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What 4Kids Dub (or any dub) Change Did You Like That You Think Was Better Than The Sub

The Englush dub of Pokemon XYZ had a remix of the original English Kanto theme as the OP. The Japanese music wasn't bad, but it just doesnt compare to the nostalgia.
 
Chloe Sullivan said:
I recall that the US Dub of Pokemon had a few lines that could be read as Ash flirting back at Misty back in the ol' Kanto days.

I also recall that the US dub of Digimon added a bunch of Davis/Daisuke-bashing for no damned reason.

Are my recollections correct?
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Digimon owns this thread. The show had no business being good but it is my goto for localizing without exact translating. Pathetic attempts to hide shit and all. Helped they had a steller voice cast. Also that Digimon in the original is goofy as fuck and frankly, my opinion, the dub voices feel... well better. Such as pegasus armored digimon chiding about tactical advice. And the name changes followed by "this is the real thing but changed so relatable and dialogue not painful" and other stuff.

Special mention to Samurai Pizza Cats

Robotech and Voltron, of course, and other "hack jobs" that looking back were under enormous constraints but felt like acted out pieces as to the often bland stuff we ended up demanding.

Man I can't stand jp digimon personalities. They are TOO babyish and simplistic.
 
While not better Cardcaptors, in my opinion, was unfairly railed by the fan community most of which didn't watch the original anime but wanted to get righteous on its behalf. tweens having bisexual and treacher crushes? Not going to fly in their sell our crap/girl pokemania substitute. Also I feel the second season managed to find a right balance.
Basically I can see how it screwed up but the fan reaction was not helping and made me feel "this is why we can't have nice things" That this seemed to slide into the same reaction to fucking One Piece which included some bits like the Dr. K shout out and other things...
well I accept the 4kids dub was flawed but people ragged on EVERYTHING no matter what it was.

In some ways ygo's dub was a godsend as it helped to anihilate the mythic assumption of flawless japanimation unbesmirched by commercialism. Yes some heart was hacked but there is no ignoring no amount of dub work could have put that much cheese IN and by doing what they did made a deliciously camp bit with an original show that where 4kids put sanitized silly the original just put in trite horror and occultism. Thus making it clean the whole thing was DUMB but papered with tropes/elements to make it seem acceptable. punks, occultism, and visciously illogical violence in the original, pathetic censorship elsewhere.

In short the soundtrack was awesome and they embraced the sheer lunancy of everything.
 
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Low-hanging fruit, I know, but how the actual hell did we go nearly three pages of this discussion without anyone mentioning the sublime pleasure of watching Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, and Samurai Champloo in English?

There lots of little hints of of characterisation in the way each actor portrays their character and voices their lines, ambiguity that I never felt I was able to pick up while watching these shows subbed. I was always missing something, and the dub of each show clearly rectified that. It's not huge changes, perhaps, but these shows would not be as good without them.
 
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I mean if we're talking English dubs in general, I adore dubs more than the average person and can go for a long time just talking about why I like the dubbing industry in general and just gush over my favorite voice actors. But it kinda felt we were leaning towards English dubs that specifically tailor the show for kids, so I've mostly neglected the general side. I'll just say on that front that I find the process of ADR and of recasting a character with a significantly more limited pool of actors and still making them work, whether they're exactly the same or not, incredibly fascinating, and that there's some outright fantastic performances we get from the process. If given further opportunity, I can really gush for hours about dubbing and the people involved. Also the rare blooper reels are godly.

But back to the child-tailored side of dubs, I just remembered something existed. The English dub of Saint Seiya, retitled as Knights of the Zodiac, had the single most 90s intro in the history of 90s intros.

Ladies in gentlemen, this anime dub features, as its theme song, the hit song "I Ran" by Flock of Seagulls as covered by the rock band Bowling For Soup. This is a real thing that exists in our universe and it is glorious.
 
If this is going to morph into a general "Awesome Dubs" thread, my favorite dub of all time is Yu Yu Hakusho. That was Funimation back when they really took liberties with the script. (try giving semi-important characters nowadays a random accent. You'll be lynched) Yet it was also after they had gotten some experience so it wasn't this.



YYH's dub is basically the perfect blend of creativity and talent. The cast are all fantastic, the script they get to work with is natural and entertaining, and i hold it up as an example of what a battle shounen can be. It can be interesting, it can be emotional, it can feature a MC who is actually a human being that would exist in the real world and not another goddam Goku Clone like Naruto and Luffy.

Justin Cook as Yusuke Urameshi deserves all the praise forever and ever.
 
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I don't think I really dislike any 4Kids changes despite its unpopularity among certain circles online. It's often different from the original but its often interesting to see differences, and the original with various different dubs and subs has their own merits.

Chloe Sullivan said:
Didn't the original author say the English VA for dutch nailed it perfectly?

Yeah, mos def.
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I think that's partially because the Black Lagoon crew is in story made up of a lot of English speaking westerners. Even Revy is born in New York.
 
Flcl knocked it out of the park. I also really liked the incidental fact that since most of the songs started in English and switch to Japanese it helped reinforce how everyone was just going along with stuff they didn't really understand because puberty.

That and 'The Last Dinosaur' really helps set the tone for the finale, especially in that it implies things are fully off the rails.
 
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Nikkolas said:
YYH's dub is basically the perfect blend of creativity and talent. The cast are all fantastic, the script they get to work with is natural and entertaining, and i hold it up as an example of what a battle shounen can be. It can be interesting, it can be emotional, it can feature a MC who is actually a human being that would exist in the real world and not another goddam Goku Clone like Naruto and Luffy.

Justin Cook as Yusuke Urameshi deserves all the praise forever and ever.
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You know, there is some sort of universe where somehow, through luck or whatever, instead of Bleach Quests, the new hotness is YYH Quests. I mean, it'd be a tougher sell, but still.
 
One of the great tragedies of Bleach is Ichigo started out as a Yusuke clone and morphed into a particularly dull Goku clone.
 
Insufficient Dakka said:
Ichigo became Goku? I didn't get very far into Bleach, but I really wonder how they managed to pull that off.
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It's not as bad as he says. My guess is that he's saying that because Ichigo is all about protecting MY FRIENDS and constantly gets new powerups, but his personality is still pretty different from Goku. And, heck, he's ALWAYS been about protecting his friends. From the very start.
 
Yubel said:
It's not as bad as he says. My guess is that he's saying that because Ichigo is all about protecting MY FRIENDS and constantly gets new powerups, but his personality is still pretty different from Goku. And, heck, he's ALWAYS been about protecting his friends. From the very start.
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While Goku does frequently protect his friends, it's not really a source of power for him the way it is for, say, Natsu
 
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