4Kids Entertainment

"We can't bothered with three syllables, are you crazy?"

That joke was funny! I LOL'd!

But I really hate this "Well, the original name was stupid too, so..."way of thinking. If you feel the original name was so stupid, then why not just make your OWN cartoon and name it with the most Awesome Mc Cool Name you can think of instead of dubbing a cartoon and showing so little respect for it that you changed its very name because it was OH SO STUPID.

Weirdly,I am pro-changing Character Names. But only because stuff like Nagisa Misumi was in injoke that would be lost if it was kept for a foreign audience. Natalie Blackstone is an acceptable alternative that keeps the injoke.

I also dont like this "I liked this heavy rewrite of Oda's Vision".Im always fine with toning down some violence to allow shows to air on TV. But its Oda's vision, not yours. You shouldnt be the one who gets the final say in what goes. Ogodei.

Toning violence down is one thing. Trying to pretty much deny the existence of violence is another for me. 4Kids' One Piece's dub was flat out pathetic that way.

4kids One Piece failed in every conceivable level, no need to remind me.

I also liked 4kids' tendency to invent A Fate Worse Than Death to get around Never Say "Die".

Now you're just putting words in my mouth. I never said the name "Pretty Cure" was stupid; I said that it sounds equally as girly as Glitter Force.

Honestly, sometimes I think people get so worked up over crap they see what they want to see.

I remember liking Kirby: Right Back at Ya! and Sonic X when I was younger. But nowadays, I kinda see how people thought Chris was obnoxious and now I can't help but think that Tiff looked really constipated often. (Is it even ok to say stuff like that?)

TMNT 2003 was what got me into TMNT in the first place.

And I even remember liking Ultimate Muscle, even though the only thing I can remember from that was this dialogue from the announcer guys (and even this is paraphrasing):

I don't suppose anyone remembers that one part?

edited 14th Mar '15 7:35:25 PM by TargetmasterJoe

Oh, and also

"If you can't pay the cash, then you're out with the trash. And you can quote me on that one. HAHAHAHAHA" - Arlong

I most certainly DONT (The caps are for emphasis) want to see people say that any anime's original name is stupid and that it should be replaced.. Im very glad you dont think so and I apologize for being so rude. Its just that people say that ALL THE TIME (Again, emphasis) and I always wanted to yell that at people who did. Im really sorry. I'd feel this way about any anime.

• Several of their theme songs are actually very good, and even the ones that aren't are at least pretty catchy.
• Their Pokemon and Yu Gi Oh dubs were good and played a huge part in making those franchises popular in the States.
• Their Yu Gi Oh GX dub was good, in part due to clear inspiration from Yu Gi Oh The Abridged Series
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2003 was very good, in part because it was somehow allowed to get away with the dark shit that got censored out of the anime dubs.
• They served as a platform for a lot of talented V As, such as Dan Green and Mike Pollock.
• They ultimately single-handedly preserved the Saturday-Morning Cartoon through the 2000s.

Don't get me wrong, they fully deserve a lot of the shit that gets thrown on them. But they did still do some things right.

I have to be honest. They may have kept Saturday morning cartoons going through the 2000s, but it was after one of their shows pretty much dealt the finishing blow to the tradition.

To this day, I can not get the Tokyo Mew Mew dub's theme out of my head. And at times, it makes tears swell up because it was so beautifully catchy. DON'T JUDGE ME! >:(

I actually have nothing against their opening themes. Its the within-episode dubbing quality Im against. If they had done what they did with Pokemon, as in making a new opening theme but kept everything else as faithful as posible, including the Japanese OST they could have been BIG. Seriously, TOKYO MEW MEW and ONE PIECE in the same block. That should have been EPIC. It REALLY took a lot of effort to ruin them the way they did. And dont tell me they had to edit it as much as they did. They definitely could have used less moronic work around the edits.

As much as I disagree with Ogodei over Kuina's 4kids Dub Fate, it showed that they were willing to get away with pretty heavy stuff. But,you know, not actually BEING DAMN FAITHFUL TO THE FRICKING ORIGINAL SCRIPT. If they felt falling down the stairs was too sad, why didnt they have her die from an illness. Usopp's mom died from an illness in the 4kids dub. Why couldnt Kuina? Why just make Bellemere's death more ambigous and less moronic. John Semper's Spiderman The Animated Series on Fox Kids had an IRON FIST censor that thought the word "Sinister" was TOO EVIL. It still had great great use of the Death By Backstory trope with Jonah Jameson and The Punisher(Namely they got gunned down, just like Bellemere) without being too gory. And it was on the same Network.

The worst part is that in their final years, THEY FINALLY realized that they had the most Crazy Awesome potential in a Kids Anime Block. They FINALLY realized that fans hated the heavy edits. They actually were in talks to get anime from Viz and other major anime licensors and they were putting it all on TV!

Then the FUCKING LAWSUIT came and ruined everything. Im still bitter.

And yes, the edits on Toonzai/Vortexx were light in a weird Fair for Its Day way. DBZ Kai fans may whine endlessly about sparkles/LAZER BULLETS and Blue Popo. But they also got away with stuff 4Kids never allowed before. Even VEGETA got to die on Toonzai WITH HIS ORIGINAL speech as intact as Saturday Morning allowed. They removed his burial. Even more, Vegeta even gloated about all the Namekians he killed. Namekians that never got wished back to life because the Good Guys wished all the people Frieza killed which ruled out the ones killed by Vegeta. And Vortexx got even better with Trunks killing Frieza and his father. With SPARKLES but still.

yohoho he took a bite of gum gum!

If you look at their YGO work as a gag dub, maybe.

However as a good depiction of YGO...not really. they made several moronic edits, changed numerous plot points that ended up being way sillier, made the motivations of most villains either more outright evil (eliminating depth from them) or stupider, like pegasus wanting to combine ancient egyptian magic with technology to somehow bring his wife back (which is dumb), instead of creating a lifelike hologram which makes a lot more sense and is much more human and tragic.

oh, and while some of their dub songs were cool, the original soundtrack to the show is better.

the only reason people say it's good is because it led to YGO Abridged, which is enjoyable sure, but the reason it's funny is because it's pointing out not only how silly YGO in general is, but how bad the 4kids dub was specifically.

edited 18th Mar '15 6:31:23 AM by wehrmacht

Yu-Gi-Oh to me, was camp and ridiculous enough that the changes though not terribly faithful didn't effect the entertainment value much. It's so silly to begin with even 4Kids lampshaded things constantly. Intended or not, the Shadow Realm made villains more threatening and dangerous because of higher stakes, rather than hilariously violent deathtraps. I've seen it subbed and the hammier villains just make it more fun to watch, at least for me, having a somewhat sympathetic rogues gallery and more serious plot just leaves it as another generic merchandise-fueled anime.

One thing that got not just silly but nonsensical was Marik and Bakura agreeing to gather McGuffins for each other so they could both achieve their goals. Despite both of them having the goal of "gain unlimited power and take over the world", and both of them needing the Millenium Puzzle to do it.

In the original Marik just wanted revenge on the Pharaoh for his apparent role in his parents' deaths.

that's something 4kids did pretty often, changing the villains' motivations to be either sillier or more stereotypically evil, making them much less interesting. this was pretty much the entire reason why the dub of the first pokemon movie was awful, because mewtwo's inner existential struggles were essentially carrying the entire film. that and they shoehorned a "fighting is bad" aesop into the movie for whatever reason, which was completely unnecessary and kinda dumb.

The Shadow Realm is a frightening concept but to be frank I really preferred the original's simplicity and felt that the idea just over-complicated matters. I agree that the death-traps are a bit frightening and grim for western kids' shows standards, but i think that it's here that we find the fundamental problem with 4kids' dubbing policies.

Japan has very different standards regarding what's acceptable for pre-teen and young teenage children than the west does. most battle shounen, meant for children, have content that simply can't be in the average kids' show in the west without parents getting up in arms. as such 4kids had to make massive changes to a lot of their shows to the point where some of them feel very different in spirit from the original, and most of the time the shows ended up worse for it. you'll notice modern anime distributors avoid this by simply marketing battle shounen to older audiences in the west alongside the legitimate adult series like Cowboy Bebop, Wolf's Rain, etc.

edited 18th Mar '15 6:22:50 PM by wehrmacht

I actually like that mini-plot point. They have completely different goals. Regular Marik was only interested in revenge, not taking over the world. Bakura wanted the opposite.

This make Marik severely less generic and more interesting. I've found the dub plot points to be really good in general. Made them honestly feel like real characters and not just generic doomsday villains. We still have them, but not to a large degree in the dub. And I do vastly prefer the Shadow Realm. It's significantly more interesting to me than just death games. Those are a dime a dozen. Here, we have mind games and mind rape, which is severely worse. Having your soul trapped for eternity is way worse than simply losing your life and moving on to a more normal "heaven" of sorts. It'd be nice if they actually went slightly into what the afterlife was like, if there was one. And even then, being trapped forever in somewhere where you're tortured is pretty much worse than simply not existing to some. YMMV, of course. Both are pretty horrid in their own right, let's just say.

I really don't think the Shadow Realm was anything less than a pretty terrible place in the long run, and was very dark in its own right(no pun intended). As for Pegasus' motivations, I thought those were really good. It got better when he essentially became a more heroic person down the line, actually attempting to help Yugi here and there, even coming back in GX as a non-evil person entirely. Heck, the Paradox Brothers' return in GX was interesting too. Apparently they got out of the evil business along with Pegasus and are still employed. Then again, we only saw 2 different Eliminators anyway. Panik and them. Panik got mind crushed, so... who else would Pegasus have at the time? Besides new guys, which he clearly got when he outright hired Chumley.

Amusingly Pegasus surviving was something that the anime added so they could keep using him. in the manga bakura just flat out KILLS him in a pretty gruesome fashion by ripping the millenium eye out of his socket. understandably even the original anime didn't think they should do that.

i'll give 4kids some credit that a couple of their changes were actually for the better.

1. yugi's conflict with mai in the original was kind of underwhelming; basically atem wasn't taking her seriously at all and that was the reason he was losing. in the dub he and yugi are in conflict because atem was so determined to help yugi that kaiba almost died in the process.

2. some of their localization changes are actually pretty decent. "relinquished" is a pretty good localization of "Sacrifice", for one. "Black Luster Soldier" also sounds a bit spiffier than "Chaos Soldier", which is still cool, but doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

edited 18th Mar '15 6:32:47 PM by wehrmacht

That also saved Bandit Keith, anime only and all. Unfortunately they didn't do anything much with him except make him a mind slave to Marik for a small bit, then he never showed up again. It's too bad, since he was a really good foil to Joey overall. Albeit, Joey got more rivals here and there, so it wasn't as bad during later seasons. I feel the fact Bandit Keith was also similar(being a ruffian and all) to Joey made him a really good polar opposite that most of Joey's rivals just didn't cut it. Or was one season only due to the Waking the Dragons Arc. Joey didn't have a main rival since then. At least one that was a foil or of a similar archtype as himself. It even helped that Keith had his own set of cronies. It was nice to see that Keith's team moved on as is, although they proved to still be jerks during Battle City regardless. Sad part is, if they bothered to win, they might've gotten far better decks.

The voice acting.

In my opinion, 4kids was top-notch when it came to voice acting. The dubs where they did the least "damage" like Kirby and Pokemon are actually excellent dubs.

Also, I love 4kids for being something the entire anime fandom could all make fun of. If we never had 4kids, we would never have Casey And Friends... Hell, half the jokes in Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged would be gone without 4kids. Now that they're gone, it's difficult to find a resident chew toy.

edited 18th Mar '15 11:33:23 PM by ninjamitsuki2

...Sentai?

Except Sentai is well loved for some dark stories alongside the light hearted stuff.

Kamen Rider Moreso, and Garo being for adults entirely.

He meant Sentai Filmworks, the anime licensor, not the Sentai genre.