Forum - View topicHey, Santaman! [2006-12-15]
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Malintex Terek
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Sorry, but it it doesn't fly in America it probably isn't going to come back here. The UK's distributor is most likely behind or at the same volume VIZ Media has produced, since they are contracted to use VIZ's translations. Which is a real pity.
Sigh, I never expected GATSU of all folks to hold this opinion. Well, time to dig up my old arguments. *ahem*, the 4Kids Dub was at an "acceptable" level during the Drum Arc, probably equivalent to what VIZ Media would have edited OP to; no puns, no lame dialogue, just serious drama. Yes, there was the issue of the non-stop music track and Sanji's voice acting, but that's all moot since people who have been watching the dub for so long tend to ignore it. I didn't see One Piece explode in popularity following that arc. Drum has been cited as "the most emotional" of all OP arcs, and 4Kids actually preserved that, including precedent-setting references to death, dying, and exploding. To say that "4Kids never gave it a chance" is a bit uneducated, since they actually did experiment with a relatively "normal" style of dubbing and it had no effect on the American market. Given how frequently Drum was rebroadcast, it's obvious that people simply didn't cue into the show. OP fans are just going to have to accept that their show will gain little more than cult-status in America; it won't enter pop-culture, nor will it gain widespread popularity. Like Haruhi, it's just a weird show that some Americans can enjoy but has no real market feasibility; it's a bird that only flies in Japan.
Toei pulled the rights to SM and now it's unavailable in the West; given that incident, and noting SM's status in Japan, the same will probably happen to OP.
Why do people keep saying that? I used to be a dub-basher when I was just watching the dub and reading the manga, but when I actually saw the original I realized the show in its Japanese form would *never* click with American audiences. It's due to the cultural sterotypes we imprint on anime; something like OP creates a conceptual imbalance in our minds since we expect characters who look as ridiculous as Oda's characters do to be jumping around, screaming or smashing stuff. Instead they talk about politics, relationships, tactics or engage in "slice-of-life" stuff like eating food or flirting. That kind of show isn't what America would agree with readily; I've shown Japanese OP episodes to people and they've hated the show. Eiichiro Oda writes OP with children in mind; in America, it turns out college kids like OP the most, while children tend to revile the title. Now, for something as big as OP is in Japan, if it doesn't carry the child market it isn't worth bringing over to America; what's the point in licensing Pokemon if it only does as well as Chobits? That's unsound, and no one will be willing to go for it. I mean, look at the popularity of Bobobo and check how VIZ Media won't even touch additional volumes of the show; they recognize that Bobobo can't appeal to children, while its college-oriented audience is too small to make it successful relative to its popularity. So, it stays in Japan. OP fans are just bitter and rabid; I know, I speak with them every day. There's also an atmosphere of denial as well; people are blind to the faults of their own favourite show and refuse to acknowledge that people simply don't like their title. Given that many of these individuals are college kids that like a child's manga, all I can say is, "GROW UP". |
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Nebs
Posts: 384 Location: University of Illinois |
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4Kids actually aired all of the Shaman King episodes, all 64 of them. Which means it too lasted for more than 50 episodes. But anyway, I recall hearing last year that One Piece was Toonami's 3rd highest rated show, leaving it behind only Naruto & Zatch Bell. With that in mind, I wonder why it still failed. |
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Deltakiral
Posts: 3338 Location: Glendora, CA (Avatar Hei from Darker than BLACK) |
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If you want the full list of anime from the masterpiece theater group they are right here Yeah a good book can beat basically any medium when ya think about it. |
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GATSU
Posts: 15306 |
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Malintex:
It probably didn't take off, because its target audience was turned off by 4Kids' original dub of the show.
I'm guessing it was a case of too little, too late by then.
We'll see.
*cough* Naruto *cough*
So in other words, filler?
Perhaps the subs they were reading were a little too literal, and came off flat, as a result?
Chobits did pretty damn well for itself before its 15 minutes ended. I think a better analogy would be Ultimate Muscle.
I think they're waiting to assess sales for the dvds, before they decide whether to continue the manga. And I see more Bobobo fan art in Jump than OP.
I'm not actually a fan, but I still feel 4Kids blew it. Nebs: I'm guessing it failed, because it cost way too much to make its money back in advertising revenue. |
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Vikio
Posts: 60 Location: tropical volcano |
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The rant was perfect. I'm glad there's still people on the internet who can think and form their thoughts clearly. I shake the writer's virtual hand with respect.
And the news about an actual Les Miserables anime with a moe Cosette was...hilarious! I honestly tried to finish that book but Monseiur Hugo can be a bit of a ranter himself. Oh, and I'd like to see what other people would recommend for the shallow sister, since I haven't seen "Fist of the North Star"... |
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Ai no Kareshi
Posts: 561 Location: South Africa |
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Interesting column, as usual.
And the rant was good for once. |
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candeh
Posts: 17 Location: Orange County, CA |
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Your illustrations for the "gifts for people you hate" are priceless.
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ichido reichan
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you haven't seen Hokuto no ken?
let me put it this way, my girly girlfriend (y'know the one that likes pink color, anything pop etc) broke up with me just for showing her a clip of the movie of the first of the north star (The movie) they hate that like the plague. Also, for the one that made the list, you forgot two titles: Ie naki ko (the first series, the remake is god-awful) and FANTASTIC CHILDREN that also is part of the world masterpiece teather |
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Zalis116
Moderator
Posts: 6867 Location: Kazune City |
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Great answer to the flake, except that step 1 is a formidable obstacle to the average anime fan I wonder if I can find Wedding Peach DVDs that way?
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Vikio
Posts: 60 Location: tropical volcano |
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*snort* Hahaha!! I mean really? Aw, I'm sorry your gf broke up with you, you're too good for her anyway. Now I'm thinking I gotta see what the fuss is about, and see if it triggers the same gag reflex in me...I'm a girl btw, but definitely not sqeamish. |
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tkwelge
Posts: 18 |
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I guess that I'm one of the few people who didn't like the rant. It's not that I disagree with anything written in it, it's just that we aren't visiting any new ideas. Also, I kinda think that some censhorship is necessary on television. Not because I want television to raise my kids or protect them, but because I don't want television to turn to crap. Maybe I'm just getting old. Also, there are plenty of pro-war people in Japan, they are just against war that is perpetrated by somebody else's country. Anyway, remember, the absence of war is not necessarily peace. War has killed millions of people in the last century, but peace has killed billions.
Also, I noticed that every now and then, somebody will type something aimed at christians. Amazingly, I don't ever see any christians on this forum harrassing anybody (well, maybe some people are christians, but I've never seen anybody evangelizing on these forums), but every now and then, I'll just see some angry loser who hates his parents or some kids at school say, "Yeah, man, we should do this or that, because it will really blow some religious deush's mind! Yeah!" What's the point of that? |
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WesW
Posts: 144 |
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I just finished Mahoromatic a few hours ago, and the cry "Fist of the Nude Star!" is going to have me chuckling for days to come. That, and "Bitty Booby Attack!"
I would love to have an interview with Wendee Lee and Bridgett Hoffman about what it was like doing the dialogue for that series. |
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Malintex Terek
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Such would be the case if a large enough audience was exposed to the dub, but aside from the people who surf the internet, many of the folks who watch CN were sheltered from the "bad" dub for a long while; the Krieg and Kuro arcs, relatively "less-painful" than the Morgan and Arlong ones, were shown on primte-time Toonami early on, followed by a serious bount of Drum, then Arabasta, and finally a rerun of Drum. The best of the 4Kids dub, including a "relatively normal" arc, was what the CN viewers were experienced to; if anything, that minimizes (but does not elliminate) the negative factors of 4Kids' dubbing, bringing the CN viewers "as close" to the original show as 4Kids got. In the United Kingdom, OP took off even during the first trashy 4Kids episodes; it's been theorized that is is due to people "finding the merit" in the show. If the UK could do it with the heavy butchered episodes, why couldn't the US do it with the lightly manhandled ones?
Given that the series was virtually unknown and had mild (though excellent) promotions on CN, I'd say it was a good effort. It just didn't bear any devil fruit.
Indeed we shall.
Not exactly; barring the obvious fact that Naruto is a cartoon, it doesn't have the atmosphere of one. That is, there's no thematic exaggerations of character design of personality (caricature) or logistics presented as inherently ridiculous; the Naruto anime took a serious plot and presented it seriously. The One Piece anime took an absurdist plot and presented it seriously. As I've said before, the analogy is "Macbeth performed by clowns".
Pretty much, except it's manga-adapted filler.
I used that group with the hubris complex, and showed people choice fight sequences (namely, Luffy v. Crocodile I); I tried to find an action-packed episode that embodied OP but didn't suffer from a lot of flow weaknesses (as was the case in the East Blue fights).
I had a lot of trouble finding a comparable series, so you'll have to excuse me for that error (if one was made); regarding UM, it resulted in the unusual situation of a second-season being produced exclusively for America (well...), so its popularity cannot be underestimated.
Somehow I doubt that, since Illumitoon are the distributors and VIZ Media had all the opportunity in the world to get the title themselves; they handled the manga, and have records of how well the manga did. Bobobo strikes me as a show that would do better in manga-form than anime, even though the anime audience is larger, so for the VIZ manga to fail so profoundly that VIZ won't even touch additional volumes leads me to infer that there isn't much interest in it. That contrasts all the rave I've heard about Bobobo on various forms, but eh, if OP or Slam Dunk are any indicator of success in America versus Japanese or internet popularity, neither are exactly 100% sound indicators of profitability.
I wasn't talking about you in particular, just OP fans in general from what I've observed. I got kicked from a certain IRC channel not two hours ago by making a comment that Naruto's manga was improving, under the pretense of "OP > NARUTO FAG". Yeah, real mature of an administrator to provide that comment. I reinterate; the OP fandom is terrible. |
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PantsGoblin
Subscriber
Encyclopedia Editor Posts: 2969 Location: L.A. |
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Oddly enough, I've found this conversation more enjoyable than the actual column. Hmm, it's being directed by Hiroaki Sakurai (Director of Di Gi Charat). I have some interest in this now. |
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penguintruth
Posts: 8461 Location: Penguinopolis |
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I very much disagree - I've always loved The Tempest, and consider it Shakespeare's most original and imaginative pieces. It's perpetually underrated. It's usually goes unmentioned in lists of Shakespeare's greatest works, but it certainly is one of the best, in my opinion. I'm glad Zac is being realistic about One Piece's chances. Just because 4Kids has stopped production on its dub, doesn't mean FUNimation or Viz has already started on it. It's pretty unlikely that any company will look at what an enormous failure OP's been here and want to buy its license, and if that did happen, it wouldn't be for quite a while. Hokuto no ken will turn any celebrity-obsessed princess into a woman proper for hotblooded manly men. |
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