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How bad do you think the 4Kids pokemon dub is?

What do you think of the 4Kids dub?


  • Total voters
    31
  • Poll closed .

CyberCubed

Yeah, ok!
It was pretty good as a whole. The only major screw ups were select movies and how poorly Chronicles was dubbed.

Aside from that, the main series was fine aside from some music replacement and some minor edits. Oh, and Lisa Ortiz voicing so many female filler characters really got grating since Johto.

8/10 overall for the main series, all it needed was more of the Japanese soundtrack and less edits that nobody cares about to begin with.

Chronicles gets 5/10 for cutting out major scenes, forgetting characters names, and altering the plot a great degree. Only a few of these faired well in the dubbing process.
 

Ashy Boy

Paul's #1 Rival
The 4kids dub was great, even though it wasn't always perfect. I wonder how the PUSA version will do.
 
I loved the dub in Kanto and the Orange Islands, but all other seasons were just bland to me, and the chronicles were just plain terrible. I mean, his name was Jackson! Would it have been too much trouble to leave his name alone? And they did with a couple of other characters that I forget.
 

DreamChasing Windie

*hums Zelda tune*
^ "Vincent". XD Yeah, that was bad...
Well, we can all be relieved that the Pokemon dub isn't as bad as the One Piece one... then again, Pokemon has different concepts than One Piece does.
 
you gotta be a japanese fanatic if you say the dub sucks, because it's actually really good compared to some **** out there.
 
I'd say it's very bad after watching a few raw eppies, and I'm a picky turd. :)

But I've seen much worse dubs, and save the banned eppies and Chronicles, the Pokémon dub has satisfied me quite a lot. Shame they had to ruin such a good job by killing off the overall feeling provided by the BG music, lack of it and such. Plus, the mexican dub abused Team Rocket and made them best comic relief ever. So... :D

The american dub is very bleah, but well done. The mexican dub is awesome. ;)

[IMG139]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v723/Orion8166/chibiakane.png[/IMG139]~Orion-Sama

Edit: Boo censorship. :(
 

Yamato-san

I own the 5th gen
I'd say the quality of the dub varies. In the beginning, it was pretty good, with understandable edits (though, sometimes lazy, blank signs for example). In Jouto... well, the saga was already friggin' dull enough as it is, but 4kids went and made it worse by replacing more of the original music and using repetitive voices for the filler characters, particularly Lisa Ortiz and her lack of efforts in distinguishing between the vast majority of female one-shots (I'm currently watching Jouto episodes in Japanese, and while it still sucks, I personally find the episodes a LOT more tolerable to sit through than the English dub episodes were). Although, in terms of faithfulness to the original, Jouto seems to have had few paint edits due to the Japanese text being abolished (and 4kids didn't go on some crazy binge to erase any writing whatsoever), with the only major problem being the music changes. But really, in the end, the Japanese version is dull, the dub version's dull (a touch duller), I'd say 4kids didn't do too bad.

Now we get to Houen... the Japanese version greatly improved from Jouto, but the dub was just god awful, replacing even more of the music than they did in Jouto (and given that this crappy, unmemorable crap has been heard for the past 6 years, making it overly redundant now), plus 4kids falling into a deeper abyss of treating their best dub as crappy as their other dubs by making several pointless edits. They got a bit lax with the voice acting, as well. I mean, watch this clip and compare Miki Shin'ichirou's performance as Kojirou to Eric Stuart's as James, chances are, you'll notice a major difference. And I haven't watched any Chronicles episodes, but from what I hear, they're pretty friggin' awful.

It's remarkable, really. 4kids said they treated the early episodes with the utmost care when they were barely starting with the anime business... over time, they gained more influence, gained more anime licenses and.... they went friggin' mad with power, thinking they could screw their customers over all the time, never listen to them, and it wouldn't matter because they'll always have an audience, and they can throw money away to do so (useless paint edits, releasing cut DVDs and immediately discontinuing uncut DVDs with a bulls*** excuse). You know, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Al Kahn used thousand-dollar bills to wipe his ass and light cigars. In the end, they go and demand Nintendo for more money (either because they're greedy, or their loss of profits is finally brought to attention), and they pretty much screw themselves. Serves 'em right, I say. XD
 

Chris

Old Coot
Now if only Toei could pull One Piece away from them. >__>

The dub's not great, but it's not bad compared to their other messes. Movie 1 and Chronicles are another story, though. God awful. I prefered the Kanto dub more than the rest of the series' dub.

So far, I'm liking the TAJ Productions/PUSA dub.
 

Jesse GS the II

I was frozen today!
I'd say the quality of the dub varies. In the beginning, it was pretty good, with understandable edits (though, sometimes lazy, blank signs for example). In Jouto... well, the saga was already friggin' dull enough as it is, but 4kids went and made it worse by replacing more of the original music and using repetitive voices for the filler characters, particularly Lisa Ortiz and her lack of efforts in distinguishing between the vast majority of female one-shots (I'm currently watching Jouto episodes in Japanese, and while it still sucks, I personally find the episodes a LOT more tolerable to sit through than the English dub episodes were). Although, in terms of faithfulness to the original, Jouto seems to have had few paint edits due to the Japanese text being abolished (and 4kids didn't go on some crazy binge to erase any writing whatsoever), with the only major problem being the music changes. But really, in the end, the Japanese version is dull, the dub version's dull (a touch duller), I'd say 4kids didn't do too bad.

Now we get to Houen... the Japanese version greatly improved from Jouto, but the dub was just god awful, replacing even more of the music than they did in Jouto (and given that this crappy, unmemorable crap has been heard for the past 6 years, making it overly redundant now), plus 4kids falling into a deeper abyss of treating their best dub as crappy as their other dubs by making several pointless edits. They got a bit lax with the voice acting, as well. I mean, watch this clip and compare Miki Shin'ichirou's performance as Kojirou to Eric Stuart's as James, chances are, you'll notice a major difference. And I haven't watched any Chronicles episodes, but from what I hear, they're pretty friggin' awful.

It's remarkable, really. 4kids said they treated the early episodes with the utmost care when they were barely starting with the anime business... over time, they gained more influence, gained more anime licenses and.... they went friggin' mad with power, thinking they could screw their customers over all the time, never listen to them, and it wouldn't matter because they'll always have an audience, and they can throw money away to do so (useless paint edits, releasing cut DVDs and immediately discontinuing uncut DVDs with a bulls*** excuse). You know, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Al Kahn used thousand-dollar bills to wipe his ass and light cigars. In the end, they go and demand Nintendo for more money (either because they're greedy, or their loss of profits is finally brought to attention), and they pretty much screw themselves. Serves 'em right, I say. XD

You seem to have captured my thoughts pretty well here. I'm strongly against the suppression of creativity, and 4Kids has it in spades. What I've heard from PUSA sounds promising, though - they seem to realize that there's no real reason to muck around with the original version of the show.
 

Juputoru

M-m-m-m-onobear?!
It's okay. Rarely any "oh, that's GREAT dubbing!" spots, quite a few cringeworthy edits, but nothing Dub Piece-horrific. Easily 4Kids' best dub, but it's mediocre compared to most non-4Kids dubs nowadays(mostly considering dubs made to air on TV).
 

CyberCubed

Yeah, ok!
and 4Kids has it in spades. What I've heard from PUSA sounds promising, though - they seem to realize that there's no real reason to muck around with the original version of the show.

Considering,

A) They butchered the Spurt opening

B) They're making new music to replace the silence and the songs with Japanese lyrics

C) They're using the same script writer from 4kids' Seasons 5-8

D) And oldguard has already confirmed that almost all the dialouge would be tweaked to suit American audiences more...I don't see why PUSA is being glorified.

Season 9 will probably be comparable to the same dub we've always had. Only upside is more of the Japanese music, downside is the voice acting, (but I'm sure they'll get better once time has passed), and so forth.

And since it's on Cartoon Network, they won't have to deal with those annoying KidsWb execs that forced 4kids to edit things.
 

Kabuto

little punks!
A) They butchered the Spurt opening
So, they didn't want to spoil it for viewers

B) They're making new music to replace the silence and the songs with Japanese lyrics
4Kids was even worse by replacing silence AND regular music

C) They're using the same script writer from 4kids' Seasons 5-8
4Kids wiritng wasn't awful actually. All that sucked were edits, and chronicles writing

D) And oldguard has already confirmed that almost all the dialouge would be tweaked to suit American audiences more...I don't see why PUSA is being glorified.
Yeah, same with every other dub especially ones done by 4Kids

I'm not saying PUSA will do a good job, but for once we don't have to put up with the BULLSH*T 4Kids has given us for SIX YEARS.(the first two years weren't bad) No more food edits, no more ruining of the Japanese episodes, no more sh*t music, etc.
 
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Gravy

Contaminated KFC
I had very few problems with 4Kids adaption of pokémon, and I greatly enjoyed their work during the earlier seasons of the show, including the first 2 Johto blocks.

I started having (big) problems with the dub when the overall quality of the voice acting and musical score seem to drop faster than an anvil on Jupiter. People (read; Yamato-san) have already commented on points such as the likes of Eric Stuart pretty much losing the plot, and the synthesiser stuff being the equivelent of deranged chimps smashing a keyboard, so I won't delve any deeper into that.
Though I would like to point out that pokémon voices actually suffered the most in recent years. There have been very few decent ones (ie. Gulpin, Shedinja and Corphish) and an onslaught of those that are either painfully generic (Shiftry, Absol and Ludicolo) or just outright crappy (Combusken, Grovyle and...actually, the previously mentioned 'generic' ones too.) . And for the most part, I never really liked how almost EVERY dub pokémon had to say it's entire name. I know the japanese version is guilty of this too, but it's a very rare occurence and a pokémon is usually limited to a certain sylable.

Pointless paint edits and the like were beyond annoying, not only because they were unessicary, but because the majority of the time it seemed to be nothing more than a pathetic excuse to waste money. But that's showing distain towards the company itself, or at least more so than the dub, so I suppose I shouldn't rely on that as a decent enough reason.

They're all pretty minor reasons really, so...yeah. I don't have a particulary high opinion of the dub, and I don't have a low opinion of it either.
 

intergalactic platypus

Only rescues maidens
The first movie wasn't the only one butchered. The 2nd movie was full of dumbing down. They took out a lot of lines that might sound too "smart" and added lots of ridiculously blatant foreshadowing. They also took out whole scenes and such. Not as bad as the first one though...or Chronicles. I give credit to their script writer though, (s)he is really good and does well with TR
 
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