Koyuki's extra-long rendition of "I've Got A Feeling" Dying Breed's "Fifty Cent Wisdom"note It's a common mistake among viewers, as the most prominent line in the song is indeed "I've got a feeling/in my head", but none of the other lyrics match the Beatles' song. (not related in any way to Real Life artist 50 Cent), in which the other band members join him one by one until Beck is completely reassembled, if only for their gig at Greatful Sound.
In the original Japanese broadcast and in the manga, he does in fact sing "I've Got a Feeling". It had to be changed outside Japan because Funimation could never even hope to afford rights to a Beatles song.note They actually did ask out of curiosity; Apple Corp's asking price was over twice the cost of the entire Beck license. Similarly, the voice actors weren't allowed to mention the original song by name in the commentary, though they made it as obvious as they could.
Then there's the part near the end of the manga where the band performs "Devil's Way".
And the part in the final chapter of the manga where a typhoon causes all the electrical equipment at Beck's concert in Greatful Sound 9 to short-circuit mid-song, but the crowd just keeps on singing the song by heart.
Funimation's English dub, full stop. This is one of the purest examples of Doing It for the Art in all of anime.
How much so? They brought in a director from LA (Taliesin Jaffe, who dubbed Hellsing) because they didn't care where quality came from so long as they got it, hired actors who were trained singers and professional musicians because they wanted authenticity, and even found series-accurate instruments to re-record all the songs because the music-and-effects track wasn't always up to snuff.
That attention to detail even extends into the scripting, where how people's names are pronounced is a cue-in to how influenced by foreign things a character is. Also, they somehow managed to successfully write around the original's Language Barrier plot point – some characters only speak Japanese, some are bilingual, some only speak English (well that's what the J-dub tried to do at any rate), accomplished in Tokyopop's translation via fonts – by making it a culture clash instead.
They put so much effort into a show that, frankly, bombed for them. And the reason for its poor sales is due almost entirely to circumstances outside their control. See that entry above about replacing a Beatles song with Dying Breed? Well, all the people who watched via fansub held back from buying any of the DVD's until they knew whether or not that song would be retained on the Japanese track for episode 23 – everyone already assumed it would be replaced in the dub. When the final volume came out and that song was indeed replaced for both tracks, those same "fans" angrily cried censorship and boycotted it.
