Dear god, I absolutely
loved their version of the Pokemon dub! They put so much life and emotion into the show! I know I sound pretty stupid praising 4Kids of all companies, and people will probably want to kill me for this, but their Pokemon dub was a very fun and enjoyable show! I actually don't think it was their best dub, but this was one of their strongest efforts and it is a solid dub. A lot of my love for the Pokemon anime has died down and nearly faded away in recent years since the switch occurred. I think if they still had the dub, I would probably have enjoyed the BF season more at the very least. If anything, I would've had some amount of closure with the series if AG ended with the original dub...it just didn't feel right for the cast to change near the end of AG to me. T_T
I got used to the TPCi dub in BW, but I honestly don't think it's as good as the 4Kids dub (no offense to those who disagree). I admit that TPCi
have improved their dub over the years, and I do appreciate their lack of xenophobia and edits, but it just seems to me like they simply aren't as emotionally invested in their dub the way 4Kids was. Some of the actors still seem like they're line reading, like the newer voice for Unova Officer Jenny, and that makes things feel so artificial sometimes. There's also not that many jokes, creativity, or ingenuity in the dub anymore for the most part. I also feel 4Kids' voice actors for the main characters were very well cast, and things haven't been the same since they left to me.
What I've noticed is that what I really seem to miss from 4Kids isn't even their voice cast, so much as much as their script writing/dialogue, and I heavily prefer the way they wrote Team Rocket and Ash's dialogue to TPCi's scripts. I don't know what happened, but since the switch, there have been some incredibly...well, awful...lines given to the characters. I do remember some of the puns in the 4Kids dub made me cringe a bit, sure, but I don't remember lines like "I'm not a noob," "Whoa, she's holding a Pokeball," "Don't get technical," "Pikachu's just about to hit the wall," in Ash's case, or those odd little catchphrases TPCi gives TRio like "Dig it, jack," "lugs," "Primo Pokemon," and the
constant alliterations, rhymes, and assonance TRio spout whenever they are not serious in the dub these days. It actually makes me sad, because it seems like James Carter Cathcart was a much better script writer when he worked with Kathy Borland, as opposed to how he does with Z Pang America (ZPA). I also miss their intros: TPCi's have gone better, like their voice acting, but they are still too friendship-centric for my tastes at times. I mean, the themes felt so epic before and most of the intros nowadays don't feel like that to me (I do really like
Galactic Battles and
Adventures in Unova, though)! xD.
Really, if there was something they did right with Pokémon, it was with how the characters were handled (dialogue-wise, anyway). Team Rocket probably had some of the best script moments that weren't present, or very strong in 4KIDS' other works. Though judging from where Team Rocket ended up going in later seasons, who knows if 4KIDS would've saved them as characters.
Exactly. TRio actually sounded pretty witty and had some funny lines in the 4Kids dub at times: they had their problems, sure, but they were still pretty likeable. I've noticed Ash actually had pretty decent dialogue as well in 4Kids' dub, and I liked how sincere and childlike some of the lines they gave him seemed to make him.
