PokeMaster Justin said:
And to the person who said the penny thing wasn't complaigned on, it was, to a very high degree about nothing keeping the culture...this is Pokemon not Pocket Monsters. I personally like when a show is localized keeping the oringal feel and spirit but trying to draw in the audience of target crowd as well.
Show me an example of this, outside of Dogasu commenting that it was changed on his site. Bear in mind that this was EARLY KANTO, aka "ten years ago".
The orignal music isn't kept? so what.
Do you have any ****ing clue how hard it is to play a piece of music to BGM standards of perfection? It takes a
lot of TIME and EFFORT. Then 4Kids replaces it with the same 5 tracks of synthesized crap. If I were one of the people who had played the original music, I would feel HIGHLY offended. It's not like the intros, which are 0.1% of the show. The background music is pervasive, and there's actually (gasp)SILENCE in the original. I have no CLUE what 4Kids has against silence, but sometimes a lack of music is just as good as the prescence of music. I might actually consider listening to the full versions of the original music on their own, but the dub music is just too...dull...for me to consider the same with it. I can tolerate the music, but it's not something I'd prefer over most other things.
I love when you guys say Kenji doesn't need to be changed, but I personally like reading things in English on the screen and I believe when a series gets dubbed that it should do everything that it can to localize to the country be it America, Mexico, Italy what have you.
As for localization...that's another way of saying "your culture's not good enough, so we're changing it to get more viewers", IMO. And really, do the kiddies CARE if the heroes are eating a hamburger or an onigiri? I doubt so. Wasted effort. Having other cultures noted in the show gives it a uniqueness to it that you don't find when everything's changed to be 100% PURE AMERICAN CULTURE just like everything else. I'm fascinated by other cultures. I am not fascinated with American culture because I have to live in it EVERY DAY. Bear in mind that this obsessiveness with "not letting kids know this comes from Japan"(to paraphrase Khan's words) leads to downright sloppy edits, like the infamous rolling sandwich. I'd prefer a well-drawn rice ball to a sloppily-edited sandwich, thank you very much.
If a show comes from Mexico, I'd prefer to see Mexican culture than forced American crap put in just because everything HAS to be like it is here. Same goes for Italy, Japan, France, what have you. Similarly, American culture should not be localized when our shows(and movies) are dubbed overseas. Obviously, you'll have to change SOME things that make absolutely NO sense in the dub(such as the "Mushi mushi mushi mushi mushi!"(bugx5) "Ushi?"(cow) being changed to a joke about Cowterpie)
Little kids heads will not explode if you expose them to new cultures. The little kids probably DON'T CARE. They don't care if they see kanji or taijirin(aka "those senseless squiggles that replaced kanji). As I said before, wasted effort. And you may prefer reading things in English, but...4Kids erases Japanese and replaces with with either A)Nothing or B)A picture(how old do they think we are, 2?). Not with English, usually. 4Kids erases ENGLISH text at times for no discernable reason. Also, does anyone really CARE what random signs that have no relevance to the episode say? No. So why erase them? Waste of effort. Of course, you agree that the random gibbrish is rubbish, so at least we have common ground there.
Pokemon has a better dub than some anime, true, but nowadays, most of the dubs people complain about are dubbed by(get ready for this) 4Kids. Sailor Moon's dub(which wasn't very good. Chopped to hell, sometimes for no good reason, and they had a complete inability to remember the names for Venus' attacks during one of the seasons, among other complaints. Really, did they HAVE to change it? The versions are different alright, but different=/=good. The dub's tolerable, but I doubt that the target audience would really care if most of the senseless edits were left out)
If there's no good reason to edit something(making it "American" does NOT count), DON'T EDIT IT. Little kids won't panic if they see a strange(to them) food eaten by characters in a FANTASY world. Little kids won't cry out in fear if they see kanji(which they won't understand) in place of the generic squiggles(which they won't understand). Little kids won't stop watching the show in droves if the original music is kept. Since the show IS targeted towards little kids(like it or not), why edit those things if the kids don't care either way? You're saving effort, saving money, and reducing the *****ing(warrented or not) of the older fans. I usually keep my complaints to myself unless its something MAJOR(hello there Bashou's gender change), and people really DON'T complain about the dub that much anymore. Dogasu's site is for comparisons. Which involve noticing the differences between the dub and the original. Which usually involves stating simple time cuts and such in a neutral way. Which usually DOESN'T involve complaining unless the edit is blatently stupid.
I honestly don't mind the dub, but I DO mind when people ***** about other people's *****ing for no good reason. It seems to me that you're blowing this out of proportion. I honestly don't see that much complaining about the 4Kids dub(of course, stuff like Dub Piece have reminded us that it COULD be much worse), and what complaining I do see is usually about something excessively stupid. The music is the most common complaint I see, and well...you (hopefully) read my position on that(coming straight from someone who's been in some form of orchestra since fourth grade, no less). It's not the little things like time cuts or name changes(aside from stuff like Junichi/Jackson/Vincent, Kenta/Yoshi/Jimmy, and Marina/Dani/Marina's name differences within the dub) that bother people.
In short, the dub's decent but there's a lot of useless editing involved with it. Most dubs nowadays don't change the background music, character names(aside from westernizing the name order, which is understandable(since that actually CAN be confusing for people not familiar with the last-name-first name order) and not really a change), Japanese text, etc. 4Kids seems to be the only noticable holdout on that, and THAT'S why these edits irritate me. This overediting seems to belong more to the dubbed anime of the days of Sailor Moon and earlier DBZ than to now. Anime like Zatch Bell and Naruto have been successful without this much editing, so why can't Pokemon?
At the end of the day, people who harp on dubs as if anything that's not 100% the same as the original is worthless trash annoy me just as much as the people who assume that any complaints about the dub mean that you're a nitpicky elitist whose opinion doesn't matter, so yes, your kind of people who assume that the dub can do no wrong piss me off just as much as the people who assume that any form of dubbing beyond translation is descecration of something sacred(to be redundant about the matter. It's just THAT annoying!). Avoid being either kind of person and you're that much more likely to stay on my good side.
(end counter-rant)
