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A tribute to 4Kids Entertainment.

Over the years,I heard a lot of criticisms of 4Kids. Some of them had merit. Others didn't. There were times they did a good job with the anime they had,other times not.
But what shouldn't be forgotten is that 4Kids had some pretty talented voice actors and actresses. Some of the stuff they were given was terrible,but they did a good job with their parts. People like Veronica Taylor,Wayne Grayson,Maddie Blaustein,Lisa Ortiz and many others.

Outside of "Pokemon" and "Yu-Gi-Oh,"they did a good job with other projects. Their version of "Winx Club,"a show I didn't really watch,was pretty good. They gave the characters on that show a life the Nickelodeon dub didn't. The Nickelodeon dub felt flat and a little lifeless. The 4Kids dub was that much better.
They also did a good job with "Mew Mew Power,"an Americanized version of "Tokyo Mew Mew." They gave the characters names like Zoey Hanson,Kiki Benjamin,and Corina Bucksworth. They also did a wonderful opening song for the show called "Team Up!" by Bree Sharp. They also gave the alien bad guys on the show a different motive for what they were doing. Instead of them claiming to be the original inhabitants of Earth,like they did in the Japanese version,they were a race of aliens that had lost their home planet and were jealous of humans because we had a home and they didn't.

While not every 4Kids project was a gem,there were more than enough of them. It's a shame 4Kids is gone. They would have done a swell job with "Polar Bear Cafe." That would have been right up their alley.

Winx Club, from what I understand, reading the wikia, was pretty heavily edited/changed, and the Nickelodeon version was much more faithful. I only saw a few episodes of Nick's version, but I greatly preferred them over the 4crap version.

The ONLY good things that 4Kids brought us were TMNT (the first season, NOT that piece of crap Flash Forward) and Ultimate Muscle.

Everything else.... and I mean EVERYTHING else they ever touched turned into a massive piece of crap.

PERIOD.

Well,I watched "Mew Mew Power,"one of the examples that I said that 4Kids did a good job with. And it was pretty good. Good acting,good storyline,it was well handled. Although,they did Americanize it,I didn't mind. I still liked it and enjoyed it. It was a good show.
And I still think that the 4Kids staple of voice actors and actresses were pretty good at what they did. They were talented people and deserve a lot more credit for what they did than they have received. They were very good and did a good job,even when the material they were given wasn't always very good.

Pokemon and Yugioh were my childhood.
I wasn't really watching any of their new shows, but I feel bad because so many people lost their jobs.

Ultimately they have ruined the reputations of several choice anime while only thinking of profit for themselves. There is nothing wrong with that. That is how things work in America, it's their right as businessmen and procurers of such work.

Alas the editing of and/or telling us "children do not read", should have been a reminder of how not to handle a "property", when in a time where BBS folk and the internet populace began evolving to eventually view and discuss such mistakes prior to release.

Learn from 4kids and let us not repeat these past quandaries, once more in the future. You too, VIZ

Signed an ancient One Piece fan!

http://i.imgur.com/Jx6gf.jpg

That's all I gatta say on the subject.... Rolling Eyes

Ok ok... 4Kids was at it's peak financially when the internet was new and dial-up was the standard, back before everyone could see the original versions of these shows and realize what these shows went though to air on American TV. Back when sites like Megchan and offering a 30 second clip in terribly compressed .rm realplayer format was considered a holy blessing. Laughing

Now we got streaming sites like YouTube and Cruncyroll, share sites, torrents, broadband. Anime on TV in general has changed.. and by changed I mean networks don't want it anymore cause its cheaper and more profitable to air their own stuff they own 100%.. not to mention no one is gonna watch an edited One Piece dub 400 episodes behind the latest Funi stream/torrent episode... and without appealing to the small market of people who actually buy anime like real companies do, 4Kids dying was expected. No one wants to buy edited only DVDs... people barely wanna buy uncut DVDs! And relying on the dead TV anime market just isn't viable anymore

tl;dr anime markets changed in America, and the companies that didn't adapt got thrown under a bus

though I do wonder just how much money digital paint costs.. editing all those YGO cards and lengthening the skirts in every scene where they show Kotori and Cathy below the waist, which is like 15 minutes of a 20 minute episode each episode given the animators love to pander Kotori and Cathy fanservice at us.. that probably added up to a lot of expenses. Razz

really?! you going to bash them yet again?! I was going to say stop beating a dead horse, but at this point the horse is well past dead. Get over yourself already.

I'm in agreement with TitanXL. There are a number of Japanese cartoons that may be for kids but aren't going to be shown here without a lot of editing. For example,they have a show called "Case Closed." From what I've heard,this was a kids show back in Japan. Why it wasn't shown during the daytime was that it featured people getting murdered. This show was more like "Murder,She Wrote" or "Law & Order" than like "Scooby-Doo."
When it was in this country,it was shown on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block. But,it's mentality was that of a kid's show albeit,one that would get an American tv station in trouble with parents for the violent subject matter shown. Eventually,it was dropped.

I agree with TitanXL. The Japanese have a much different standard for what they show to kids than they do in America. The Japanese believe that both good and bad should be shown,even death. Americans believe that kids should be sheltered from that type of thing and should wait until much later for that to be shown. I'm in agreement with the American mentality more than the Japanese mentality. There are some things that should not be shown to kids until much later on,when they are able to deal with them better.

4kids did a terrible job with Mew Mew Power. They changed all the names (annoying) and then never released the series on DVD. They didn't even finish dubbing it, if I remember correctly only 23 episodes even got dubbed. They dropped it after a hack and slash job. They left anyone who wanted to own the series totally shafted. I'm currently looking for a decent copy so I can watch it all the way through (my laptops dvd burner is broken and my wifi is garbage.)

I don't understand why they changed the name from Tokyo Mew Mew to Mew Mew Power. The first name was perfectly acceptable. No Japanese words (just a famous city), not a mouthful, and kind of catchy. I understand changing the opening and ending theme, they were entirely Japanese and no kid would possibly sit through them. But the names were fine. Lettuce isn't a complicated name. Neither is Mint, Strawberry, or Pudding. Could have just changed Zakuro to Chocolate or something else food themed.

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Forum - View topicA tribute to 4Kids Entertainment.

Forum - View topic
A tribute to 4Kids Entertainment.