Why do English-speaking fans belittle the non-FUNimation dubs?

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Re: Why do English-speaking fans belittle the non-FUNimation dubs?

Post by 8000 Saiyan » Tue Jan 15, 2019 10:12 am

Well, they're used to what they saw first so they'll deem it as superior to what they didn't grew up with.
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Re: Why do English-speaking fans belittle the non-FUNimation dubs?

Post by Kunzait_83 » Tue Jan 15, 2019 12:22 pm

TVfan721 wrote:That's another huge exaggeration. I can name several Saturday morning cartoons in North America that were very sophisticated and had a continuous storyline. Spider-Man: The Animated Series, Sonic The Hedgehog, Batman: The Animated Series, TMNT, just to name a few.
The only title out of any of those you just named that even the most REMOTE shred of artistic merit to it is Batman: The Animated series. Calling the 90s Spider-Man and Sonic cartoons along with pretty much ANY animated incarnation of TMNT "sophisticated" is a laughably gross misuse of that word. Again, Batman notwithstanding, these shows are across the board the polar diametric opposite of anything that's within the faintest realm of "sophistication".

A specific audience of overly media-sheltered kids who came of age in the 90s cling onto most of these shows as bastions of "mature cartoons" in large part not only out of nostalgia, but also out of a stubborn and seeming pathological refusal to divorce themselves from their childhood frame of artistic reference and explore other realms of art and media that exist outside the realm of children's cartoons.

Again, with Batman: TAS as a notable exception, none of these other shows listed here were seen as "sophisticated" by virtually anyone during their time, and for very good reason: because they aren't. The idea of shows like these being quality Television that are somehow "mature and sophisticated" even a SHRED beyond their target audience is something that, apart from being just downright delusional, only came about within the past maybe 15 years or so... and largely by the people who grew up with them and haven't really moved on very much past shows of this ilk. Again, Batman: TAS was the ONLY one of these that had ANY remote actual critical clout back in the day. The others? NO ONE outside their target demographic gave the slightest iota of a flying fuck about them: rightly so.

Spider-Man: TAS was a poorly animated, absurdly over-censored, hamfistedly-scripted bastardization of the Marvel Comics source material (for that matter, so was the X-Men cartoons series: and I say that as someone who is as die-hard a lifelong X-Men fan as you'll ever come across).

The Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon (assuming you mean the ludicrously over-praised SATAM series: the fact that I now even know what that acronym stands for is something that I accept as a sad indictment of both internet "nerd culture" as its existed throughout the 2000s and 2010s as well as my remarkably poor life decision in still remaining as plugged into it as I've been) is without a single shred of redeeming quality.

SATAM is simply another unwatchably lame tie-in cartoon to a popular 90s kids' property that has maintained a terrifyingly over-obsessive fanbase of socially impaired weirdos who act like a children's cartoon that has even the FLIMSIEST shred of faux-edge to it is somehow artistically revolutionary: and alongside its accompanying Archie comic series, its also ground-zero for everything that's long been notoriously dysfunctional and horrifying about Sonic the Hedgehog fandom prior to even the Adventure games.

And lord help you if you're referring to the 1980s TMNT cartoon (which literally has ONLY nostalgia going for it in terms of why ANYONE still remembers its existence today, and stands as just raw audio-visual water torture). Even the later 4Kids version, while obviously LEAGUES better than its predecessor... being leagues better than THAT atrocity is in NO way a high bar for ANYTHING to clear. As it stands, its mostly just another generic early 2000s kids cartoon, and another (of about a zillion) pale and hollow shadow of a classic indie comic series.

Don't get me wrong here: a TREMENDOUS amount of Japanese Shonen anime is hardly that much better than their U.S. equivalents. I'll put Pokemon, Bakugan, Yu Gi Oh, Digimon, Medabots, and whatever other vapid children's merch garbage fire from the Land of the Rising Sun right down there alongside our Western equivalents as absolutely and utterly Worthless with a capital W. That being said though... pound for pound overall, Japanese anime in a much broader and more historically overarching sense just has a GARGANTUAN built-in advantage over U.S. children's animation on numerous levels.

The big obvious one being that Japan doesn't SOLELY aim the vast majority of their animation at children, and actually have MUCH broader adult animation markets than that which is found in the West even to this day. While America has SOME adult animation, the overwhelmingly vast majority of it is solely relegated to sitcoms along the lines of South Park, Family Guy, The Simpsons, Bob's Burgers, etc. (with VERY rare few exceptions to this, like Aeon Flux, HBO's Spawn, The Maxx, Ralph Bakshi's career, etc). And in a broader Western sense, maybe Europe will very occasionally pitch in a good animated art house film every so often (obligatory shout out to titles like Fantastic Planet, The Illusionist, Triplets of Belleville, and Persepolis, to name but a few).

Japan on the other hand, in stark contrast to much of Western animation overall, has an astoundingly dense back catalog of animated adult dramas of a dizzying scope and breadth of genres (horror, action - REAL action mind you, not just kids' table shit - domestic drama, romance, hardboiled noir, historical fiction, literary adaptations, etc.) that spans back more than 40+ years now.

But even setting aside Japan's adult/Seinen market: even within the realm of Shonen/children's anime, while there is still more than plenty of mind-deadening trash that exists solely to sell plastic crap to children (same as over here on Western shores), there's also still a VERY decent-sized margin of Shonen titles that are not only outstanding on their own, but make even the very best and most genuinely sophisticated American children's cartoon shows look absolutely laughable and shallow by comparison.

Titles like Tomorrow's Joe, Rokudenashi Blues, Area 88, and Barefoot Gen, among others make something like Batman: The Animated Series - a Western children's cartoon that I myself genuinely like a fairly decent amount and will genuinely point to even today as having actual creative value to it - just look intellectually flimsy and dramatically/emotionally hollow and inert in a straight-on comparison by even the most charitable and forgiving of standards.

A lot of the reasons for why that is boil down to not only basic cultural differences in children's media standards between our countries as well as basic cultural differences in how animation as a medium itself is perceived, but also at the same time HUGE differences in terms of how the Shonen industry functioned business/economics-wise in the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s compared to later years. Without getting into a whole novel's worth of an explanation of those specifics, the end result of a fortuitous combination of these two key factors was a very lengthy period where Japan produced a fairly decent amount of children's animation that hit artistic highs that I would say NO Western equivalent has come even VAGUELY close to yet (alongside a gargantuan mountain of dogshit that fits in fairly well right alongside ours).

And likely we (Westerners/Americans) won't ever hit those same creative highs that Japan has managed to historically hit if things remain as they've been throughout the past several generations now, and seriously seismic cultural and industry changes don't take place that shift the fundamental foundations of how U.S. animation is both perceived and artistically tackled. And considering both the crushing economic realities within the U.S. market, not to mention how backwards-looking, knuckle-draggingly regressive, and artistically conservative so many U.S. animation FANS often are at this point, never mind the suits or the artists themselves... and yeah, I'm not exactly holding my breath of anything to budge on this anytime soon.

The ultimate point though being: there's a VERY clear and definitive reason for why so many people, at one time or another, would draw a very clear line in the sand to separate Japanese anime from Western animation, with the former being seen as overall something of a great deal more inherent artistic value and superiority over the latter. That paradigm doesn't HAVE to exist mind you, and I myself certainly do not want it to exist (and never have wanted it to). But it will invariably continue to be an undeniable elephant in the room until Western animation somehow or other gets to a point where it more consistently and permanently frees itself of the self-imposed genre and demographic constraints it has long placed on itself for animation.

And also note: there's a HUGE disparity between generations of Western anime fandom with regards to the perception that Japanese anime is of innately more artistic value than Western animation. The genesis of that perception are of course rooted back in the very early days of Western anime fandom during the 80s, when the fanbase was far, FAR more innately interested in and receptive toward the broader bulk of Japanese anime output, particularly with regards to its adult/non-Shonen and more art house output.

Because the simple fact of the matter is, there is plainly just NOTHING, NO American animated equivalent (and only a very limited output of European films as an overall Western equivalent) for titles as uncompromisingly experimental and transgressive as stuff like Angel's Egg, Manie Manie Labyrinth Tales, or Belladonna of Sadness (or in more recent contexts, stuff like Mind Game, Tatami Galaxy, Genius Party, or Mononoke). Nor for that matter, as emotionally raw and real as stuff like Grave of the Fireflies or Millennium Actress. For that inherent, ingrained advantage, Japanese anime, rightly and justly, gained the reputation that it originally gained during the heyday of titles like Akira and Ghost in the Shell (and even earlier).

As the generations transitioned into the post-Cartoon Network era however, that "anime is superior to and more mature than Western cartoons" perception still managed to stick, but for TOTALLY different and altogether more misguided and absurdly silly reasons: those reasons being the idea that overly-children's cartoon focused fans had developed that anime is innately more "mature" than Western cartoons, because general Shonen anime like DBZ, Naruto, One Piece, and so on could show onscreen blood and death and contain sexual references.

Obviously this perception is TOTALLY mistaken and utterly wrongheaded within THAT particular context (for a multitude of obvious and self-evident reasons that have long been thoroughly delved into)... but that context was NOT the original context in which the "anime > U.S. cartoons" stereotype was initially born from. Its simply a ridiculously stupid perspective that only developed later on, at the turn of the millennium, as a perverse mutation divorced from its original context by hardcore devotees of Cartoon Network-friendly titles who primarily remain fixated on mainstream children's animation (in both the East and West) and have little to no frame of artistic reference (nor intellectual curiosity) outside of those narrow confines and parameters.

That being said however: while the post-millennial/post-Cartoon Network bubble rationale for anime's "superiority over Western animation" is indeed hopelessly stupid, idiotically shallow, and bereft of context... the fact remains that Western animation, with VERY rare noted exceptions, just does not have (as a point of fucking stone cold historical fact) the same overall larger breadth and scope of animation as "real/serious" filmmaking and art that Japan has had going back nearly 50 years now.

For THAT reason and THAT reason alone, Japanese anime had originally (and rightly and justifiably) earned the lofty reputation that its managed to still cling to, even as its core fanbase (on both sides of the Pacific to one degree or another) has increasingly devolved and deteriorated in overall standards and intellectual curiosity, dragging the broader discourse and overall tenor and scope of historical perspective about anime down with it.

tl;dr: you cannot hope to have an accurate read on what "maturity" and "sophistication" actually are in a given work of art/media (book, film, TV, whatever) if your main points of focus are on a very narrow range of titles that are, by their very core nature, SUPREMELY limited in how mature and sophisticated they are allowed to be. You can't know where the middle actually is unless you've been to the farthest edges.

There's a FAR too large generation of an audience active online throughout the past decade and a half now who have largely thrown around labels like "dark", "edgy", "mature", "intelligent", "deep", "sophisticated", etc. for things that are absurdly, laughably trite, childish, and frivolous so often and for so long now, that they've in many ways honestly broken the critical gauge for these things, and we're at a point now where shit like Rick and Morty gets regularly highlighted as "dense" and "intellectual", Toy Story 3 is cited as "one of the most visceral dramas of all time", and non-animated movies like Captain America: The Winter Soldier are unironically labeled "political thrillers" with a straight face. And yes, where people will genuinely call this goddamn thing "sophisticated".

Its downright embarrassing and makes the entirety of online fan culture look and sound like hopelessly hyper-insulated and emotionally-stunted man-children who lack any whit of perspective past their childhood interests, and can't even be bothered to pick up one actual piece of for-real literature or one non-children's/non-franchise/non-nostalgic film for one second of their lives and develop something that even halfway resembles grown-the-fuck-up critical standards and a genuinely developed spectrum of a critical framework to work from.
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Re: Why do English-speaking fans belittle the non-FUNimation dubs?

Post by ABED » Tue Jan 15, 2019 1:54 pm

Just so we're clear, what do you guys take "sophisticated" to mean?
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Re: Why do English-speaking fans belittle the non-FUNimation dubs?

Post by Robo4900 » Tue Jan 15, 2019 3:06 pm

Kunzait_83 wrote:Spider-Man: TAS was a poorly animated, absurdly over-censored, hamfistedly-scripted bastardization of the Marvel Comics source material (for that matter, so was the X-Men cartoons series: and I say that as someone who is as die-hard a lifelong X-Men fan as you'll ever come across).
The cheap animation, I'll grant you, though I don't think it's much of a criticsm.

The censorship thing is a common misconception; the only "Censorship" imposed on the creative team was that they were told not to use the Hulk, Ghostrider, Sandman, or Electro in the show. The commonly-cited stuff is just nonsense; "he can't punch anybody" was a deliberate creative choice to make fights more interesting and Spider-Man-ish, and everything else people talk about is either just something the team did as a part of the show's weird semi-high-tech setting, or is just total bunk made up to slander the show in that way people online like to do so they can make their hot takes sound edgier.

The scripting, I think falls down to individual taste. I would say the scripting was rather great, though of course there are weak episodes -- the Venom 3-parter is of particular note -- but I think you'll find a lot of people will back me up that the writing is really what made this show good, and it was pretty strong writing. Of course, I suppose it's not for everyone.
Kunzait_83 wrote:And lord help you if you're referring to the 1980s TMNT cartoon (which literally has ONLY nostalgia going for it in terms of why ANYONE still remembers its existence today, and stands as just raw audio-visual water torture). Even the later 4Kids version, while obviously LEAGUES better than its predecessor... being leagues better than THAT atrocity is in NO way a high bar for ANYTHING to clear. As it stands, its mostly just another generic early 2000s kids cartoon, and another (of about a zillion) pale and hollow shadow of a classic indie comic series.
Yeah, I've never got the hype for TMNT before... Though I remember enjoying what I saw of the 2011 TV show. Apparently it was generally well-received on the whole.
Kunzait_83 wrote:tl;dr: you cannot hope to have an accurate read on what "maturity" and "sophistication" actually are in a given work of art/media (book, film, TV, whatever) if your main points of focus are on a very narrow range of titles that are, by their very core nature, SUPREMELY limited in how mature and sophisticated they are allowed to be. You can't know where the middle actually is unless you've been to the farthest edges.

There's a FAR too large generation of an audience active online throughout the past decade and a half now who have largely thrown around labels like "dark", "edgy", "mature", "intelligent", "deep", "sophisticated", etc. for things that are absurdly, laughably trite, childish, and frivolous so often and for so long now, that they've in many ways honestly broken the critical gauge for these things, and we're at a point now where shit like Rick and Morty gets regularly highlighted as "dense" and "intellectual", Toy Story 3 is cited as "one of the most visceral dramas of all time", and non-animated movies like Captain America: The Winter Soldier are unironically labeled "political thrillers" with a straight face. And yes, where people will genuinely call this goddamn thing "sophisticated".

Its downright embarrassing and makes the entirety of online fan culture look and sound like hopelessly hyper-insulated and emotionally-stunted man-children who lack any whit of perspective past their childhood interests, and can't even be bothered to pick up one actual piece of for-real literature or one non-children's/non-franchise/non-nostalgic film for one second of their lives and develop something that even halfway resembles grown-the-fuck-up critical standards and a genuinely developed spectrum of a critical framework to work from.
Y'see, this is where you really lose me.

Yes, western animation is often lacking in depth, complexity, etc. due to the age ghetto, and basically all adult animation tends to be comedies like Futurama, Simpsons, South Park, etc., but I think at this point, you're starting to just get into the territory of "people who don't let go of their childhood joys are man-children", which I've always thought was an awful mindset to get into.

Let's start with your dismissal of Toy Story 3. Toy Story and Toy Story 2 cemented themselves in the consciousness of western children at the time of their release in 1995 and 1999, so when the rather extremely delayed third installment came about in 2010, the audience had done rather a lot of growing up. Toy Story 3 isn't visceral for being edgy, or for being a deep meditation on human psychology, it's visceral because it's laser-focused on people who grew up on the first two, and is very much about these people going through their lives and discarding things about their child selves, parts of them dying, the passage of time, accepting your mortality and the impermanence of fixtures of your life, etc.
Toy Story 3 isn't a masterpiece, but it's an emotionally-resonant piece that hit hard for a lot of people, and while it's worth criticising for what it is, dismissing it in the way you are shows an eagerness to dismiss anything seemingly childish without delving into what its actual value is, for the sake of supporting your idea that western animation is usually too childish. If you ask me, this is rather ironic, as it exposes some of the age ghetto bias in you, if only insofar as supposedly child-orientated media being seen as childish and devoid of value for adults, teens, etc.
Toy Story 3 hit hard with people because it used its viewers' attachment to its characters and world to tell an emotionally resonant story that ended up hitting a lot of people hard. The fact it hit so many people so hard shows that it ultimately succeeded pretty bang-on with what it set out to do. It made people feel things. So, are those people shallow for feeling? Are their feelings invalid because the movie is an American commercial product?

Rick And Morty is ultimately just a pretty well-written comedy that combines a loose, heavily-improvisational take on the "Typical" Adult Swim gross-out, out-there, "Edgy" animated "Adult comedy" with a fairly grounded family dynamic akin to the Simpsons, and the way these things collide ultimately creates heaping piles of nightmare fuel. The genius of the show is ultimately in the fact it's a pretty clever comedy that doesn't shy away from going to dark, serious places. It's not the intellectual masterpiece some people make it out to be, because of course it isn't. It's an adult animation comedy show. Much as a show like Community is ultimately still a comedy, even if it is willing to go places beyond its call of duty as a sitcom, it is still ultimately a sitcom. But Rick And Morty does unabashedly confront existential crises, abuse of various kinds, living unhealthy lifestyles and the damage that does to those around you, etc.
Naturally, as a comedy first, Rick And Morty tends to only dive into this for a few moments, but those moments do still resonate, and give the show a real depth and weight. You watch the show because it gives you a laugh, but the show stays with you because it resonates with you. It's not just a shallow 20 minutes of laughing at the old man swearing at the kid, it's a show with real-feeling characters who have real-feeling issues. It's a pretty clever show. The faux-intellectuals who see themselves in Rick's shoes ultimately miss the point of the show, and kind of ruin the discourse around it, but putting them aside, we're looking at an overall pretty great animated comedy show. Not some transcendent intellectual piece like some people weirdly claim, but dismissing it as shit being put on a pedestal is profoundly unfair.
What's wrong with a well-written comedy? Even in a world where most animation defaults to this, a good version of a popular idea is still a good thing.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is more of a spy thriller, though honestly, I don't see how genre enters into this discussion if you ask me, so I won't dwell on that.

Ultimately, while it's perfectly reasonable to want more mature, sophisticated material than what we get, decrying examples of quality animation just because it doesn't meet this criteria is unfair, and when it is pushing the boundaries of what tends to be done in western animation, I think it's particularly unfair, because while it's perfectly reasonable to criticise a flawed work or situation, calling something shit because it's not as mature as people often feel it is by the contrast it has with most other material... Well, it just strikes me as "Damned if you do, damned if you don't."
Toy Story and Toy Story 2 were solid Pixar films aimed primarily at kids. I happen to be of the opinion the first one doesn't hold up that well, and that the second one is the true classic of the two, but regardless, they're both great kids' movies with strong characterisation, some great comedy, great visuals, and the cast is pretty excellent all-round. The third one, many years later, didn't simply take this and do more, as was the initial plan under Circle 7, instead it used the ground laid by the first two, and the way the audience had grown to tell a much more emotionally-resonant and personal story, creating a much more visceral movie with a lot of impact. It went a step beyond simply doing a third Toy Story movie. And in general these days, you won't see an animated movie without something greater going on than just a solid kids' movie. Or, if you do, it'll be one of the crap ones like The Emoji Movie or Boss Baby.
See Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, or Coco... It's not just fun shenanigans to entertain children that has some jokes and such thrown in for adults to enjoy; these films have learned the lessons of brilliant films like Iron Giant and are built to have real emotional resonance, and real things to say, real depth, and to be -- at the very least -- solid movies for adults to get their teeth into, with the colourful visuals and jokes entertaining the children in the audience.
This stuff isn't shallow, it has plenty of depth, depth that most movies of their ilk would have lacked 15 years ago. Sure, it's not the deepest movies you'll ever watch, but it's certainly rather deep for what it is, given western animation's history to this point... Even a movie like The Incredibles, one of the absolute classic Pixar movies, directed by Brad Bird, who did the masterpiece of Iron Giant, ultimately doesn't go much deeper than the family drama at its core. It's very well-done family drama, but it's not anything particularly deep or sophisticated. It has emotional resonance, but it's quite cosy, really, compared to what we tend to get these days.

Western animation still has a long way to go, but to quote one of my favourite movie quotes of recent times, from The Equalizer, "Progress, not perfection."
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Re: Why do English-speaking fans belittle the non-FUNimation dubs?

Post by MasenkoHA » Tue Jan 15, 2019 3:19 pm

TVfan721 wrote:
That's another huge exaggeration. I can name several Saturday morning cartoons in North America that were very sophisticated and had a continuous storyline. Spider-Man: The Animated Series, Sonic The Hedgehog, Batman: The Animated Series, TMNT, just to name a few.
Haven’t seen the Sonic show I assume you’re talking about so I’ll keep my mouth shut on that one

I’m gonna assume with TMNT you mean the 2003 series which while objectively better written and less audience insulting than the 80s cartoon I’d hardly call it sophisticated

Spider-Man TAS is probably the most baffling on the list. It’s a pretty blatant 90’s kids 65 episode toy commercial (to be fair this had more do with Avi Arad being the producer but look at the headwriter/showrunners other body of work and he mostly writes kids shows for a reason) characters aren’t particularly deep or nuance. Peter going on long tangential inner monologues that usually amount to “it sucks being Peter Parker and Spider-man” doesn’t make the writing mature or sophisticated. It had continuous storylines but they’re hardly anything complex or mature. Even Power Rangers eventually got into the continuous storyline game by the late 90s but I wouldn’t call Power Rangers sophisticated or intended for anyone over the age of 10.

Honestly? There’s really not much to distinguish 90s Spider-man from the Funi/Ocean collab dub of DBZ. They’re both pretty much on the same level.



And I’ll go back to there’s nothing inherently wrong with enjoying something you liked as a kid. Being an adult can suck and sometimes you need a temporary break from reality but don’t pretend that something you enjoy as an adult now would hold up any scrutiny if you didn’t watch it first when you were 9.

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Re: Why do English-speaking fans belittle the non-FUNimation dubs?

Post by MasenkoHA » Tue Jan 15, 2019 3:39 pm

Robo4900 wrote:
Kunzait_83 wrote:Spider-Man: TAS was a poorly animated, absurdly over-censored, hamfistedly-scripted bastardization of the Marvel Comics source material (for that matter, so was the X-Men cartoons series: and I say that as someone who is as die-hard a lifelong X-Men fan as you'll ever come across).
The cheap animation, I'll grant you, though I don't think it's much of a criticsm.

The censorship thing is a common misconception; the only "Censorship" imposed on the creative team was that they were told not to use the Hulk, Ghostrider, Sandman, or Electro in the show. The commonly-cited stuff is just nonsense; "he can't punch anybody" was a deliberate creative choice to make fights more interesting and Spider-Man-ish, and everything else people talk about is either just something the team did as a part of the show's weird semi-high-tech setting, or is just total bunk made up to slander the show in that way people online like to do so they can make their hot takes sound edgier.
."
Eh? Stuff like police shooting laser pistols and adherance to Never say die trope seemed to be a result of restrictions placed on them by Fox Kids.

Granted stuff like that wasn’t out of the norm for 90s kids shows. Batman TAS was one of the few shows of the era that got away with stuff like saying kill and die (and still used 40s lingo like iced and bumped off) and had realistic firearms (albeit the guns used weren’t exactly common place anymore in the average American home and pretty much never hit anyone)

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Re: Why do English-speaking fans belittle the non-FUNimation dubs?

Post by 8000 Saiyan » Tue Jan 15, 2019 3:46 pm

Even if it's censored, I still like Spider-Man TAS a whole lot. It's not on the level of the DCAU or X-Men TAS, but I enjoy it for what it is. Sure, the animation isn't great, but there's some Batman TAS episodes that aren't exactly scenery porn either. Never trust AKOM with creating something beautiful or fluid.
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Re: Why do English-speaking fans belittle the non-FUNimation dubs?

Post by Robo4900 » Tue Jan 15, 2019 3:52 pm

MasenkoHA wrote:Eh? Stuff like police shooting laser pistols and adherance to Never say die trope seemed to be a result of restrictions placed on them by Fox Kids.
The showrunner of the series outright said very recently, in response to someone pointing this exact thing out, that this wasn't the network's doing, it was a deliberate thing on the part of the creative team. Perhaps it was done with an idea of trying to keep things kids-safe, but there was never anyone calling for this, it was just how they decided to make the show.

One could argue this is censorship, but since the creative team made these decisions on their own, I don't think it is accurate to say it's censored. Censorship implies limitations being placed on a creative team by a higher authority.
MasenkoHA wrote:Granted stuff like that wasn’t out of the norm for 90s kids shows. Batman TAS was one of the few shows of the era that got away with stuff like saying kill and die (and still used 40s lingo like iced and bumped off) and had realistic firearms (albeit the guns used weren’t exactly common place anymore in the average American home and pretty much never hit anyone)
Yeah. I mean, the thing is, Spider-Man TAS was a solid kids' show from the '90s. Putting it up on a pedastal alongside Batman TAS will make it come off pretty bad, but appreciating it for what it is, it was a pretty well-written kids' action show, and ultimately holds up pretty well IMO, and while Batman does trounce it, taking that exceptionally transcendently good show out of the mix, Spidey stood out from the crowd pretty well in its time, and generally provided pretty great adaptations of the comics it sourced its material from, even if it did often tone violence and such down.
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Re: Why do English-speaking fans belittle the non-FUNimation dubs?

Post by MasenkoHA » Tue Jan 15, 2019 4:04 pm

Robo4900 wrote: The showrunner of the series outright said very recently, in response to someone pointing this exact thing out, that this wasn't the network's doing, it was a deliberate thing on the part of the creative team. Perhaps it was done with an idea of trying to keep things kids-safe, but there was never anyone calling for this, it was just how they decided to make the show.

.
If it’s the post that I’m thinking of (from his facebook?) be basically did confirm that those things were network requirements but they weren’t censorship because he was hired by the network to make the show to their specifications.

A show created to meet BS&P standards isn’t the same as a pre existing show like say DBZ being edited to meet American BS&P as understood by Saban which is a form of censorship.


I have no idea how to link facebook post from phone but here’s, I think, the relative quote
Examine this picture carefully. It accurately depicts everything we were NOT ALLOWED to do on a cartoon show in the mid-nineties (read the upside-down text at the bottom of the picture). A patently FALSE RUMOR was started some years ago that, on "SPIDER-MAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES," we suffered from a great deal of CENSORSHIP by the network. This FALSE RUMOR has since been perpetuated by sources like Wikipedia (a veritable cornucopia of flawed and false information) and such bastions of misinformation as online critics. This FALSE RUMOR always frustrates me. I'd like to get my hands on the IDIOT who started that rumor. Oh, wait a minute. It was ME! You see, when I appeared at fan conventions way back when the show was still on the air, just for fun and entertainment, I would read notes that I got from the network's Broadcast Standards and Practices Department. Things like, "Be careful that when Spider-Man lands on the roof, he doesn't harm any pigeons." Funny stuff like that. I thought it was good for laughs. But apparently, the whole notion of getting notes from BS&P was so completely foreign to you folks out there that it hit you all by surprise. What I thought was a silly joke suddenly became A BIG REVELATION! My second mistake was not realizing that, one day, there would be this monster called "The Internet." And the Internet soon would be so hungry for things to talk about that it would take this little bit of information and blow it up all out of proportion. It didn't help that the Internet also would become a tool for the ignorant and uninformed (like certain online "nostalgic critics") to be hyper-critical of everything under the sun. So, this little bit of information - that my cartoon show was subject to review by the Broadcast Standards and Practices Department - got turned into a major criticism and then a war cry: "Spider-Man has CENSORSHIP! LOTS AND LOTS OF CENSORSHIP!!" Now, you might ask, "Why isn't it true?" Well, to begin with, the BS&P department placed the same restrictions on EVERY cartoon show on the air in exactly the same way. So, if you think about it, all of the shows were limited in certain ways as to what they could do or show. There were rules that we all had to play by, as shown in the illustration. That's why, for instance, on "X-Men," you never saw Wolverine use his claws on anybody human and rip them to shreds. Usually he'd just swipe at mechanical robots and stuff like that. Producers, writers, etc., all had to play by the same rules. As a show creator, you could always argue with BS&P for some things more than others. A punch in the face might slip by here. A fire causing jeopardy might happen there. But basically, every show had to deal with the same fundamental restrictions. Those were the rules of the game. Where did those rules come from, anyway? Let me take you back to the nineteen-sixties. After the successive assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, it was decided by the powers-that-be that all television was too violent, and, in particular, children's TV was too violent for kids to watch. Remember when someone could shoot a gun at Huckleberry Hound and the resulting gunpowder would blacken his face? Or when Quick Draw McGraw wore guns and often used them? That's what I'm talking about. So, suddenly, very stiff restrictions were placed on TV cartoons that remained in place for decades to follow. So here's why all the whining and complaining about "censorship" drives me crazy. Because, in the nineties, we were finally allowed to do things in action-adventure cartoons that we hadn't been able to do for decades. Starting with "Batman," and moving on to "X-Men," "Spider-Man," et al, the Broadcast Standards and Practices Departments were finally loosening the shackles just a bit and allowing us to be more violent than kids' TV had been for most of my lifetime. And that, my friends, is how you got the exciting "Spider-Man:TAS" show that you got, instead of "Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends." Therefore, instead of complaining about a gun having to look like a "laser rifle" as opposed to a real gun, you ought to be reveling in the fact that we were finally able to do stories that approached the sophistication of the comic books. But now you might be asking, "Yes, but how can you say you weren't censored when BS&P clearly told you what you could and could not do? Isn't that a form of censorship?" Again the answer is a resounding "NO." I wasn't hired to be wildly creative and do whatever the hell I wanted. I was hired to deliver to the network a show that was what they asked for. BUILT TO THEIR SPECIFICATIONS They were the client and I was the hired help. Let's say that you are a house builder, and you're hired to build a house, and you want to paint it green, but the person who is hiring you wants the house to be red. You can't scream "Help, I'm being censored. I can't paint the house the color I want!" It's not your house! You just shut up and paint it red! End of story. It's the same with "Spider-Man" TAS" or any of the other cartoon shows on their network. Ultimately, the Network was paying for the show. They were hiring me to deliver the show to their specifications. It's their show. If they tell me to do something, then ultimately it's my job to do it. I can't legitimately scream "Censorship!" And neither can you. "Censorship" is when you do have a right or an understanding, or a reasonable expectation of freedom of personal expression and it is suddenly blocked or curtailed. That isn't the case when you're hired to deliver a show to a client's specifications. It's not what you agree to when you sign a contract to work-for-hire. Censorship is when I take my own money and pay to have something produced, and I put it online and it suddenly gets pulled down against my will because somebody doesn't like some aspect of it. That's censorship. In my next post, I'll discuss specific creative choices I made on "Spider-Man: TAS" to live within the BS&P guidelines - and also areas where I argued for, and received, greater latitude to work outside of the guidelines to enhance a story.

Since it was a long ass rant I bolded the relevant bits

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Re: Why do English-speaking fans belittle the non-FUNimation dubs?

Post by ABED » Tue Jan 15, 2019 4:12 pm

There's nothing wrong with watching children's cartoons as an adult. I wouldn't make it the biggest part of my viewing diet, but revisiting shows you enjoyed isn't a bad thing. Also, there's more than just children's fare and sophisticated mature programming. There are levels. I'd put Spidey well above Power Rangers and TMNT, but definitely below the DCAU.

Even at S-M: TAS or X-Men: TAS's worst, I wouldn't put the Z dub's best in their league. Ironically X-Men was produced by Saban.

One issue that I think is an indicator of the level of sophistication is how the story treats death. Does it even acknowledge it? The Saban era dub of DBZ didn't do that except for a few times at the beginning, which got re-recorded. Even the home video versions don't have lines like Roshi saying "I smell death in the air."
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Re: Why do English-speaking fans belittle the non-FUNimation dubs?

Post by Robo4900 » Tue Jan 15, 2019 4:16 pm

MasenkoHA wrote:
Robo4900 wrote: The showrunner of the series outright said very recently, in response to someone pointing this exact thing out, that this wasn't the network's doing, it was a deliberate thing on the part of the creative team. Perhaps it was done with an idea of trying to keep things kids-safe, but there was never anyone calling for this, it was just how they decided to make the show.

.
If it’s the post that I’m thinking of (from his facebook?) be basically did confirm that those things were network requirements but they weren’t censorship because he was hired by the network to make the show to their specifications.

A show created to meet BS&P standards isn’t the same as a pre existing show like say DBZ being edited to meet American BS&P as understood by Saban which is a form of censorship.


I have no idea how to link facebook post from phone but here’s, I think, the relative quote

Since it was a long ass rant I bolded the relevant bits
Mm, yes, I see.

For the record, the quote I was mainly thinking of was this, important bit bolded:
John Semper Jr. wrote:I finally saw SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING yesterday in a delightfully empty theater (just the way I like it, which is why I waited a few weeks) in 3D (of course). I thoroughly enjoyed it! Two of my favorite things about it were purely selfish. 1) The film has garnered universal praise for its treatment of the character, yet it makes so many changes to the original Spider-Man mythos that it's barely recognizable. I'm okay with that, and thanks to this film, I never have to answer why I made Electro into the son of the Red Skull. Changes are made for dramatic purposes. That's why, in this new film, The Vulture became a working guy with a black daughter whom Peter was in love with, which was nothing like the comics. Case closed. 2) In this film, as in my series, Spider-Man did not resort to fisticuffs. He used his webbing, probably for the same reason we did, because it's visually more interesting. So, I no longer have to defend not having Spider-Man sock people in the jaw. The lack of fists to the face in my series had nothing to do with censorship, as is often cited. I just didn't think it was necessary. (I suppose I could also cite a preponderance of LASER RIFLES over actual weapons in the film, not unlike my series, but I know that would drive many of you into a frenzy, so I won't mention it. :lol:) That being said, the film was a rousing, exciting adventure and - despite the fact that it was nothing like the original Spider-Man comics - I thought it captured the SPIRIT of the character and therefore it was a lot of fun. And that, my friends, is all it had to do and be!
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Re: Why do English-speaking fans belittle the non-FUNimation dubs?

Post by SuperSaiyaManZ94 » Tue Jan 15, 2019 5:18 pm

Kunzait_83 wrote:
TVfan721 wrote:That's another huge exaggeration. I can name several Saturday morning cartoons in North America that were very sophisticated and had a continuous storyline. Spider-Man: The Animated Series, Sonic The Hedgehog, Batman: The Animated Series, TMNT, just to name a few.
The only title out of any of those you just named that even the most REMOTE shred of artistic merit to it is Batman: The Animated series. Calling the 90s Spider-Man and Sonic cartoons along with pretty much ANY animated incarnation of TMNT "sophisticated" is a laughably gross misuse of that word. Again, Batman notwithstanding, these shows are across the board the polar diametric opposite of anything that's within the faintest realm of "sophistication".

A specific audience of overly media-sheltered kids who came of age in the 90s cling onto most of these shows as bastions of "mature cartoons" in large part not only out of nostalgia, but also out of a stubborn and seeming pathological refusal to divorce themselves from their childhood frame of artistic reference and explore other realms of art and media that exist outside the realm of children's cartoons.

Again, with Batman: TAS as a notable exception, none of these other shows listed here were seen as "sophisticated" by virtually anyone during their time, and for very good reason: because they aren't. The idea of shows like these being quality Television that are somehow "mature and sophisticated" even a SHRED beyond their target audience is something that, apart from being just downright delusional, only came about within the past maybe 15 years or so... and largely by the people who grew up with them and haven't really moved on very much past shows of this ilk. Again, Batman: TAS was the ONLY one of these that had ANY remote actual critical clout back in the day. The others? NO ONE outside their target demographic gave the slightest iota of a flying fuck about them: rightly so.

Spider-Man: TAS was a poorly animated, absurdly over-censored, hamfistedly-scripted bastardization of the Marvel Comics source material (for that matter, so was the X-Men cartoons series: and I say that as someone who is as die-hard a lifelong X-Men fan as you'll ever come across).

The Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon (assuming you mean the ludicrously over-praised SATAM series: the fact that I now even know what that acronym stands for is something that I accept as a sad indictment of both internet "nerd culture" as its existed throughout the 2000s and 2010s as well as my remarkably poor life decision in still remaining as plugged into it as I've been) is without a single shred of redeeming quality.

SATAM is simply another unwatchably lame tie-in cartoon to a popular 90s kids' property that has maintained a terrifyingly over-obsessive fanbase of socially impaired weirdos who act like a children's cartoon that has even the FLIMSIEST shred of faux-edge to it is somehow artistically revolutionary: and alongside its accompanying Archie comic series, its also ground-zero for everything that's long been notoriously dysfunctional and horrifying about Sonic the Hedgehog fandom prior to even the Adventure games.

And lord help you if you're referring to the 1980s TMNT cartoon (which literally has ONLY nostalgia going for it in terms of why ANYONE still remembers its existence today, and stands as just raw audio-visual water torture). Even the later 4Kids version, while obviously LEAGUES better than its predecessor... being leagues better than THAT atrocity is in NO way a high bar for ANYTHING to clear. As it stands, its mostly just another generic early 2000s kids cartoon, and another (of about a zillion) pale and hollow shadow of a classic indie comic series.

Don't get me wrong here: a TREMENDOUS amount of Japanese Shonen anime is hardly that much better than their U.S. equivalents. I'll put Pokemon, Bakugan, Yu Gi Oh, Digimon, Medabots, and whatever other vapid children's merch garbage fire from the Land of the Rising Sun right down there alongside our Western equivalents as absolutely and utterly Worthless with a capital W. That being said though... pound for pound overall, Japanese anime in a much broader and more historically overarching sense just has a GARGANTUAN built-in advantage over U.S. children's animation on numerous levels.

The big obvious one being that Japan doesn't SOLELY aim the vast majority of their animation at children, and actually have MUCH broader adult animation markets than that which is found in the West even to this day. While America has SOME adult animation, the overwhelmingly vast majority of it is solely relegated to sitcoms along the lines of South Park, Family Guy, The Simpsons, Bob's Burgers, etc. (with VERY rare few exceptions to this, like Aeon Flux, HBO's Spawn, The Maxx, Ralph Bakshi's career, etc). And in a broader Western sense, maybe Europe will very occasionally pitch in a good animated art house film every so often (obligatory shout out to titles like Fantastic Planet, The Illusionist, Triplets of Belleville, and Persepolis, to name but a few).

Japan on the other hand, in stark contrast to much of Western animation overall, has an astoundingly dense back catalog of animated adult dramas of a dizzying scope and breadth of genres (horror, action - REAL action mind you, not just kids' table shit - domestic drama, romance, hardboiled noir, historical fiction, literary adaptations, etc.) that spans back more than 40+ years now.

But even setting aside Japan's adult/Seinen market: even within the realm of Shonen/children's anime, while there is still more than plenty of mind-deadening trash that exists solely to sell plastic crap to children (same as over here on Western shores), there's also still a VERY decent-sized margin of Shonen titles that are not only outstanding on their own, but make even the very best and most genuinely sophisticated American children's cartoon shows look absolutely laughable and shallow by comparison.

Titles like Tomorrow's Joe, Rokudenashi Blues, Area 88, and Barefoot Gen, among others make something like Batman: The Animated Series - a Western children's cartoon that I myself genuinely like a fairly decent amount and will genuinely point to even today as having actual creative value to it - just look intellectually flimsy and dramatically/emotionally hollow and inert in a straight-on comparison by even the most charitable and forgiving of standards.

A lot of the reasons for why that is boil down to not only basic cultural differences in children's media standards between our countries as well as basic cultural differences in how animation as a medium itself is perceived, but also at the same time HUGE differences in terms of how the Shonen industry functioned business/economics-wise in the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s compared to later years. Without getting into a whole novel's worth of an explanation of those specifics, the end result of a fortuitous combination of these two key factors was a very lengthy period where Japan produced a fairly decent amount of children's animation that hit artistic highs that I would say NO Western equivalent has come even VAGUELY close to yet (alongside a gargantuan mountain of dogshit that fits in fairly well right alongside ours).

And likely we (Westerners/Americans) won't ever hit those same creative highs that Japan has managed to historically hit if things remain as they've been throughout the past several generations now, and seriously seismic cultural and industry changes don't take place that shift the fundamental foundations of how U.S. animation is both perceived and artistically tackled. And considering both the crushing economic realities within the U.S. market, not to mention how backwards-looking, knuckle-draggingly regressive, and artistically conservative so many U.S. animation FANS often are at this point, never mind the suits or the artists themselves... and yeah, I'm not exactly holding my breath of anything to budge on this anytime soon.

The ultimate point though being: there's a VERY clear and definitive reason for why so many people, at one time or another, would draw a very clear line in the sand to separate Japanese anime from Western animation, with the former being seen as overall something of a great deal more inherent artistic value and superiority over the latter. That paradigm doesn't HAVE to exist mind you, and I myself certainly do not want it to exist (and never have wanted it to). But it will invariably continue to be an undeniable elephant in the room until Western animation somehow or other gets to a point where it more consistently and permanently frees itself of the self-imposed genre and demographic constraints it has long placed on itself for animation.

And also note: there's a HUGE disparity between generations of Western anime fandom with regards to the perception that Japanese anime is of innately more artistic value than Western animation. The genesis of that perception are of course rooted back in the very early days of Western anime fandom during the 80s, when the fanbase was far, FAR more innately interested in and receptive toward the broader bulk of Japanese anime output, particularly with regards to its adult/non-Shonen and more art house output.

Because the simple fact of the matter is, there is plainly just NOTHING, NO American animated equivalent (and only a very limited output of European films as an overall Western equivalent) for titles as uncompromisingly experimental and transgressive as stuff like Angel's Egg, Manie Manie Labyrinth Tales, or Belladonna of Sadness (or in more recent contexts, stuff like Mind Game, Tatami Galaxy, Genius Party, or Mononoke). Nor for that matter, as emotionally raw and real as stuff like Grave of the Fireflies or Millennium Actress. For that inherent, ingrained advantage, Japanese anime, rightly and justly, gained the reputation that it originally gained during the heyday of titles like Akira and Ghost in the Shell (and even earlier).

As the generations transitioned into the post-Cartoon Network era however, that "anime is superior to and more mature than Western cartoons" perception still managed to stick, but for TOTALLY different and altogether more misguided and absurdly silly reasons: those reasons being the idea that overly-children's cartoon focused fans had developed that anime is innately more "mature" than Western cartoons, because general Shonen anime like DBZ, Naruto, One Piece, and so on could show onscreen blood and death and contain sexual references.

Obviously this perception is TOTALLY mistaken and utterly wrongheaded within THAT particular context (for a multitude of obvious and self-evident reasons that have long been thoroughly delved into)... but that context was NOT the original context in which the "anime > U.S. cartoons" stereotype was initially born from. Its simply a ridiculously stupid perspective that only developed later on, at the turn of the millennium, as a perverse mutation divorced from its original context by hardcore devotees of Cartoon Network-friendly titles who primarily remain fixated on mainstream children's animation (in both the East and West) and have little to no frame of artistic reference (nor intellectual curiosity) outside of those narrow confines and parameters.

That being said however: while the post-millennial/post-Cartoon Network bubble rationale for anime's "superiority over Western animation" is indeed hopelessly stupid, idiotically shallow, and bereft of context... the fact remains that Western animation, with VERY rare noted exceptions, just does not have (as a point of fucking stone cold historical fact) the same overall larger breadth and scope of animation as "real/serious" filmmaking and art that Japan has had going back nearly 50 years now.

For THAT reason and THAT reason alone, Japanese anime had originally (and rightly and justifiably) earned the lofty reputation that its managed to still cling to, even as its core fanbase (on both sides of the Pacific to one degree or another) has increasingly devolved and deteriorated in overall standards and intellectual curiosity, dragging the broader discourse and overall tenor and scope of historical perspective about anime down with it.

tl;dr: you cannot hope to have an accurate read on what "maturity" and "sophistication" actually are in a given work of art/media (book, film, TV, whatever) if your main points of focus are on a very narrow range of titles that are, by their very core nature, SUPREMELY limited in how mature and sophisticated they are allowed to be. You can't know where the middle actually is unless you've been to the farthest edges.

There's a FAR too large generation of an audience active online throughout the past decade and a half now who have largely thrown around labels like "dark", "edgy", "mature", "intelligent", "deep", "sophisticated", etc. for things that are absurdly, laughably trite, childish, and frivolous so often and for so long now, that they've in many ways honestly broken the critical gauge for these things, and we're at a point now where shit like Rick and Morty gets regularly highlighted as "dense" and "intellectual", Toy Story 3 is cited as "one of the most visceral dramas of all time", and non-animated movies like Captain America: The Winter Soldier are unironically labeled "political thrillers" with a straight face. And yes, where people will genuinely call this goddamn thing "sophisticated".

Its downright embarrassing and makes the entirety of online fan culture look and sound like hopelessly hyper-insulated and emotionally-stunted man-children who lack any whit of perspective past their childhood interests, and can't even be bothered to pick up one actual piece of for-real literature or one non-children's/non-franchise/non-nostalgic film for one second of their lives and develop something that even halfway resembles grown-the-fuck-up critical standards and a genuinely developed spectrum of a critical framework to work from.

While I didn't think that Sonic SATAM was the greatest animated series ever myself it's still a decent romp overall for what it was aiming for based on said comic, i certainly think it was pulled off better as a series than the full on Looney Tunes-esque gag fest that the "Adventures Of" show from the same period turned out to be. Ok sure, it's not a gold standard but something about that edge you mention i believe made it seem more action packed and serious feeling for a Saturday morning show at the time. I mean, compare Dr. Robotnik/Eggman in AOSTH and SATAM and it feels like a completely different character because in the former series he is an almost non menacing buffoon who is always having his plans fouled up by his two bumbling robot lackeys. His portrayal in the latter on the other hand is played straight as a much darker, serious threat to our heroes. While the animation and writing may not be great shakes and about the level of other similar video game based cartoons of the time it at least seems elevated on account of those factors to some degree.

You might disagree with my own personal stance on the show as stated here, but i believe it isn't the worst to grace to the Sonic franchise in terms of TV (Sonic Underground, anyone).
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Re: Why do English-speaking fans belittle the non-FUNimation dubs?

Post by MasenkoHA » Tue Jan 15, 2019 5:52 pm

SuperSaiyaManZ94 wrote:





".



While I didn't think that Sonic SATAM was the greatest animated series ever myself it's still a decent romp overall for what it was aiming for based on said comic, i certainly think it was pulled off better as a series than the full on Looney Tunes-esque gag fest that the "Adventures Of" show from the same period turned out to be. Ok sure, it's not a gold standard but something about that edge you mention i believe made it seem more action packed and serious feeling for a Saturday morning show at the time. I mean, compare Dr. Robotnik/Eggman in AOSTH and SATAM and it feels like a completely different character because in the former series he is an almost non menacing buffoon who is always having his plans fouled up by his two bumbling robot lackeys. His portrayal in the latter on the other hand is played straight as a much darker, serious threat to our heroes. While the animation and writing may not be great shakes and about the level of other similar video game based cartoons of the time it at least seems elevated on account of those factors to some degree.

You might disagree with my own personal stance on the show as stated here, but i believe it isn't the worst to grace to the Sonic franchise in terms of TV (Sonic Underground, anyone).

But being, arguably better, than another Sonic series doesn’t make it good. You’re just comparing one serious ish action-adventure kids show to a wackier comedic kids show as if serious=Mature comedy=for kids.

I don’t think Kunzait is comparing SAT:AM to other Sonic shows but on its own merits?


Like I can compare I dunno Digimon to Pokemon because Digimon has the most basic baby’s first storyline plot compared to Pokemon’s non-plot and comparatively better written characters (by which I mean the Digimon kids almost have traits that almost bare resemblance to actual human beings versus Pokemon humans characters that don’t even remotely resemble actual people). But that doesn’t make Digimon good or worthwhile to anyone outside the target demo or once in the target demo. It just means its better than a more lowest common denominator kids show

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Re: Why do English-speaking fans belittle the non-FUNimation dubs?

Post by SuperSaiyaManZ94 » Tue Jan 15, 2019 6:19 pm

MasenkoHA wrote:
SuperSaiyaManZ94 wrote:





".



While I didn't think that Sonic SATAM was the greatest animated series ever myself it's still a decent romp overall for what it was aiming for based on said comic, i certainly think it was pulled off better as a series than the full on Looney Tunes-esque gag fest that the "Adventures Of" show from the same period turned out to be. Ok sure, it's not a gold standard but something about that edge you mention i believe made it seem more action packed and serious feeling for a Saturday morning show at the time. I mean, compare Dr. Robotnik/Eggman in AOSTH and SATAM and it feels like a completely different character because in the former series he is an almost non menacing buffoon who is always having his plans fouled up by his two bumbling robot lackeys. His portrayal in the latter on the other hand is played straight as a much darker, serious threat to our heroes. While the animation and writing may not be great shakes and about the level of other similar video game based cartoons of the time it at least seems elevated on account of those factors to some degree.

You might disagree with my own personal stance on the show as stated here, but i believe it isn't the worst to grace to the Sonic franchise in terms of TV (Sonic Underground, anyone).

But being, arguably better, than another Sonic series doesn’t make it good. You’re just comparing one serious ish action-adventure kids show to a wackier comedic kids show as if serious=Mature comedy=for kids.

I don’t think Kunzait is comparing SAT:AM to other Sonic shows but on its own merits?


Like I can compare I dunno Digimon to Pokemon because Digimon has the most basic baby’s first storyline plot compared to Pokemon’s non-plot and comparatively better written characters (by which I mean the Digimon kids almost have traits that almost bare resemblance to actual human beings versus Pokemon humans characters that don’t even remotely resemble actual people). But that doesn’t make Digimon good or worthwhile to anyone outside the target demo or once in the target demo. It just means its better than a more lowest common denominator kids show
I must have been missing the point of his post when responding to his take on SATAM, though what i was trying to get at about the show is that while it may not be the greatest thing ever made in terms of animation it's not exactly the worst either. Part of that opinion is because i watched it back in the day when i was a kid so it must be a nostalgia thing with me, to my own personal view i must see it on it's own terms as being better than it supposedly really is. Same thing with the other shows he mentions like the '80s TMNT or others that i like. Simply put, i am not claiming that Sonic SATAM is an Oscar-worthy, gold standard of animation pefection but that i wouldn't go so far to say that it is absolute trash that is not worth watching by that same token.

I don't know, i guess it's one of those things where when you like a cartoon show as a child and don't really see the flaws in them be it the animation or writing because you're so taken in by everything else. Then again, you could apply that same logic to a lot of the popular yesteryear Saturday morning cartoons and action shows made by the legendary animation studios like Hanna-Barbera, Filmation.etc as in some of the things they put out may not have been the greatest quality wise but they were a part of so many people's childhoods that those who grew up in the era back in the '60s all the way up to the '90s still fondly recall them, even if some were not exactly huge hits that have stuck around for decades like others have.
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Re: Why do English-speaking fans belittle the non-FUNimation dubs?

Post by Gligarman » Tue Jan 15, 2019 8:50 pm

I have and will ALWAYS prefer the Japanese cast. But as someone who watched the Ocean dub for years back in the day on TV before Funimation used their in-house voice actors, I felt the Ocean dub had a much better cast for the most part. The new cast was instructed to imitate the original and it was a disaster. Admittedly some of them came into their own and considerably improved over the years. Bulma got better when she dropped the valley girl accent, Freeza's current dub voice is amazing, and I'll be the first to admit that Chi-Chi's current voice is hysterical and fits the character perfectly. But the damage is already done, there are just too many characters that were miscast who I'll never be able to get use to. Unfortunately that's what happens when you don't offer union pay.

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Re: Why do English-speaking fans belittle the non-FUNimation dubs?

Post by ABED » Tue Jan 15, 2019 9:01 pm

Gligarman wrote:I have and will ALWAYS prefer the Japanese cast. But as someone who watched the Ocean dub for years back in the day on TV before Funimation used their in-house voice actors, I felt the Ocean dub had a much better cast for the most part. The new cast was instructed to imitate the original and it was a disaster. Admittedly some of them came into their own and considerably improved over the years. Bulma got better when she dropped the valley girl accent, Freeza's current dub voice is amazing, and I'll be the first to admit that Chi-Chi's current voice is hysterical and fits the character perfectly. But the damage is already done, there are just too many characters that were miscast who I'll never be able to get use to. Unfortunately that's what happens when you don't offer union pay.
Not seeing the link between union pay and performance. I don't know for sure, but I think FUNi still doesn't use union actors.
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Re: Why do English-speaking fans belittle the non-FUNimation dubs?

Post by Dr. Casey » Tue Jan 15, 2019 9:08 pm

6 was probably the last age where I fully and wholeheartedly loved the cartoons of the era (TaleSpin, DuckTales, Goof Troop, Darkwing Duck, the typical array of series that kids watched during the early 90s). My interest started to decline a lot at 7, but I hung on to them for a time because I have a weird sort of loyalty and don't always like admitting to myself when I'm beginning to lose interest in something I used to care about; that holds true even now in my 30s. 8 was where I went "Yeah, nah, these shows just aren't very good" and stopped.

I don't really have any kind of nostalgia for most of them. The dialogue, the theme songs, everything about the average cartoon from the era was just cynically cheap and low-quality. Don't know enough about 2000s or 2010s cartoons to know how or if they differ.
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Re: Why do English-speaking fans belittle the non-FUNimation dubs?

Post by ABED » Tue Jan 15, 2019 9:12 pm

Dr. Casey wrote:6 was probably the last age where I fully and wholeheartedly loved the cartoons of the era (TaleSpin, DuckTales, Goof Troop, Darkwing Duck, the typical array of series that kids watched during the early 90s). My interest started to decline a lot at 7, but I hung on to them for a time because I have a weird sort of loyalty and don't always like admitting to myself when I'm beginning to lose interest in something I used to care about; that holds true even now in my 30s. 8 was where I went "Yeah, nah, these shows just aren't very good" and stopped.

I don't really have any kind of nostalgia for most of them. The dialogue, the theme songs, everything about the average cartoon from the era was just cynically cheap and low-quality.
Really, 7? What shows did you start to like between then and your tween years?

And what exactly constitutes 'cynically cheap?'
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Re: Why do English-speaking fans belittle the non-FUNimation dubs?

Post by Dr. Casey » Tue Jan 15, 2019 9:20 pm

ABED wrote:Really, 7? What shows did you start to like between then and your tween years?

And what exactly constitutes 'cynically cheap?'
I didn't really watch much TV between 8 through 18 or so (I started watching anime a lot after we upgraded to DSL in early 2006, which has continued to the present); most of my media consumption was of videogames. 1999 through 2005 in particular saw me glued to the computer playing NES/Sega Genesis/Super Nintendo ROMs basically all the time. I did have a spell of enjoying Degrassi: The Next Generation in high school, but that's about it.
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Re: Why do English-speaking fans belittle the non-FUNimation dubs?

Post by MasenkoHA » Tue Jan 15, 2019 9:37 pm

Gligarman wrote:Bulma got better when she dropped the valley girl accent
Bulma got better when they dumped Tiffany Vollmer for Monica Rial.


. Unfortunately that's what happens when you don't offer union pay.
We have on record from Ian Corlett that Ocean paid its actors shit. (Which is why Kelamis replaced him) I don’t know if better pay=better voice actors. Ocean just knew how to get experience voice actors. Funimation, at least Funimation in 1999, did not and just grabbed whatever actors they could that they felt sounded close enough to the Ocean cast.

And to echo what Abed already said Funimation still isn’t union. I believe the vast majority of anime dubbing companies are non-union.

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