Trivia / B't X

• All-Star Cast: Heavily branded as "Masami Kurumada's 20th Anniversary Work" and "The Major Anime Adaptation of a Kurumada work after Saint Seiya." Based on The '90s stand-point, the Japanese casting was really big. Even the veteran voice actors of the time were considered renowned to the Japanese public.
• Dueling Dubs: The series has two English dubs. One was produced in 2006 by the short-lived Illumitoon covering episodes 1-14, but they went under before they could continue. Anime Midstream later rescued the series and gave it a new dub in 2018 in association with Sound Cadence Studios, currently covering the entire series. Both dubs were recorded in Dallas, TX with many of the same actors (commonly associated with Funimation) in different roles. Eric Vale voices Teppei in both dubs.
• Executive Meddling: During the turn into The '90s, Kurumada fell out with Shonen Jump with his Saint Seiya series, prompting it's cancellation. Leading him to leave Shueisha for a different publisher who would be willing to give him his creative freedom in developing a new story to catch some fresh air. Hence the birth of B't X through Shonen Ace of Kadokawa Shoten. The rest of his Saint Seiya franchise was adopted by Akita Shoten's Weekly Shonen Champion and Champion Red magazine.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • One of the rare cases for domestic Japan. Japan released both TV and OVA in full VHS and VCD formats. But as the DVD wave poured in, they failed to release the DVD version of B't X NEO, and the fight for Japan's limited-released TV Box set in DVD is bloody, HARD.◊ Therefore, most domestic Japanese fans have to crawl their way finding episodes online, or owning the French version of B't X, which released the complete TV and OVA set in one DVD box (with affordable pricing).
  • The original 2006 English dub, which covered episodes 1-14. Only 8 episodes were released to DVD from Westlake Entertainment, and the releases are now out-of-print. Episodes 9-14 aired exclusively on The Anime Network, and are even harder to find.
  • The late 1990s Tagalog dub of B't X from ABS-CBN in the Philippines has yet to reappear online. If it has any VHS recordings of the time, they're few and far between. There aren't even any re-dubs of the series in the 2000s to allow for modern YouTube uploads, unlike with Magic Knight Rayearth and Kishin Douji Zenki. So online, the only proof of the 1990s dub's existence is a clip of the Tagalog opening or nostalgic forum discussions.
• Role Reprise: It's pretty clear that Nobuyuki Hiyama, Keiji Fujiwara, and most of the main cast came back in the pachinko for their respective roles. But unfortunately Megumi Ogata (Karen) and Kenyū Horiuchi (Metal Face) failed to come back for their roles.
• Screwed by the Network: TMS Entertainment were one of the many victims that were caught in the Executive Meddling of their hosted TV stations. Japanese TV stations at the time, particularly TBS (who produced B't X) and Fuji TV were desparate for ratings and were aggressively stuffing more TV programs within their channels in attempt to fish up their floundering viewership due to the rise of The Internet, and made the move to frequently, and forcibly shift around their existing programs to either death slots, or cutting air time, especially to programs they determined to be flying low in ratings. TMS started two projects with TBS at that time, one was B't X, and the other was Case Closed; which the latter was spared due to it airing on Nippon TV instead. The TMS department that was working on B't X originally planned to weather out their Overtook the Manga period by pacing filler arcs within their planned one year (roughly 50 episodes) run. But their producers didn't give a damn about "slow brewing a product," and threw them the cut-time red card on short notice, hence, the anime was forced cut on the half year (25 episode) mark, right where Canon Foreigner B't Shadow X was introduced. Which was why the latter half of the TV episodes were off paced, redrawn, and scrambled into ending, much to TMS' chagrin. Kurumada proceeded in saving Shadow X to save both the anime adaptation, and his work as a whole.

---