Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Do Edited for TV Dubs Change An Anime's Music?
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Lord Starfish
Posts: 155 |
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Another example of overly literal translations... Anyone ever notice how stilted much of the dialogue is in The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask? It didn't occur to me as a kid, but the game is littered with literal translations of Japanese phrases that sound extremely awkward, such as the Gibdo telling Link to "LEAVE IT! LEAAAAVE ITTTT!!! Leave me something that [VARIOUS VAGUE HINTS AT WHAT THEY WANT]" and then when they get it "THIS! THISSSS! I BEAR YOU NO REMORSE", or Tatl responding to Tael being about to explain the Skull Kid's deal with "Without being told, we understand", or the Skull Kid boasting "If it's something that can be stopped, then try to stop it!"
It's a good game... But man does the translation read terribly. It's really kind of a good thing the game has no voice acting because these lines would be even worse when spoken out loud. |
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Mosaic
 Posts: 75 |
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I find it funny America is the only country that has a history of doing this. If any foreign dubs have changed music, it's typically because of lack of M&E Tracks.
This is a random example, but I always liked the English soundtrack for Hana no ko Lun Lun, or as it was called here, "Angel". Although only two episodes were dubbed, the entire 50 episode series was rescored and used in other countries. |
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LostTL
Posts: 15 |
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I had heard that royalties going to the US licensor instead of the Japanese composers has sometimes been a factor as well.
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Kadmos1
 Posts: 13572 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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Considering sound effects in a lot of TV shows are stock sound effects and really short in length (often only a few seconds), I think the rights issues might be more lenient on that than a longer music piece. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6002 |
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It's an interesting point though if you're black kid who hangs out with other black and Hispanic kids watching a show where most of the music is rock music it raises a few questions......and there here comes GT with it's weird music that wasn't "it" either.
Which gets a bit funny given that Z and Yu-Gi-Oh had songs like "Battle Point Unlimited" (which was plagiarized) and "Psychological Warfare" that hit some of those genres yet of course they wound up being replaced with trash anyway.
With "Rock The Dragon" long having long faded into obscurity it's kind of moot plus Steve Aoki remixed Cha-La Head Cha-La for Xenoverse 2 so.....we're gravy.
If fans are having to add it to Kai and Super which themselves come with new music that's not much of a selling point.
I've seen the movie and barring the way some characters are used it's fine better than the Alpha movie but really not all that, soundtrack didn't age well. |
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FLCLGainax
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The practice of changing BGM in anime is/was usually more of an American practice than a Western one. Most European and Latin American dubs don't change the music from the Japanese version, even when a show gets censored heavily. For example, the French dubs of Dragon Ball/Z/GT/Super.
The exceptions seem to be when a country imports the altered American version and dubs that over into their local language, like a lot of Pokemon dubs outside Japan. Also, Italian co-productions like Lupin III Part IV have had their music changed for non-Japanese versions. Canadian dubs also sometimes change the music, like the Westwood dub of DBZ. |
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Spawn29
Posts: 551 |
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DBZ was already a global hit long before it was dubbed in the US. If they kept the Japanese music in the background in the dub on CN, it would still be popular. DBZ became popular for its fast pace action and having characters blowing shit up. |
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OjaruFan2
Posts: 662 |
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I’ve heard about this, too. The US licensor doesn’t want to pay royalties to the Japanese composer, but wants other countries to pay them royalties. What a twist! 
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Kadmos1
Posts: 13572 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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Hypocritical and ironic at the same time. |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4607 |
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It's been well over 15 years since I've seen anything substantial of it, but I'm curious: did the original Kanto Pokemon episodes keep any of the Japanese soundtrack, or was all the music original to the Americanized version? I know a couple of the songs taken straight from the GameBoy games, but I never knew if that was true of the Japanese version too.
(I do know that the original theme and vocal songs are still awesome. Fite me.) |
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Lord Starfish
Posts: 155 |
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4Kids actually kept quite a lot of the original score. They didn't keep everything, but I think in the Kanto era, there was only one instrumental track from the Japanese version that never made it in, that being the Lavender Town theme, which somehow got erased every single time it appeared. But practically every piece of BGM from the anime that's iconic among the fandom? It's from the Japanese version. Well, except Lugia's theme and I guess perhaps Tears of Life from Mewtwo Strikes Back, as 4Kids replaced basically the entire score in the first three movies sans Team Rocket's theme. |
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Chester McCool
 Posts: 322 |
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Isn't DBZ super popular with black people? I mean, I see them insist "Piccolo is totally black guys!" a lot. Although I have no idea what that means...
They kept some of the Japanese music, but almost every episode also featured original 4Kids produced music. As a general rule of thumb, if it sounds like music from the games, it's the Japanese music. I guess they felt keeping some of the more recognizable video game music was a smart choice, but the rest was expendable. The dub of the first three movies were basically them trying to turn them into an American animated movie with insert songs and "songs inspired by" to sell a CD which was common back in the 90s. Thankfully they stopped doing that after three movies. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6002 |
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It is I was talking about Funimation's weird soundtrack options that would potentially tune out some of it's black and Hispanic audience. |
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JustinTaco
 Posts: 118 |
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Forgive me if this was already said in the preceding 58 posts but,
does this article come off as extremely condescending to anyone else? |
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Cardcaptor Takato
 Posts: 4896 |
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For as controversial as it is when English dubs make music changes to anime shows, I don't think it can be denied that there is a lot of nostalgia love for the soundtracks in a lot of these older anime kids dubs. The English soundtrack for the original DiC dub of Sailor Moon is still widely regarded as one of it's strong points by the fandom, even by most fans who otherwise prefer the original Japanese version. I don't think I've ever met a Sailor Moon fan who actively hates My Only Love. While I otherwise have little interest in the original Cardcaptors English dub, the Nelvana soundtrack is still pretty good and I like a lot of the songs. And I actually really like the soundtracks for the first three Pokemon movies. Everyone loves Lugia's theme but I also really love Dragonite's theme in the Mewtwo Strikes Back dub. This might be a controversial hot take, but I actually quite like the Disney soundtrack to Castle In The Sky and I think it's just as beautiful as the original soundtrack. It helps Disney hired Joe Hisaishi to compose it.
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