Why did 4Kids One Piece FAIL while Funimation's Dragon Ball succeeded?

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Re: Why did 4Kids One Piece FAIL while Funimation's Dragon Ball succeeded?

Post by Hellspawn28 » Wed Dec 01, 2021 7:56 pm

4Kids was consider to be better than Funimation by anime fans at one point. You had people that felt like Pokemon had a better dub than DBZ did. Here's one old post that I found.

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Re: Why did 4Kids One Piece FAIL while Funimation's Dragon Ball succeeded?

Post by MasenkoHA » Wed Dec 01, 2021 8:27 pm

An editorial Chris Psaros did also gives insight of where anime fans were at with 4Kids pre-2000

Last but not least, we have Pokémon, another show that I must admit to really liking. And what can I say about the conversion? Well, plain and simple, this is by far the most faithful-to-the-original broadcast anime I have ever seen. These people (4Kids Productions) take some risks! Why couldn't they have gotten the rights to Dragon Ball? About the only "censoring" they've done so far is to darken the screen slightly when there are any especially bright or strobing effects. (Long story behind that, but I'm sure you're all well aware of the "Pokémon incident.") I've seen this show deal with death, religious overtones, lechery, violence, and all that other good stuff with complete confidence.

And listening to it is great! The casting, the dubbing, the writing... WONDERFUL! They've even gone so far as to keep the original Japanese voices for MOST of the Pokémon! Absolutely unheard of! But that's not even the crown jewel.... the music, the wonderful Japanese music, has been KEPT! The US producers have added some of their own, but that's OK. It all sounds great, and what matters is that THE JAPANESE STUFF IS STILL THERE! And then there's the theme song... Ok, it was changed, but the new song is pretty damned cool. I like it better than the Japanese one, actually. Again, it's a bit lacking in the lyric department, but it's good.

How about episode output? Well, 4Kids showed more Pokémon in the first 3 months than DBZ has in 3 years! (Same thing with DIC and Sailor Moon, now that I think about it). And more are on the way, 52 new shows are planned for next year. It's enough to make me want to tear my hair out in frustration. WHY COULDN'T IT HAVE BEEN DRAGON BALL??

What I'm getting at here is that I'm very jealous, maybe even a little bitter, about how well things have turned out for Pokémon. And I'm not just talking about how it was treated by the American producers, this thing is an unprecedented runaway success. It was doing so well in syndication that Warner Brothers bought the rights, and it's now the top-rated freakin' kid's show on the WB! Plans are in the works to release the Pokémon movie theatrically nationwide, the toys are all over the place, the premiere issue of the comic is Viz' highest seller ever, the video game is the most popular Game Boy cartridge yet, it just goes on and on! They even have fast food tie-ins, For Kami's sake! it just ISN'T FAIR! Meanwhile, what the hell is FUNimation doing? Grr. Save our Sailors actually has an article up about the situation, and they're pretty much in the same position that I am about Sailor Moon's lack of comparable success.

So, needless to say, I think that Pokémon was handled much, MUCH better than DBZ, in just about every way. I must admit though, it had a few things working in its favor from the outset. First, there was a lot less objectionable material to be "fixed" for US broadcast, so it's not exactly fair to compare it to DBZ or even Sailor Moon in that respect. If there's not much that needs to be cut, then.. well... not much is going to be cut, hence, not as much for purists to notice and complain about. Second, Pokémon has the money, power, and influence of Nintendo to back it up and make sure that the thing gets good timeslots, licensees, and is aggressively marketed to be pounded into people's psyches.

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Re: Why did 4Kids One Piece FAIL while Funimation's Dragon Ball succeeded?

Post by JulieYBM » Wed Dec 01, 2021 8:51 pm

Talk about a historical jewel. 😆
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Re: Why did 4Kids One Piece FAIL while Funimation's Dragon Ball succeeded?

Post by SuperSaiyaManZ94 » Wed Dec 01, 2021 9:15 pm

MasenkoHA wrote: Wed Dec 01, 2021 8:27 pm An editorial Chris Psaros did also gives insight of where anime fans were at with 4Kids pre-2000

Last but not least, we have Pokémon, another show that I must admit to really liking. And what can I say about the conversion? Well, plain and simple, this is by far the most faithful-to-the-original broadcast anime I have ever seen. These people (4Kids Productions) take some risks! Why couldn't they have gotten the rights to Dragon Ball? About the only "censoring" they've done so far is to darken the screen slightly when there are any especially bright or strobing effects. (Long story behind that, but I'm sure you're all well aware of the "Pokémon incident.") I've seen this show deal with death, religious overtones, lechery, violence, and all that other good stuff with complete confidence.

And listening to it is great! The casting, the dubbing, the writing... WONDERFUL! They've even gone so far as to keep the original Japanese voices for MOST of the Pokémon! Absolutely unheard of! But that's not even the crown jewel.... the music, the wonderful Japanese music, has been KEPT! The US producers have added some of their own, but that's OK. It all sounds great, and what matters is that THE JAPANESE STUFF IS STILL THERE! And then there's the theme song... Ok, it was changed, but the new song is pretty damned cool. I like it better than the Japanese one, actually. Again, it's a bit lacking in the lyric department, but it's good.

How about episode output? Well, 4Kids showed more Pokémon in the first 3 months than DBZ has in 3 years! (Same thing with DIC and Sailor Moon, now that I think about it). And more are on the way, 52 new shows are planned for next year. It's enough to make me want to tear my hair out in frustration. WHY COULDN'T IT HAVE BEEN DRAGON BALL??

What I'm getting at here is that I'm very jealous, maybe even a little bitter, about how well things have turned out for Pokémon. And I'm not just talking about how it was treated by the American producers, this thing is an unprecedented runaway success. It was doing so well in syndication that Warner Brothers bought the rights, and it's now the top-rated freakin' kid's show on the WB! Plans are in the works to release the Pokémon movie theatrically nationwide, the toys are all over the place, the premiere issue of the comic is Viz' highest seller ever, the video game is the most popular Game Boy cartridge yet, it just goes on and on! They even have fast food tie-ins, For Kami's sake! it just ISN'T FAIR! Meanwhile, what the hell is FUNimation doing? Grr. Save our Sailors actually has an article up about the situation, and they're pretty much in the same position that I am about Sailor Moon's lack of comparable success.

So, needless to say, I think that Pokémon was handled much, MUCH better than DBZ, in just about every way. I must admit though, it had a few things working in its favor from the outset. First, there was a lot less objectionable material to be "fixed" for US broadcast, so it's not exactly fair to compare it to DBZ or even Sailor Moon in that respect. If there's not much that needs to be cut, then.. well... not much is going to be cut, hence, not as much for purists to notice and complain about. Second, Pokémon has the money, power, and influence of Nintendo to back it up and make sure that the thing gets good timeslots, licensees, and is aggressively marketed to be pounded into people's psyches.
This editiorial shows what seemed to be the majority opinion that a large chunk of fans in that era viewed the dub of the early Pokemon seasons as circa 1998 to around 2001 as the Pokemania craze was in full swing, and say what you will about 4Kids' more notorious editing and localization practices (painting out Japanese writing, renaming foods) but aside from that they seemed to largely be faithful with adapting the scripts and dialog more often than not. Music replacement wasn't present to a significant degree in the early years, and the most that was done was adding original music mixed in with the original score where silence was in the Japanese version so it wasn't like the massive rewriting and score replacement going on with DBZ prior to that. Sure, 4Kids snipped out frames and cut small bits of scenes here and there plus of course certain eps not getting dubbed for one reason or another (Legend of Dratini, Cyber Soldier Porygon.etc) but on the whole it's easy to see why early Pokemon was and is considered one of their better regarded dubs for the time.

But yeah, the One Piece fiasco and losing the Pokemon license in 2006 was the real blow that ultimately caused 4Kids to crash and burn.
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Re: Why did 4Kids One Piece FAIL while Funimation's Dragon Ball succeeded?

Post by Hellspawn28 » Fri Dec 03, 2021 1:37 am

Pokemon is a easier anime to edit and localize than Dragon Ball was. That's probably why the dub was consider to be better than what Funimation was doing.
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Re: Why did 4Kids One Piece FAIL while Funimation's Dragon Ball succeeded?

Post by Adamant » Fri Dec 03, 2021 4:34 am

Hellspawn28 wrote: Fri Dec 03, 2021 1:37 am Pokemon is a easier anime to edit and localize than Dragon Ball was. That's probably why the dub was consider to be better than what Funimation was doing.
Or maybe it was just because it was pretty well done by that era's standard, while the Dragonball Z dub was utter garbage.
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Re: Why did 4Kids One Piece FAIL while Funimation's Dragon Ball succeeded?

Post by SuperSaiyaManZ94 » Fri Dec 03, 2021 4:45 am

Hellspawn28 wrote: Fri Dec 03, 2021 1:37 am Pokemon is a easier anime to edit and localize than Dragon Ball was. That's probably why the dub was consider to be better than what Funimation was doing.
Yes, and not to mention the absolute bomb on bomb hype train that it had here at the time. DBZ had a pretty good following and decent ratings during is almost three year syndicated run itself but the big success really came once it was placed on Toonami in mid 1998. Funny how Pokemon also started out that way as well for the first few months of airing before KidsWB picked up the broadcast rights to the show in early '99 and it just exploded from there. Also agreed with it being simpler to adapt because compared to Dragon Ball there wasn't a ton of overly violent stuff that needed to be snipped out.

Also, i think given the time when it was made in the late '90s/early 2000's the early seasons of 4Kids' dub still is a good bit of dubbing work even now.
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Re: Why did 4Kids One Piece FAIL while Funimation's Dragon Ball succeeded?

Post by Fionordequester » Fri Dec 03, 2021 5:23 am

Adamant wrote: Fri Dec 03, 2021 4:34 am Or maybe it was just because it was pretty well done by that era's standard, while the Dragonball Z dub was utter garbage.
Weird how times change, eh?
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Re: Why did 4Kids One Piece FAIL while Funimation's Dragon Ball succeeded?

Post by Adamant » Fri Dec 03, 2021 5:36 am

Fionordequester wrote: Fri Dec 03, 2021 5:23 am
Adamant wrote: Fri Dec 03, 2021 4:34 am Or maybe it was just because it was pretty well done by that era's standard, while the Dragonball Z dub was utter garbage.
Weird how times change, eh?
Not really, Pokemon is still pretty well dubbed by 1998 standards while Dragonball Z dubs are still garbage.
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Re: Why did 4Kids One Piece FAIL while Funimation's Dragon Ball succeeded?

Post by MasenkoHA » Fri Dec 03, 2021 9:00 am

Adamant wrote: Fri Dec 03, 2021 4:34 am
Hellspawn28 wrote: Fri Dec 03, 2021 1:37 am Pokemon is a easier anime to edit and localize than Dragon Ball was. That's probably why the dub was consider to be better than what Funimation was doing.
Or maybe it was just because it was pretty well done by that era's standard, while the Dragonball Z dub was utter garbage.
But Hellspawn is right. Pokemon had far less problematic content to edit. That’s not an excuse for how bad Dragon Ball Z’s dub could be but it does make 4Kids job easier.




It was a respectable dub in 1998 but it was also the peak of 4kids quality. Funimation matched it by 2001/2002 and then surpassed it pretty quickly after


And even in its golden years you still had the most awkward attempts of culture erasure ever.

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Re: Why did 4Kids One Piece FAIL while Funimation's Dragon Ball succeeded?

Post by Shiningboltsurge » Sat Dec 04, 2021 8:41 am

MasenkoHA wrote: Fri Dec 03, 2021 9:00 am
Adamant wrote: Fri Dec 03, 2021 4:34 am
Hellspawn28 wrote: Fri Dec 03, 2021 1:37 am Pokemon is a easier anime to edit and localize than Dragon Ball was. That's probably why the dub was consider to be better than what Funimation was doing.
Or maybe it was just because it was pretty well done by that era's standard, while the Dragonball Z dub was utter garbage.
But Hellspawn is right. Pokemon had far less problematic content to edit. That’s not an excuse for how bad Dragon Ball Z’s dub could be but it does make 4Kids job easier.




It was a respectable dub in 1998 but it was also the peak of 4kids quality. Funimation matched it by 2001/2002 and then surpassed it pretty quickly after


And even in its golden years you still had the most awkward attempts of culture erasure ever.
This and the the shady international finance merchandising residual fraud stuff is how they got blacklisted from even the Japanese companies themselves and died

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Re: Why did 4Kids One Piece FAIL while Funimation's Dragon Ball succeeded?

Post by MasenkoHA » Sat Dec 04, 2021 9:24 am

Did you…delete your post just to repost the exact same thing?

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Re: Why did 4Kids One Piece FAIL while Funimation's Dragon Ball succeeded?

Post by NitroEX » Sat Dec 04, 2021 10:46 am

4Kids are often the punching bag of anime communities but back in the late 90s Funimation wasn't any better, the key difference was that 4Kids were adapting shows solely for kids television whereas Funimation mostly abandoned that strategy in favour of the teen/YA home video market. The two weren't really comparable by the late 2000s as they were essentially catering to two completely different audiences.

For all their faults, 4Kids did at least try to uphold a certain level of quality to their dubbing during the Pokemon and early Yugioh era. They hired talented actors in New York, a lot of whom seemed to have theatre acting experience and could lend those skills to their anime roles. Jay Goede in particular gave a great performance as Mewtwo during a time when nobody expected much from anime dubs, and it still holds up today without coming off as cheesy or hokey. The replacement music in the 4Kids dubs was also often of a standard that you'd expect from US television with lots of variety including some orchestra. The first Pokemon movie is still easily one of the best replacement scores ever created for an anime.

Funimation during the same period were mostly still doing things with a cost-cutting mindset, from scouting local talent with little to no acting experience or hiring Faulconer who essentially helped create music that sounded like something off of Newgrounds at the time. The difference in production quality might not have been clear to kids but it's easy to see why older anime fans could recognize and appreciate the effort and money 4Kids were putting into the creative decisions of their dubs. Now somewhere along the way that effort seemed to decrease and Funimation undoubtedly got better and became more preferable in terms of scripts and music taking a more faithful approach, but 4Kids did initially set a very high bar for English anime adaptations so I find it hard to say they were always bad. When they stopped dubbing Pokemon the dub quality immediately declined and didn't recover for years so they were clearly doing something right.

I wouldn't go as far as to say 4Kids should have dubbed Dragon Ball, I think they'd have messed that up similar to One Piece and we probably wouldn't have gotten an uncut dub had their version succeeded. It was really only Pioneer who had the right idea for Dragon Ball at that time, which was making it uncut for home video. Funimation sort of went that direction but half-assed it with a rather cheap and thrown together uncut dub that doesn't really hold up under scrutiny.

I don't know or care much about One Piece to judge that show but it's obvious that the Funimation version is at least is truer to the original. I don't think that really matters one bit to the casual television viewer (particularly kids who are largely oblivious) but for the anime home video market, it matters a lot. If I had to guess why the initial version of One Piece "failed" (and I'm even sceptical it did) it was probably just down to the look of the show. I certainly thought One Piece had a strange look to it when I first saw it.
Shiningboltsurge wrote: Sat Dec 04, 2021 8:41 am This and the shady international finance merchandising residual fraud stuff is how they got blacklisted from even the Japanese companies themselves and died
As far as I can tell, it doesn't seem as though they died completely. They were acquired by Konami and now seem to only handle the English side of the Yu-Gi-Oh franchise under the name Konami Cross Media NY.

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Re: Why did 4Kids One Piece FAIL while Funimation's Dragon Ball succeeded?

Post by DBZAOTA482 » Sat Dec 04, 2021 12:48 pm

4kids did okay with Pokemon because it was already made with young children in mind. One Piece is more for older kids and teens so if they got Dragon Ball, they'd fuck it up just as bad. I mean, the dubs for Yu-gi-Oh! is even more heavily edited and localized.
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Re: Why did 4Kids One Piece FAIL while Funimation's Dragon Ball succeeded?

Post by Dragon Ball Ireland » Sat Dec 04, 2021 1:26 pm

Fun question, but if 4Kids did dub Dragon Ball what do people imagine the cast would look like? I was thinking perhaps something like this:

Goku - Veronica Taylor or Matthew Labyorteaux
Vegeta - Marc Thompson
Gohan - Wayne Grayson for adult, Tara Jayne Sands for kid
Piccolo - Scottie Ray
Tenshinhan - David Brimmer
Yamcha - Gregory Abbey
Krillin - Wayne Grayson
Chi-Chi - Lisa Ortiz
Bulma - Amy Birnbaum
Oolong - Kayzie Rogers
Puar - Rachael Lillis
Roshi - Stuart Zagnit
Shenron/Porunga - Dan Green
Freeza - Maddie Blaustein
Cell - Eric Stuart
Boo - Michael J Haigney for fat and kid, Eric Stuart for Super
Do you have any info about international non-English broadcasts about the Dragon Ball anime or manga translations/editions? Please message me. Researching for a future book with Dragon Ball scholar Derek Padula :thumbup:

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Re: Why did 4Kids One Piece FAIL while Funimation's Dragon Ball succeeded?

Post by Adamant » Sat Dec 04, 2021 8:02 pm

DBZAOTA482 wrote: Sat Dec 04, 2021 12:48 pm I mean, the dubs for Yu-gi-Oh! is even more heavily edited and localized.
And just like Dragonball, it ended up with a secondary fanbase of kids that grew up on it, which insisted that dub WAS good and a massive improvement over the shitty original.
The idea that this somehow wouldn't have happened to One Piece had 4Kids stuck with it is ludicrous. Of course it would have.
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Re: Why did 4Kids One Piece FAIL while Funimation's Dragon Ball succeeded?

Post by Hellspawn28 » Sat Dec 04, 2021 8:08 pm

4kids was still wans't as bad as Harmoy Gold was. HG still refuses to let go the Marcoss IP depsite not doing anything new with Robotech in news. HG's influence on Robotech would later help inspire Saban's influence on Power Rangers consdering that both shows edited three unrelated shows into one Frankenstein creation.
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Re: Why did 4Kids One Piece FAIL while Funimation's Dragon Ball succeeded?

Post by WittyUsername » Sun Dec 05, 2021 2:44 am

Adamant wrote: Sat Dec 04, 2021 8:02 pm
DBZAOTA482 wrote: Sat Dec 04, 2021 12:48 pm I mean, the dubs for Yu-gi-Oh! is even more heavily edited and localized.
And just like Dragonball, it ended up with a secondary fanbase of kids that grew up on it, which insisted that dub WAS good and a massive improvement over the shitty original.
The idea that this somehow wouldn't have happened to One Piece had 4Kids stuck with it is ludicrous. Of course it would have.
In the case of the Yu-Gi-Oh dub, I haven’t heard very many people who consider it a genuine improvement over the original. It definitely has fans, but that seems to be more for the memes (which LittleKuriboh largely contributed to) and the cheese factor associated with it, than any genuine belief that it was some work of art.

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Re: Why did 4Kids One Piece FAIL while Funimation's Dragon Ball succeeded?

Post by MasenkoHA » Sun Dec 05, 2021 2:54 am

I know opinion of the 4Kids Yu-gi-oh dub shifted from “This is really bad, like overtly sanitized with horrendously bad dialog and ill fitting voices” to “The dub is good actually, one of 4Kids best efforts!” over the years but I don’t think the fans ever developed the hate boner for the Japanese dub the way American Ball Zeeee fans do.

Goku’s Japanese voice being the main point of criticism from fans of the American dub but also Funimation putting the Japanese music back in their dub of Z, even though fans of the dub score can literally switch to the dub music.

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Re: Why did 4Kids One Piece FAIL while Funimation's Dragon Ball succeeded?

Post by Adamant » Sun Dec 05, 2021 3:19 am

MasenkoHA wrote: Sun Dec 05, 2021 2:54 am I know opinion of the 4Kids Yu-gi-oh dub shifted from “This is really bad, like overtly sanitized with horrendously bad dialog and ill fitting voices” to “The dub is good actually, one of 4Kids best efforts!” over the years but I don’t think the fans ever developed the hate boner for the Japanese dub the way American Ball Zeeee fans do.
I'm not really much of a Yugioh fan, so all I have is random anecdotes, but I've definitely seen my share of comments along the lines of "the show is only watchable dubbed, the original is too edgy and tryhard and takes itself too seriously".
When you grossly misrepresent a product when presenting it to people unfamiliar with it, those people are going to treat your misrepresentation as "what the product is like" and the actual product as "weird and different". Especially when you bring nostalgia into the mix.
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