Creator / Spacetoon

Turning Arabs into weebs since 2000

Spacetoon (Arabic: سبيستون or سبيس تون) is an Arabic dubbing and broadcasting channel. It is the largest distributor of anime and Western Animation in the Middle East. Though it specializes in media aimed at children, it's nightly block, Space Power, is aimed at an older demographic.

The origins of Spacetoon begin in 1999, when Bahrain signed an agreement to broadcast an animation channel aimed at children. On March 15, 2000, Spacetoon officially launched, and it has since expanded to all over the Middle East and even some non-Arab branches such as Indonesia.

Prior to Spacetoon, the two most common dubbing studios dealing with anime were Al-Sharq Al-Adnaa Studios and Al Markaz Al Arabi Studios.

Spacetoon is also affiliated with the Venus Centre (Al-Zuhra) company in Syria, which produce a good chunk of their dubs.

Consult the Wikipedia page for additional information.

Here is their site, YouTube channel, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Media broadcasted on Spacetoon

Anime (Arabic dub)

• Arabian Nights: Adventures of Sinbad
• Baby and Me
• The Beyblade franchise and it's many anime
• Black Cat
• Captain Tsubasa
• Case Closed
• The Story of Cinderella
• Doraemon (both anime series)
• Digimon Adventure
• Digimon Frontier
• Digimon Tamers
• Dragon Ball
  • Dragon Ball Z
  • The various Dragon Ball movies
• Floral Magician Mary Bell
• Fushigi Yuugi
• Hamtaro
• Hello Kitty
• Hello! Sandybell
• Himitsu no Hanazono (The Secret Garden)
• Honoo no Alpen Rose
• Hunter × Hunter
• Idol Densetsu Eriko
• Inazuma Eleven
• Jewelpet
• Kaze no Shōjo Emily
• Made in Abyss
• Magical Princess Minky Momo
• Mobile Suit Gundam Wing
• One Piece
• World Masterpiece Theater
  • The Bush Baby
  • A Dog of Flanders (1975)
  • Alps Story: My Annette
  • Ie Naki Ko Remi
  • Katri, Girl of the Meadows
  • Little Prince Cedie
  • Little Women (1987 version)
  • My Daddy Long Legs
  • Peter Pan no Bouken
  • Porphy no Nagai Tabi
  • Princess Sarah
  • Rascal the Raccoon
  • Romeo's Blue Skies
  • The Story of Pollyanna, Girl of Love
  • The Swiss Family Robinson: Flone of the Mysterious Island
  • Trapp Family Story
• Yo-kai Watch

Live-Action Series (Arabic)

• Hetty Feather

Western Animation (Arabic dub)

• Babar
• Batman: The Animated Series
• Bob the Builder
• Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood
• Fairly OddParents
• Futurama
• Garfield and Friends
• Rolie Polie Olie
• The Smurfs (1981)
• Voltron: The Third Dimension
• Zafari

Spacetoon has examples of:

• Bowdlerise:
  • Digimon had to rewrite Digimon Adventure and Digimon Adventure 02 to comply with Bowdlerisation standards in the Arab world: To get past some extremely strict media regulations in a few countries Spacetoon serves, the concept of Digivolving does not exist for this dub. Instead, the higher forms of the basic Digimon are their older siblings who live in an unseen base and "switch out" with their younger ones to fight evil. Also, in Tamers, the symbol on Calumon's head is digitally removed. Their reason? Because it looked too much like the Star of David.
  • Fairly OddParents: Chip Skylark's song "My Shiny Teeth and Me" featured a tooth with a female face, eyelashes and lipstick and all. In the Arabic dub this was cut. Not many people noticed this until a Twitter account called OutOfContxtDubs posted the Arabic song, with many Twitter users asking why the female tooth was removed, and being explained about the Values Dissonance of the Middle East when it comes to female depictions.
  • Yo-kai Watch: The Spacetoon dub is edited to give Katie blue leggings, and any instance of the character Sproink was edited out.
• Digital Bikini:
  • Spacetoon's airings of the My Little Pony: Equestria Girls series hide any part of an outfit where skin is showing and colors it to look like either patches or leggings.
  • My Hero Academia: Bubble Girl's boobs were censored in the Arabic dub.
• Spock Speak: Imported media such as Disney movies and anime aired on Spacetoon is dubbed in Standard Arabic for the sake of being able to be understood by a wide audience, but some viewers may point out how it makes the characters sound like Al Jazeera newsreaders.
• We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties: Early on in its history, Spacetoon, had a call-in program named Conan on Air, wherein Amal Saad Al-Din, the Arabic voice of Conan Edogawa, would answer viewer's calls in-character. However, the popularity caused troubles for the telephone network the show was connected to, and thus on the show's final airing Spacetoon aired a notice saying the show had to be taken off the air due to technical problems.