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This Week in Anime - The Rise and Evolution of Old Classic Dubs

There has been plenty of censorship in foreign Sailor Moon dubs. The French dub changed it so Haruka was a man in his civilian form but turned into a girl when he transformed. The Italian dub made the Three Lights male and had them call upon their twin sisters when they transformed into the Sailor Starlights. The German dub made Zoisite and Fisheye both female and localized it so Usagi ate hamburgers instead of odangos. There were more faithful dubs in other countries but it's misleading to claim none of them had any censorship or localization changes.

Except it was pretty common in English dubs at the time to give characters accents to either kinda sorta match the accent they may have had in Japan or just give them random accents like Funimation giving characters Irish accents despite said characters not being Irish in the original dub or human.

NIS America got in the way because at some point, they renewed the license and released the show's standard edition DVD set in 2020 plus they're the ones who supplied Netflix with what they got.

It hasn't been seen anywhere legally since it's TV broadcast in the UK and Toei not doing anything with it since hasn't helped matters.

Yeah, they were referring to Kyatto Ninden Teyandee & Monster Farm's DVDs. A bit of a shame because the current team probably would have fixed whatever issues those DVDs had previously, especially on the video quality front (see Monster Farm having too much crammed on those 8 DVDs with 9-10 episodes a disc).

Discotek actually covered the impossibility of bringing in the original actors to "fill in the gaps" in a cut series after the fact in one of their streams. Not only are people often not available but their voices change over time and aren't a match for the original.

YagamiBlackstone255 wrote:

I hope you arent implying "Well all these countries ALSO butchered Sailor Moon!" No just NO! If you checked out these dubs past the openings you would see they are amazingly faithful. DiC is the Odd One Out here. Even the Latin American dub where Usagi was called Serena and used the rest of the DiC names, was amazingly faithful and the Spain dub was also a great dub despite calling Sailor Moon "Guerrero Luna" (A gramatically wrong way of saying Warrior Moon.)

There has been plenty of censorship in foreign Sailor Moon dubs. The French dub changed it so Haruka was a man in his civilian form but turned into a girl when he transformed. The Italian dub made the Three Lights male and had them call upon their twin sisters when they transformed into the Sailor Starlights. The German dub made Zoisite and Fisheye both female and localized it so Usagi ate hamburgers instead of odangos. There were more faithful dubs in other countries but it's misleading to claim none of them had any censorship or localization changes. Even just recently the Portuguese dub of Sailor Moon Crystal censored all of the scenes of Haruka and Michiru's relationship whic caused backlash from fans.

What I don’t understand is that why no one rescued the license to Smile Precure just yet. It needs a redub this instance.

Say whatever you want about the DiC dub of Sailor Moon, it is a butchery but there is still plenty to like and the episode where "Neflyte" dies is very well made, with the Goofy Molly showing she can actually act.

I grew up watching Digimon, so to see it finally get a proper release warms my cynical 34 year old heart.

YagamiBlackstone255 wrote:

Say whatever you want about the DiC dub of Sailor Moon, it is a butchery but there is still plenty to like and the episode where "Neflyte" dies is very well made, with the Goofy Molly showing she can actually act.

That episode was surprisingly faithful in terms of DIC dub standards.

EDIT: Okay you win with the French dub, that's butchery alright. In my defense I didn't know. But it still is a mostly faithful dub otherwise. And I said DiC dub anyway so if France didn't maul Seasons 1 and 2 it still fared a lot better. No Rescoring. No episode merging.

Oh there are absolutely Sailor Moon fans that clamor for the DiC dub. Just like Digimon, that dub has a legitimate nostalgic fanbase. Just because Viz faithfully redubbed the series doesn’t mean everyone wants to forget all about that version. Look at the recent fan effort to have the score released.

These dubs (yes, even Digimon) were trashed by hardcore fans on the internet decades ago, but it’s been so long that there are adults who grew up with these shows that want to watch them how they remember. That’s pretty much where I am with Dragon Ball Z, which I guess is a more minor case since the old FUNimation dub has no cuts or visual edits on video (not counting the even older Saban era dub that I have less attachment to); it just had a very liberal script and, originally, a changed score, but it says something when an alternate audio track with that score is still included on video releases and the raw tracks have official releases on Spotify, etc.

Even 4Kids dubs have their nostalgic fans. People my age grew up with Yu-Gi-Oh, Shaman King, Sonic X, and others, and fondly remember watching them on Saturday mornings. Their One Piece dub’s reputation is pretty hard to overcome, but no doubt there’s someone out there that wants to watch it.

I fully accept that these dubs are products of their time, and know exactly what I’m watching, but that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy them for what they are.

We’re definitely past the days of needing these kinds of dubs for most shows, but I can still see them happening for toyetic ones like Beyblade, Bakugan, etc. Seriously, how many adults are clamoring to watch those in Japanese? But shows like My Hero Academia that appeal to kids and adult anime fans? Definitely not. That’s the kind of show that would’ve absolutely been butchered by 4Kids or Saban 20 years ago.

Even 4Kids dubs have their nostalgic fans. People my age grew up with Yu-Gi-Oh, Shaman King, Sonic X, and others, and fondly remember watching them on Saturday mornings. Their One Piece dub’s reputation is pretty hard to overcome, but no doubt there’s someone out there that wants to watch it.

Even just recently the Portuguese dub of Sailor Moon Crystal censored all of the scenes of Haruka and Michiru's relationship whic caused backlash from fans.

Thanks for clearing that up! I was aware of the NIS America release but thought it had happened before the Clear Card dub.

Why Toei doesn't stream the dub on Crunchyroll is beyond me. Hopefully now that Discotek has a good working relationship with Toei, it'll lead to something. Toei does seem to realize there is an audience for subbed Precure now, based on the simulcasts.

Wasn't aware there were issues with the DVDs. That could've been a factor behind the poor sales as well.

PurpleWarrior13 wrote:

Even 4Kids dubs have their nostalgic fans. People my age grew up with Yu-Gi-Oh, Shaman King, Sonic X, and others, and fondly remember watching them on Saturday mornings. Their One Piece dub’s reputation is pretty hard to overcome, but no doubt there’s someone out there that wants to watch it.

Technically speaking there's no real difference quality wise between something like Yu-Gi-Oh and One Piece's dub. They both do the exact same thing: replaced music, skipped episodes, silly censorship, changed plot points. I think the only difference is One Piece had been out longer so it had aired around 200 episodes aired by the time the 4Kids dub premiered so it had an established fanbase to complain about it. I remember when people got their hopes up because 4Kids had a promo with an English version of We Are and thought it wouldn't suffer the same fate as Yu-Gi-Oh and their other works since they had never dubbed and used the original music before for a show. But by the time the dub actually aired we got the famous rap theme instead. Meanwhile, Yu-Gi-Oh's dub was only about a year behind the Japanese airing so like 50ish episodes. But I vividly remember the subs for it back in the day and the people who hated the dub, but it also wasn't as established like One Piece and their later acquisitions. I think One Piece's premier was around the time fansubbed anime was really taking off so anything that came during that era got hit with a lot more criticism and furor compared to stuff from the 90s and early 2000s where there were more people who were first exposed to the series through the dubs rather than subs.