Forum - View topicWhat? Pikachu Sounds Like a Prostitute, Lynch Pokemon USA!
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Ferquin
 Posts: 297 Location: Renton, WA, USA |
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You know what? To those people who say nobody gives a crap about Pokémon and that it's only a kids' show? All I can say is that when the Pokémon Journey Across America 10th anniversary tour stopped in my neck of the woods last weekend, I can tell you that there were as many kids as there were older fans (teens, 20s-ish), myself included. We all still love Pokémon - the games, the TCG, and the anime.
What PUI did was just so friggin' bad, I can't articulate it properly into text. It's a real slap in the face to people like us who've been supporting the franchise for ten years. I certainly hope PUI hears our cries and fixes the problem. Because, as much as I love Pokémon, I just can't see the anime going further stateside if they keep up with the bad dubbing. I'm pretty lenient about dubs, and this is just bad. I think kids are smart enough to see bad dialogue when they hear it. Don't count them out just because they're young. I mean, look at some of the pre-teens at anime conventions, or maybe even on this forum. Some of them are just as snobbish about dubs as a whiny, 30-year-old otaku. Seriously, I really hope PUI knows they did bad. I wouldn't really want to see it go back to 4kids, but at the same time, I'd really like it if the original dub cast was put back. I was looking at the cast list for the 10th Anniversary special and frankly, lots of them were no-names. Maybe they were aliases, who knows? But this was one really crappy dub. If they were professional voice actors, I would think they would have done a better job. |
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luffa
Posts: 3 |
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I agree, I always noticed things that were wrong as a kid while watchign cartoons and anime -- sometimes adults under-estimate kids too much and expect them to buy into anything. Though I checked out the voicing and it doesn't seem half that bad. Now the characters just sound older and that okay because it makes somewhat of a sense that they are growing up. The voice actors are probably trying their best to live up to the fan expectation, they shouldn't be blamed if anyone - alot of videos have been circulating about how pokemon fans hate the new voice overs. But I really don't think letter writting and contacting will change anything but meh, we can try I guess. If anyone, I feel kinda sorry for the new cast. |
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GodOfObelisk
Posts: 6 |
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Well, I did notice that the voices were horribly wrong, but Ash's wasn't THAT bad... I did have a big problem with May's and Brock's.
4Kids is just ghey, they always will be. Pokemon is still great at any rate. I liked the Mewtwo special. The original cast was great, no one can replace them, no matter how good they are. Can't they go work for Pokemon USA under aliases? I mean people think that Steven Jay Blum and David Lucas = the same person, why not? |
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Cyan Bloodbane
 Posts: 117 |
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Either let Ash become a god damn Pokemon master, or end the damn show already, good/bad dub and all.
I never did trust an anime series that went over 26 eps....unless it was Ranma, of course. |
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Jerseymilk
 Posts: 157 Location: Wouldn't YOU like to know. |
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Oh please! What an obviously biased statement. It's especially ironic you would praise Ranma, a series chalked full of run-around-plots and a conclusion that never was really resolved. 
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Alex K.
Posts: 247 |
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Don't forget Inuyasha. That's even worse. Hey, are they still looking for Naraku or what? |
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*kite*
Posts: 2 |
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Tempest
 I Run this place.ANN Publisher  Posts: 10421 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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I agree. Kids do notice things. But what they notice, and the perspecticve they notice it from is very different from an adult's. In the case of Pokemon, I would say it would have been more important for PKUSA to focus on sound alikes than to focus on good actors. Because Kids will notice the voice change, but are less likely to notice a change in acting quality. Understand, I said it's more important and they are less likely. Meaning that it is still important to find good actors, and if the acting is bad enough, kids might not outright notice it ("hmm, Ash's anger just isn't real enough"), but they can still be turned off by bad acting over time. ("I don't like pokemon anymore, it sucks.") But acting quality is less important when it comes to kids, they focus on visuals and the story. That's why acting quality is often so bad in children's shows. Take Pokemon for example, the old dub is hardly an example of stellar acting / directing. Yet some of those voice actors have done exemplary acting jobs on other shows. The producers, studio, directors and actors all know that it isn't necessarry to spend time getting it perfect. Obviously most of them do the best they can each take, but if after a take the quality is "80%" and "50%" is good enough for Pokemon, they're not going to redo the take striving for "99%" (sorry about quantifying a qualitative item, it just made the example easier). -t |
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jgreen
 Posts: 1325 Location: St. Louis, MO |
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I actually had the same reaction while reading this. It doesn't seem like an editorial at all, but more of a shoot-from-the-hip post you'd find on a messageboard or LiveJournal somewhere.
Agreed. There were a handful of scattered Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles episodes in the original run that had different VAs than normal for Shredder and Donatello, and believe me, I *always* noticed. You just can't replace James "Uncle Phil" Avery, y'know?
In Ranma's defense, even though it started petering out later on in the series, there's a heckuva lot more than 26 good episodes of the show. Heck, pretty much every episode of the first 3 full seasons is good. Except for that clip show at the end of Season 1. MAN was that irritating... |
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Tempest
I Run this place. ANN Publisher Posts: 10421 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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To actually respond seriously to the issue, as opposed to taking pot shots at Jonah (he makes it too easy), I don't need to view an anime to write an editorial about what fans think about it. The article isn't about my opinion on the dub. What I did do, is spend a significant amount of time reading comments and reviews by fans and writers alike who are fans of the show or follow out of a pedagogical or preofessional interest. On the fan side of things, I looked at sites that were very high brow as well as low brow ones. Finally, I lso spoke to people who were professionaly involved in the show's production for their opinions. Obviosuly it was necesarry to filter out their professional bias, but their opinions, since they were off the record, helped greately. Having done all this, I think I was in a better position to write an editorial that takes into account the the views of people who care about the series. I felt that this gave me a bunch better perspective than I would have had if I watched the show. My goal was not to review it objectively. Obviously, though all this, it wasn't off the cuff. But if the article somehow seemed like "more of a shoot-from-the-hip post" obviously that's my fault andI'll have to be more careul to avoid that result in the future. It would help if you told me what in the article gave you that impression. Was it just my comment about not having heard the new dub, or was there more? -t |
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jgreen
Posts: 1325 Location: St. Louis, MO |
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No problem at all. A few things.... 1. The conversational tone of the post. It starts by repeatedly directly addressing the reader as you, then your article responds with "that’s what everyone tells me," "From what I hear...", etc. If I understand you correctly, the goal of the article wasn't necessarily to objectively review the dub, but to objectively address the controversy. In other words, "people hate the new dub, but are there good, honest reason why the dub is there? Here's what fans think, here's what Pokemon USA says, and bam! Both sides of the argument, make up your own mind." 2. Even though you state outright that you haven't heard the dub, there are still points in the essay that are not attributed to others and therefore come off as the opinion of the writer. I'm especially thinking of this paragraph here:
That PUSA "dropped the ball" and put forth "barely...any effort at all" are extremely negative statements that seem to be coming directly from a writer that has already pleaded ignorance. 3. There are very snide comments made in the direction of a company, 4Kids, that has not conclusively been proven to have anything to do with it. It makes sense to address that 4Kids MAY be responsible, and point out that it is just a THEORY and is not a known fact. But this essay gets almost shockingly accusatory for a no-nonsense news site when it refers to 4Kids, who again, no one's proven has anything to do with this controversy, in this snide, sarcastic tone:
It's hard to say that you aren't thrusting yourself into the center of the controversy when you're outright accusing a company of being "underhanded" and guilty of "sabotage", y'know? That's how I read it, anyway. That's just my opinion, I could be wrong. |
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The Frankman
 Posts: 1160 Location: Binary Culture HQ |
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*eats popcorn*
*reads thread* *eats more popcorn* *re-reads thread* I remember a time when we were just talking about the quality of the voices themselves and not as a whole (apparently I'm the only one happy Ash has a deeper voice, even though he can't emote). Also, too many (taking this from the poll) seemingly hypocritical people who didn't give a flying youknowwhat about the series, not coming out of the woodwork to slam the VAing like they know it? Please. I hope the other VAs find their niche, but it'll take time. People, it was ONE POORLY WRITTEN EPISODE. If you don't believe me see the thread in the Japanese Anime forum "Opinions on Pokemon: Master of Mirage PoKemon". Did PoKemon USA fire the old writers too? Let's wait and see if the following episodes are this bad and stop having a cow, ok? And though I have my own opinions of his work, as a fellow writer for a site at least respect the guy who wrote the piece's opinions; it's an editorial, not the gospel. |
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fighterholic
Posts: 9193 |
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True, you can't judge everything on one episode. We should try and wait this out to see if they can improve. But here's a good question, does anybody know what the ratings for the show were for the entire country? That's what'll tell whether this show is gonna stay on or not. |
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Sepeh
Posts: 1 |
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Who gives a [crap]? Dubbed series have always been crap, I can't stand new actors which even don't fit the characters. Original japanese voice actors owns those awful dubs all the way.
I hope that in the future we don't have dubs at all. Original voices and subtitles will be fine. If the kids can't understand, what they're saying on TV it's their own problem. Kids should learn to read at age of five at least. [EDIT: No cursing, please. If you want to curse, use substitute words. Otherwise, grow up, make an actual argument that can accompany your elitist attitude, or just shut up and leave things be with the rest of normal society. -TK] |
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UsagiTsukino
Posts: 3 |
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I agree. I think it`s awful that companies are even allowed to release edited, dub only versions of anime. I am hoping that maybe if there is enough negative reaction to the new voice actors, the Pokemon dub will be cancelled, Nintendo will drop it, and maybe another company , like ADV, Geneon, or Funimation picks it up and gives it a subtitled, unedited release on DVD. I would be very happy if that happened. I couldn`t care less about what`s going on with the dubbed, edited Pokemon.
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