didn't really know about this foreign wonderland known as "Japan" back in the day and to be frank, I didn't really care. I just wanted whichever new deck of Poke'mon cards that were released.
Little did we know that 4Kids played on this ignorance of foreign countries and cultures in order to spread mass "Westernization" through their dubbing of anime.
Let's look a little closer at Pokemon shall we? Now, a lot of anime titles are set in alternate universes (so are a lot of American animation), but, they still obtain a hefty share of cultural tidbits (e.g. clothing, food, slang). So do some American cartoons. And this is where the brainwashing began. If you look through some 4Kids hate propaganda on youtube, you'll find a vid that's titled "4Kids hates riceballs" and "4kids hates riceballs part 2". I think the title says enough.
The gist is, 4Kids edits anything that bluntly shouts "JAPANESE CULTURE". They either call onigiri "donuts" or edited the friendly riceball out and replaced it with either a sandwich, cracker, or whatever! I remember asking my mom "Hey I want a donut like that!" but I could never find one that quite matched that description. But, they let some stuff slip, like some clothing. But I figure that 4Kids believes that kids are too stupid to notice the difference between foreign garb and American garb. I admit, they had me fooled. They had almost all of us fooled. Until a few years later, when my bro was watching Tenchi or something, I came to the realization that "hey. This style doesn't come from America. It doesn't even come from this hemisphere! 4Kids lied to me!!"
A tidbit: Al Kahn said that they do the Westernization crap because it makes kids "understand things better".
... Understand what? Kids don't pay attention to cartoons half the time! Avatar proves that enough!
Anyway, enough with Pokemon. They didn't do that bad with the dubbing. The series just went downhill on its own (repetative plots, too many d@mn pokemon, etc. IMO). I'm just going to go through everything that p!sses fans off with this company.
Well, I really can't explain what they did to anime such as Yu-Gi-Oh!, One Piece, Tokyo Mew Mew, Sonic X, Shaman King, etc. because they did so much crap to them. Just go on Youtube, look up "4kids sucks" followed by a series. They'll give you a slew of examples of the differences they made with dubbing.
What does 4Kids do while dubbing exactly? Well basically, besides brainwashing kids concerning Japanese culture, they make any anime that they can get their hands on "kid friendly", meaning:
-no real violence (only slapstick-ish, no blood, no hemoraging, no broken bones. they basically go against all physics of anime concerning violence)
-no sex, sensuality, or romance of any kind (no nosebleeds, extreme blushes, kissing, cleavage)
-no depictions of lethal weapons (and if they are lethal, they're blunt e.g. Zolo's swords)
-no good humor/"creative vocabulary" i.e. profanity (innuendos, double entrendes, insults)
-no DEATH
So with those five points destinguished, they pretty much got rid of reality, and put the entire original plot on the line. But they don't care. They just butcher the story line as well. I always thought that they could only rape a plot so much just to make a show appropriate for elementary schoolers, but I was clearly proven wrong.
Any character that dies in the original story just "mysteriously disappears" or "is sent to the Shadow Realm". And where the hell did this "Heart of the Cards" crap come from?!
You notice that most of 4Kids' targets are Shonen Jump titles. I love my Shonen Jump. Why are they adding all of these friendship speeches!? It's Shonen Jump, not Shojo Beat! I mean, don't get me wrong: partnership and friendship is important in a lot of these titles, but Shonen Jump has its own why of describing it. Take Naruto for example.
If 4Kids hadn't gotten to Yu-Gi-Oh!, chances are, I could have been a fan of that series. A REAL fan.
I'll never forgive them for violating Eiichiro Oda's and Hiroyuki Takei's brainchildren (In case you don't know/remember, Eiichiro is the creator of "One Piece" and Hiroyuki "Shaman King", and with the almighty Nobuhiro Watsuki, creator of "Rurouni Kenshin", they make up the Trinity of Awesomeness! There's a reason behind this: They're all friends and Eiichiro and Hiroyuki worked under Nobuhiro, and their series are all good, so I respect them and like their series as well).
4Kids butchered One Piece beyond recognition, but - thank you heaven's above - they got saved by FUNimation. No such luck for Shaman King though...It's scary, because they almost got all three of the Trinity of Awesomeness, but luckily Media Blasters got Kenshin first, so all of its violent goodness got saved.
Well, for the majority of us, a lot of our favorite titles didn't get tainted by 4kids entertainment: InuYasha, Naruto, Bleach among others all got saved by Viz Media or other licensing companies. But what does the future hold for the rest of our unliscenced anime favorites?
G*d help me if they put their slimey paws on Gintama....
So why does 4Kids do this to the fans that love these titles so much?
Well to put it simply and honestly, they don't care about the feelings of the fans. You should hear what Al Kahn says at these conventions, stuff like, "Manga is the reason why kids don't read" and then contradicts himself by saying "We edit text out of cartoons because kids don't read." Eventually he gets booed off the stage by angry fans.
But yeah, what it all comes down to is the money. They butchered the hell out of Yu-Gi-Oh! and brainwashed kids through Pokemon, and they made BILLIONS. Too bad it didn't work so well with One Piece. [/sarcasm]
Well, I'm all ranted out. I didn't want so sound like an angry lady and I didn't want to sound biased, but you would be too if these fiends killed every anime that you loved. ;_;
Discuss, rant, comment, repeat my words, twist my words around that desribe your thoughts best, etc.
Thank you.
This certain dubbing company - as we all know - came to power around the 1990s with their leader Alfred "Al" Kahn, when they dubbed the Nintendo series Poke'mon, making it into an American kiddie anime cult. Most of us were only tykes when this happened... I was only seven. Didn't really know about this foreign wonderland known as "Japan" back in the day and to be frank, I didn't really care. I just wanted whichever new deck of Poke'mon cards that were released.
Little did we know that 4Kids played on this ignorance of foreign countries and cultures in order to spread mass "Westernization" through their dubbing of anime.
Let's look a little closer at Pokemon shall we? Now, a lot of anime titles are set in alternate universes (so are a lot of American animation), but, they still obtain a hefty share of cultural tidbits (e.g. clothing, food, slang). So do some American cartoons. And this is where the brainwashing began. If you look through some 4Kids hate propaganda on youtube, you'll find a vid that's titled "4Kids hates riceballs" and "4kids hates riceballs part 2". I think the title says enough.
The gist is, 4Kids edits anything that bluntly shouts "JAPANESE CULTURE". They either call onigiri "donuts" or edited the friendly riceball out and replaced it with either a sandwich, cracker, or whatever! I remember asking my mom "Hey I want a donut like that!" but I could never find one that quite matched that description. But, they let some stuff slip, like some clothing. But I figure that 4Kids believes that kids are too stupid to notice the difference between foreign garb and American garb. I admit, they had me fooled. They had almost all of us fooled. Until a few years later, when my bro was watching Tenchi or something, I came to the realization that "hey. This style doesn't come from America. It doesn't even come from this hemisphere! 4Kids lied to me!!"
A tidbit: Al Kahn said that they do the Westernization crap because it makes kids "understand things better".
... Understand what? Kids don't pay attention to cartoons half the time! Avatar proves that enough!
Anyway, enough with Pokemon. They didn't do that bad with the dubbing. The series just went downhill on its own (repetative plots, too many d@mn pokemon, etc. IMO). I'm just going to go through everything that p!sses fans off with this company.
Well, I really can't explain what they did to anime such as Yu-Gi-Oh!, One Piece, Tokyo Mew Mew, Sonic X, Shaman King, etc. because they did so much crap to them. Just go on Youtube, look up "4kids sucks" followed by a series. They'll give you a slew of examples of the differences they made with dubbing.
What does 4Kids do while dubbing exactly? Well basically, besides brainwashing kids concerning Japanese culture, they make any anime that they can get their hands on "kid friendly", meaning:
-no real violence (only slapstick-ish, no blood, no hemoraging, no broken bones. they basically go against all physics of anime concerning violence)
-no sex, sensuality, or romance of any kind (no nosebleeds, extreme blushes, kissing, cleavage)
-no depictions of lethal weapons (and if they are lethal, they're blunt e.g. Zolo's swords)
-no good humor/"creative vocabulary" i.e. profanity (innuendos, double entrendes, insults)
-no DEATH
So with those five points destinguished, they pretty much got rid of reality, and put the entire original plot on the line. But they don't care. They just butcher the story line as well. I always thought that they could only rape a plot so much just to make a show appropriate for elementary schoolers, but I was clearly proven wrong.
Any character that dies in the original story just "mysteriously disappears" or "is sent to the Shadow Realm". And where the hell did this "Heart of the Cards" crap come from?!
You notice that most of 4Kids' targets are Shonen Jump titles. I love my Shonen Jump. Why are they adding all of these friendship speeches!? It's Shonen Jump, not Shojo Beat! I mean, don't get me wrong: partnership and friendship is important in a lot of these titles, but Shonen Jump has its own why of describing it. Take Naruto for example.
In the "Sasuke Retreival Arc", Naruto pretty much says, "I'm beating you up to a bloody pulp because you're my friend Sasuke! No shut the hell up and feel my demonic shinobi wrath!" as a display of his utter devotion to his friend.
If 4Kids hadn't gotten to Yu-Gi-Oh!, chances are, I could have been a fan of that series. A REAL fan.
I'll never forgive them for violating Eiichiro Oda's and Hiroyuki Takei's brainchildren (In case you don't know/remember, Eiichiro is the creator of "One Piece" and Hiroyuki "Shaman King", and with the almighty Nobuhiro Watsuki, creator of "Rurouni Kenshin", they make up the Trinity of Awesomeness! There's a reason behind this: They're all friends and Eiichiro and Hiroyuki worked under Nobuhiro, and their series are all good, so I respect them and like their series as well).
4Kids butchered One Piece beyond recognition, but - thank you heaven's above - they got saved by FUNimation. No such luck for Shaman King though...It's scary, because they almost got all three of the Trinity of Awesomeness, but luckily Media Blasters got Kenshin first, so all of its violent goodness got saved.
Well, for the majority of us, a lot of our favorite titles didn't get tainted by 4kids entertainment: InuYasha, Naruto, Bleach among others all got saved by Viz Media or other licensing companies. But what does the future hold for the rest of our unliscenced anime favorites?
G*d help me if they put their slimey paws on Gintama....
So why does 4Kids do this to the fans that love these titles so much?
Well to put it simply and honestly, they don't care about the feelings of the fans. You should hear what Al Kahn says at these conventions, stuff like, "Manga is the reason why kids don't read" and then contradicts himself by saying "We edit text out of cartoons because kids don't read." Eventually he gets booed off the stage by angry fans.
But yeah, what it all comes down to is the money. They butchered the hell out of Yu-Gi-Oh! and brainwashed kids through Pokemon, and they made BILLIONS. Too bad it didn't work so well with One Piece. [/sarcasm]
Well, I'm all ranted out. I didn't want so sound like an angry lady and I didn't want to sound biased, but you would be too if these fiends killed every anime that you loved. ;_;
Discuss, rant, comment, repeat my words, twist my words around that desribe your thoughts best, etc.
Thank you.