Forum - View topicNEWS: LA Business Journal: Saban Brands Company Shuts Down in July
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Chester McCool
 Posts: 322 |
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I'm honestly surprised Saban outlived 4Kids, not that I'm sad to see them go after all they've done.
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Ryuji-Dono
 Posts: 1210 |
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But still, without them, then Tokusatsu wouldn't have been that popular among Americans for very long, and without that, Kamen Rider, Ultraman, and other shows wouldn't even have the famed cult status in the states without Power Rangers. Every company has their own share of ups and downs, Saban is no exception. |
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Cardcaptor Takato
 Posts: 4820 |
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I know Saban has gotten a lot of complaints and frustration from fans in recent years but they were a huge part of my childhood and teenage years with Power Rangers and later Digimon, so I'm shocked and rather sad to see them go this way. I always felt like Saban's dubs were of much higher quality than most other companies that localized children's anime like Nelvana and 4Kids. With Digimon, Saban at least kept the basic overall plot of the show, they never skipped any episodes, they kept the Japanese locations of the series in tact, and Saban was never afraid to show some darker and more serious content in the Digmon dub, especially in the dub of Digimon Tamers. I also think Saban always had good voice artists that fit the characters well and always put a lot of emotion into their roles. Even when I didn't always agree with all their choices or when they made some more severe localization changes like with Glitter Force, Saban still always had good voice acting for their dubs which is something I've always respected Saban for. It's also just sad when any anime company has to go under and jobs are lost and I hope their employees will be able to work elsewhere. And let's not forget Saban gave us the genius that was the dub of Samurai Pizza Cats. But if Saban is going under, what's going to happen with the Netflix streams of Power Rangers and the current home video release deals with Shout Factory, both for Power Rangers and Super Sentai?
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Stuart Smith
 Posts: 1298 |
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The only brand they had success with was Power Rangers. Kamen Rider, Ultraman, Metal Heroes, and anything else they brought over was met with failure and only lasted one or two seasons. Even with Power Rangers only the first series had any kind of cultural impact, and all the series after it has gotten mostly ignored to the point every movie, comic, merchandise, and other supplemental media has to be about the first series. They definitely managed to capture lightning in a bottle once, but that was over 20 years ago and they've failed to do it again with anything else. One might be able to even make the argument it hurt the image, because the brand will forever be known for, and expected to be about, Jason, Tommy and the other original members, leaving people who actually liked the later series to forever be ignored and in the shadows. I can't speak for anyone else, but I've had more success getting people into toku thanks to the rise of streaming platforms and Japanese media being more mainstream and accessible to people. For example, I've had a lot of success getting people into Gokaiger by comparing it to One Piece, and currently, I've seen a lot of people get into Lupinranger VS Patranger due to it's similarities to Persona 5. The crossover event with Final Fantasy 14 got a few of my guildmates into Garo, and I suspect the two anime adaptions of that franchise also helped people check out the Garo franchise as well. In short, I think there's plenty of other factors to contribute to the rise of toku fandom in the west than Saban's show from the early 90s, at least as far as younger, current fans are concerned. -Stuart Smith |
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Primus
 Posts: 2761 Location: Toronto |
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Unless you mean Haim himself, Saban Brands didn't outlive 4Kids. They were founded in 2010. 4Kids launched as Leisure Concepts in 1970, rebranded to 4Kids Entertainment in 1995. The company liquidated all of its major assets in 2012 and rebranded again to 4Licensing before shutting down in 2017. You might be confusing Saban Brands with Saban Entertainment, who operated FOX Kids and launched Power Rangers. They started in 1980 and were bought out by Disney in 2002. Saban Brands was Haim starting a new company to get back into children's entertainment. Outside of Power Rangers, nothing worked. I'm guessing the movie flopping last year encouraged him to get out while he could get a nice price.
Probably nothing. Hasbro has likely inherited all of Saban Brands' existing contracts and already works with both of those companies anyway. |
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MarshalBanana
 Posts: 5316 |
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I never cared much for their dub of Sailor Moon, but I do think their dub of Digimon was legitimately good.
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loveliver
Posts: 154 |
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That edited dub of Sailor Moon was done by DiC. |
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GeorgeC
Posts: 795 |
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Saban had nothing to do with the dub of Sailor Moon in the 1990s. That was DiC, the Canadian animation company behind Inspector Gadget. The third batch of Sailor Moon episodes (including Sailor Moon S and Sailor Moon SS) were dubbed by another company (Clover?) along with the Sailor Moon movies. None of the original dub efforts are being re-released by the current Viz Video Sailor Moon license which is instead doing a second, newer English dub which is allegedly more faithful.
Saban helped produce an awful Sailor Moon proposal which didn't use any of the Japanese footage. It was a mix of live-action with very generic animation that had none of Takeuchi's style. There's more about it here => http://sailormoondub.wikia.com/wiki/Sailor_Moon_(Toon_Makers) The leaked footage is easy to find on YouTube. It was a BAD idea. For all the flack the DiC dub gets -- it has its good points, it has its bad points --, it at least kept the general storylines and animation from the Japanese series. Saban's Sailor Moon would have done away with the Japanese footage altogether and been an even more sanitized series than the DiC and Clover dubs were. Sailor Moon would have died in the West for longer than it did had the Saban idea gone forward. SM had a second coming on Cartoon Network in the early 2000s and was very popular for a while then. |
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Primus
Posts: 2761 Location: Toronto |
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DiC is actually from France (later relocated to Los Angeles, IIRC), not Canada. Their assets were bought by a Canadian company, but that was in the 2000s, well after Sailor Moon. The company behind the later Sailor Moon production was Cloverway, who at the time was Toei's international licensing agent.
Saban is often incorrectly attributed to that live action hybrid Sailor Moon project. They had nothing to do with it. It was a pitch from a studio in LA called Toonmakers |
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Just Passing Through
Posts: 276 |
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Saban always meant Ox Tales to me. I loved that show. Shame it never got a complete English release. Apparently it's been redubbed by its new licensor. That original dub was a classic!
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AsuraTheDestructor
Posts: 466 |
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It wouldn't surprise me if their failure with the Precure franchise via Glitter Force might have helped contribute to this.
Well, at the very least, if toei plans to try again with the franchise, they'll go for someone else, like Viz Media instead. |
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Lynx Amali
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I'd hope they'd handle it internally again like they did with the OG show. The big issue with the OG show was that they didn't release it on DVD or anything like that so unless you watched it as it was airing, you basically missed out. They could pull something like how Netflix had the streaming rights to Sidonia with Sentai getting home video though. The Futari Wa dub was really damn good, especially considering a lot of the main VAs were relatively unknown. It was uncut too, unlike the Glitter Force dubs, and ran through everything, not skipping any of the episodes iirc. There was name changes ( but nothing in the plot/narrative was outright changed) like Nagisa becoming Natalie and Honoka becoming Hannah and some cultural jokes that got shifted but it was pretty decent overall. |
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4426 |
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I figured this was coming when I saw that they sold the rights to Power Rangers. That is the only thing they seemed to have going, and even then, it was the first series from decades ago that got the lion's share of attention.
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TheOtakuX
 Posts: 344 Location: Wooster, Ohio |
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[quote="GeorgeC"]
Saban helped produce an awful Sailor Moon proposal which didn't use any of the Japanese footage. It was a mix of live-action with very generic animation that had none of Takeuchi's style. There's more about it here => http://sailormoondub.wikia.com/wiki/Sailor_Moon_(Toon_Makers) The leaked footage is easy to find on YouTube.[/quote] Saban had nothing to do with that. Even the page you link specified that people often mistakenly credit Saban with it even though it was by a different company entirely. |
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Sailor Sedna
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While I am glad they brought over stuff like Power Rangers and such here to America, I say GOOD. They screwed up Power Rangers and literally took a dump on the franchise with Megaforce/Super Megaforce, Ninja Steel, (Dino Charge's first season is good/great though) and even nearly tried to write Mighty Morphin' and Dino Thunder out of continuity, only focusing on toy sales, even going so far as to flag people who criticized the show with copyright claims (at least they didn't go all Daddy Derek Savage and try to impersonate lawyer firms), plus you got that arrogant prick Jonathon Tzachor trying to claim the Disney seasons as non-canon, which pretty much showed Saban thought the Disney seasons sucked and they could do better. There's a reason Pride and Greed are two of the Seven Deadly Sins, and they bit them in the ass.
Ninja Steel is a pure example of how it fails as a Power Rangers season; there's no ninja lore or settings mostly throughout (unlike Ninja Storm), you don't get the emphasis you're watching a Power Rangers series at all, the comedy fails (though it's not the actors' faults), the villains are utterly incompetent, if you took out the costumes/suits (the Ninja Steel/Ninninger ones don't even look that impressive), ninja elements, and concept of Rangers thing and replaced it with a fairy tale setting or a generic cop one like Law and Order, Major Crimes and Blue Bloods, it would be cheap, useless crap that no one would even pay attention too, Saban Brands knew anyone would eat up any crappy show as long as it looked somewhat like Power Rangers. I hope maybe for the Precure thing, we'll maybe get the Futari wa to Suite Precure seasons, the movies (wonder if Hasbro also will release the remaining Sentai series and the Sentai movies) and finally release Smile Precure as it was meant to be, I can't even look up "Smile Precure" on Wikipedia without that stupid "Glitter Force" thing popping up. |
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