Forum - View topicHey, Answerman! [2008-05-09]
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4575 |
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No...just...no. If I thought spending an hour or two going into great depth as to how massively wrong you are would do any good, I'd gladly do so, but I'm not going to waste that time. There are plenty of series out there with mediocre or even downright atrocious dubs, but I've found that, in the vast majority of those cases, the original material was inane enough in its own right that a poor dubbing job doesn't really detract anything from it. There are those instances, though, when what's done to a dub utterly destroys the very real value a series has. Besides the aforementioned 4Piece and Cardcaptors treatments, I'm going to throw in a vote for Fantastic Children's dub, even though I've actually never heard it personally. I had the pleasure of watching the series subbed, and I found it to be utterly wonderful, but from what I understand, the dub was an utter garbage throwaway outsource to Odex. Another hack-job I've heard about without experiencing personally are the few episodes of Eyeshield 21 that showed up on Toonami's Jetstream service; yay, let's remove all character interaction and get right to the football! As far as overrated goes, I'd probably jump on the "lulz Eva" bandwagon too, but that has nothing at all to do with Shinji's quite-factual emo-ness. Let's throw in Death Note for good measure; from the impression I've received from watching the series, Ohba wouldn't know realistic character development if it hit her in the face. |
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penguintruth
 Posts: 8461 Location: Penguinopolis |
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Humor me by providing me examples of how One Piece isn't generic kids fare. 4Kids may have butchered it as far as certain elements, but it was still the same, repititous, meandering children's show that it was when it was in Japanese. |
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Top Gun
Posts: 4575 |
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I wasn't even arguing your "children's fare" comment, since that's obviously the demographic that the show is primarily targeted at (though any glance at Japan's TV ratings data should tell you that it has a much broader appeal than that). My own personal opinion, and one that seems to be shared by many others, is that it's far from "generic" and "meandering," but that's a completely different topic. What I took umbrage at is your suggestion that what 4Kids did to the series didn't fundamentally change its tone or content in any meaningful way; that, my friend, is what you could not be more incorrect about.
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penguintruth
Posts: 8461 Location: Penguinopolis |
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Was the show no longer about a crew of "pirates" who are "looking" for a treasure called One Piece, meeting others along the way and fighting other "pirates" who often have powers given to them by mystical fruit? They never made any series-altering changes. Now, don't mistunderstand, I'm against any kind of edits and changes, no matter what the show, even if I dislike it. Still, the changes didn't drastically morph the show into something entirely different. |
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rizuchan
 Posts: 975 Location: Kansas |
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I never understood why people thought the Pokemon dub was bad. Nintendo was on the butts pretty bad to keep them pretty true to the original. What do people want, original Japanese names? Because I don't think I could keep track of them all with names like "Zenigame" or "Karakara".
 I think a lot of people realized how un-bad it really was when Pokemon USA took over, but even they're doing a pretty good job with it now.
Even so, while 4kids shows are generally "bad dubs" in terms of content they have a lot of pretty talented actors on staff. I know a lot of people would disagree with me on that, but I've heard enough bad ADV and Funimation DVD only dubs to know Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh are definitely not the worst. (I haven't seen the 4kids OP so I can't say anything about that) Also, I had no idea that old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles show was Anime. I guess that's why I liked it so well. I wonder if that means I can stick my old VHS tapes of it on my anime shelf now. 
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malik_chan
 Posts: 134 |
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Yes, Yu-Gi-Oh had some good voice actors... and some horrible ones *cough*Malik/Marik*cough*. Dan Green is a great voice actor. Actually, the old Ninja Turtles wasn't anime, but in Japan, there was a Ninja Turtle spinoff sorta like Power Rangers. |
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Myaow
 Posts: 1068 |
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The Power of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Dub is such that, even five years later, I'm STILL watching the dubs of things like Fate/stay night and Haruhi Suzumiya and exclaiming, "Look, it's Sam Riegal who voiced Rex Raptor for eight episodes!" But that could just be a me thing... On a different subject, though, wouldn't Shinji be considered... you know, NOT emo? Since an emo person by definition is someone who worries EXCESSIVELY about things, while Shinji's last-part-of-the-series-self is pretty much dead to the world? I doubt that people really care, though, since I've seriously seen Hamlet Prince O' Denmark called "emo" before. Apparently, if you're often sad or melancholic or 14-years-old, you, my friend, are emo. |
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Top Gun
Posts: 4575 |
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Ah, so I guess that excising content equivalent to 40 whole episodes out of 140, a vast amount of which was completely plot-centric and crucial to the overall series, doesn't count as something "drastically different." And I suppose that taking the singular defining moment in the backstory of one of the main characters, not to mention what many people consider to be the most emotional moment through at least the first half of the series, and turning it into a laughable shell of its former self, doesn't mean anything. Oh, and did I mention the characters whose personae were just about reversed from their original selves? The horrifically awful puns added here, there, and everywhere? The acting below the level of a grade school Christmas pageant? Need I go on? Seriously, just poke around for a little while on this site. This was nothing like Pokemon, where the worst things got was substituting "donut" for "rice ball." What 4Kids did to One Piece was essentially remove every little thing that made it what it was, excise the entirety of what drew fans to it in the first place, and slap a good ol' rap intro on the front. I don't care whether or not you like the series, but if you can't at least call a spade a spade, then I have no interest in continuing this conversation. |
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gourry aka pm
Posts: 1 |
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The worst dub in history? Grab Tokyopop's Initial D 1st stage and see it! I have to mention that their subs is great, but dub... New character "nicknames" were hilarious, but, to replace original music - somebody done this before or after?! They couldn't done better to fully ruin series settings:)
As for "overated" - from Russian elitist i vote for Eva and Naruto;) |
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Viga_of_stars
 Posts: 1240 Location: Washington D.C. in the Anime Atelier |
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mike.motaku
 Posts: 160 Location: Indiana |
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I had a cat like that. It would lay cutely close to and seem to snuggle with the bunny. What this picture is missing is that, at least in my cat's case, the bunny was usually missing, well, major bunny parts from about the ribcage down. Or twitching itself to a slow death after it's neck had been broken. Once we found only the bunny's face. But the cat was cuddling up to it ever so sweetly. I'd send pictures but we were too busy vomiting to focus.
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SalarymanJoe
 Posts: 468 Location: Atlanta, GA, USA |
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Interesting opinion on Conan, Zac. Like minakichan said earlier, Conan is huge in Japan though I'm not sure how well that translates to DVD sales. As best I can judge, it's something that people just like to sit down and watch once a week in the evening.
Oh, you sick sunnava.... Why? This movie is oh so ho-ho-horrible. It's probably best left unspoken further.
If someone else didn't mention it, I would have. In fact, I challenge anyone to find a sincerely good (well acted, well translated) dub from the 1980s. I'll go a step further than the Macekere that became Captain Harlock and the Queen of a Thousand Years, but anything he worked on with Harmony Gold (such as the end of Southern Cross and Mospeada where when the dialog wasn't "huh", it was hardly serious) or Streamline Pictures (oh, that AKIRA dub...) should all be a rogue's gallery of bad dubbing. Wait, I assume you meant the Harlock/Millenia combination, or did you maybe mean the Streamline dub of Galaxy Express 999 where Harlock sounded like John Wayne?
If you couldn't tell from my comment above, I'm very much in step with Zac that, while many of the 1990s and later dubs that the letter-writer spoke about have thier bad points, I can't really say that they'd really belong on a top ten list (perhaps a top 50). I think to give fans a better perspective of how bad dubbing used to be, I need to get off my lazy butt and digitize my aged copy of the Corn Pone Flicks fan documentary Bad American Dubbing (and its sequels Bad American Dubbing Too and B.A.D. III), release it to the ether and let fans see exactly how bad it used to be. Perhaps then, we wouldn't have as many people griping about "Believe it!"
I'm only familiar with the first season or so of the American version with my knowledge of the Japanese one slightly more limited (1 audio CD, fansubs of Mew-Two's Revenge and Pikachu's Summer Vacation and a raw tape of the Polygon episode) and I can say that I've nothing really against either version in their respective form. The English Poke-rap is much easier to follow than the Japanese one though I prefer the Japanese OP/ED themes (especially the cooky sounding Hyakugojuuichi and the reocket-dan intro). The changes made to it from crossing the Pacific seem to be few and far between, but they're striking when they do. I'm not just talking about onigiri =/= doughnuts; covering up Kojiro's frequent cross-dressing, altering the framespeed in the earlier episodes and other changes provide different perceptions of the show, even though it maintained its ability to act as a mass-marketing catalyst. Interesting topic for next week's Answerfans. Someone mentioned in the forums one I'd like to tackle. |
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Sheleigha
 Posts: 1671 |
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One of the more atrocious dubs that I don't think many people would realize is Digimon: The Movie. You know, it's fun to cram in a 20 minute movie + 40 minute one + a 3rd about 60 minutes long and making it around 1 hr 20-30 minutes total. Oh, and it's also REALLY fun when they decide to try and tie ALL 3 storylines together and make the 3rd one an absolute disaster. Although I agree that Hurricane Touchdown! The Golden Digimentals was a very... slow paced movie, was it REALLY worth changing the entire thing and chopping it up, ala Nausicaa first dub, and then adding in random scenes where the Digimon are 'dancing' to old pop music like Smashmouth's Allstar? Yeah, it's just wrong :/
...and the 3rd Digimon Movie gives me MY vote for 'worst dub'. (And for someone who has been rewatching Digimon in Japanese, didn't realize HOW much of the dialogue, whether pointless or not, was dramatically changed :/) |
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Jackmace Ryo
 Posts: 65 Location: Southeast Asia |
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Having been a follower of Case Closed for quite a long time now, I more or less agree with Zac.
It's (perceived to be) too childish for adults yet it's too violent for kids. In Japan, they seems to like this type of detective stories, closed room murders, where the suspect is already narrowed into usually aroundten (usually less) and the main problem is finding the 'trick' of the murder. Proof usually is secondary focus and most of the time there's a convenient decisive evidence. Sometimes there's twist here and there but the main idea is still that. For a note, I've also read the similar detective series Kindaichi Shonen no Jikenbo and Tantei Gakuen Q and while the way of storytelling is different it's still the same way of detective story. The game Phoenix Wright, even though it's an attorney game, more or less follows this pattern but since this game takes setting in a court, proof is more of a focus than the usual detective story. As of my personal opinion, I followed Case Closed for YEARS, and I have to say I'm getting bored of it. The main story, Black Organization, which is very entertaining moves in a sluggish pace. What's more of a problem is that most of the case provides little to no substantial character development. In summary, perhaps two or three years ago I might rate it Excellent but now I would rate it Good, tops. But perhaps maybr it's because of I'm getting bored of long running shonen in general (technically it's shonen since it's serialized in Shonen Sunday). |
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Alucalb
Posts: 171 |
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Don't forget they replaced nearly all the music with their own generic score (cardinal sin if you ask me). The dub itself wasn't so bad - there were a few good voices (loved Folken) and some that could've been better (Dilandau not crazy enough). Foxcaflowne was a wreck, but at least the uncut DVDs were already available (it took a few years before we finally got uncut One Piece). |
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