Children's Anime dubs: 4kids vs Saban, which was worse?

[Light Lucario]

The latter didn't last long, and Saban is done with Digimon for good.

I'm more surprised with the latter than the former to be honest. Traditional Saturday morning blocks have been outdated for ages, but I thought that Saban would stay interested in Digimon since that was one of their more popular series back in the day. Granted, the quality of the Adventure Tri dubs will probably be better now that Saban isn't involved with the franchise, but it's still a bit of a shame that the franchise couldn't get the same success under them again like what happened with Power Rangers.

 

[PicardMan]

Surprised how little anyone's mentioning Glitter Force. That dub had some weird Americanization. The dub seemed to be inconsistent about editing evidence that the series is set in Japan. The dialogue is not quite 4kids level cheesy, but there is some so bad it's funny cheese in there. Modern Saban has some 4kids-isms.

 

[TheMisterManGuy]

Surprised how little anyone's mentioning Glitter Force. That dub had some weird Americanization. The dub seemed to be inconsistent about editing evidence that the series is set in Japan. The dialogue is not quite 4kids level cheesy, but there is some so bad it's funny cheese in there. Modern Saban has some 4kids-isms.

Yeah, that's what confuses me. They Americanize the first names of all the characters, but they don't bother Americanizing their last names. At least 4kids would make sure every name is Americanized.

 

[PicardMan]

Glitter Breeze got to wear kimonos and Glitter Sunny gets to make okonomiyaki, yet Glitter Lucky once recites the American Pledge of Allegiance and the Textbook Bafoon asked questions that related to American culture and history. I was confused as can be when it came to the anime's setting.

 

[Antonio Bravo]

None. It's Nelvana. Their Dubs of Cardcaptors and Beyblade are so bad and makes me want to change the network.

 

[Zeether]

I'd have to say 4Kids. They had some good dubs (Pokemon, Ultimate Muscle) but then they had ridiculous things like the F-Zero anime and Sonic X (which wasn't exactly great to begin with...)

 

[O-chan]

I had to do a little research before giving my own response. I feel like both played a huge role in making anime more accessible/palatable to the American public. In fact Saban's contributions to Nick Toons back in the 80s set up the very things that would make me love anime. I also feel both had moments in the later years of licensing THAT show that clearly showed they couldn't just license anything and make in work (with Saban it was Escaflowne, with 4Kids it was One Piece). In term of which was worse I'm going to say 4Kids.

With 4Kids I felt they had two distinct "eras". The early Pokemon era where they were mostly competent at promoting and making the show significant to American culture. A lot of the series dub-only music/songs was actually extremely well done (I remember people breaking out into singing the Pokemon Theme at the Closing Ceremonies at the anime con I staff this past year) and they still kept the "soul" of series intact with the likes of Yu-Gi-Oh DM and Shaman King. Then somewhere down the line because of the success of Pokemon Al-Khan developed a god complex on dictating how children's programming works and there was a HUGE quality drop. A lot of the later 4Kids fare had really odd voice acting, distracting slapstick soundtracks and just was nearly unwatchable.

Conversely Saban seemed way more subdued and outside of Escaflowne the worse they got was some odd choices in scripting with the later half of Digimon Adventure through the majority of the second season and even then they didn't feel as "disconnected" as 4Kids in its later years.

 

[Gatomon41]

None. It's Nelvana. Their Dubs of Cardcaptors and Beyblade are so bad and makes me want to change the network.

Having seen 4Kids One Piece.... by comparison at least Cardcaptors kept most of what made the show interesting. One Piece would be a Frakenstiens monster of banality and poor photoshop.

 

[PicardMan]

Is any televised dub worse than 4kids One Piece. I mean back when it aired, it would be humiliating to say you liked the show where a rubber pirate gets threatened by Navy officers with water guns who's best buddies with a chef who loves lollipops.

 

[D-Poet17]

Long story short, when 4kids filed for bankruptcy. Saban Brands created a sock puppet company, which placed a bid to acquire some of 4kids' assets. Konami meanwhile created their own sock puppet company to bid for all of 4kids' assets. The auction closed and the 2 companies came to an agreement. Konami would get 4kids' Yu-Gi-Oh! license, as well as their production studio in Manhattan. Saban would get everything else, including their rights to Cubix and Sonic X, the syndication rights to DBZ Kai, and their Saturday Morning Contract with The CW.

True, but then I have slight disdain for SABAN since all their assets and broadcasting rights somehow later got owned by Disney XD and rumor had it, they really are notorious for laying off workers for no apparent reason other than making money off their company's training lesser talented people to replace the more knowledgeable workers.

Yet I am still a gullible idiot who loves what they end up producing so who am I to judge their (unlawful) practices in comparison to 4K. Even POKEMON surrendered to Disney a month or so back.


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[Mr. Daniel]

4Kids if you count all the tedious errors and edits they made. Plus they're more in infamy.

 

[Orange Mo]

isn't pokemon owned by Konami/Shopro the series?

 

[Mikurotoro92]

i actually don't mind 4-kids especially with pokémon

as for saban i'm only really familiar with power rangers but the newest series on nicktoons took out a LOT of the action elements & replaced it with sappy relationship drama!

what happened to power rangers?

i think it fell victim to seasonal rot like most other long-running kids & non-kids shows!

 

[ShadowBlinky]

isn't pokemon owned by Konami/Shopro the series?

Whatever gave you that idea?

 

[TheVileOne]

I think 4Kids just didn't understand One Piece. They treated it like Pokemon or Yugioh when it was a lot closer to Dragon Ball Z.

 

[Zeether]

Saban kept a LOT of stuff intact in spite of making edits. I was just watching part of Teknoman and I'm not sure if it was the UPN or international version, but a lot of the violence (and blood) was left in as well as a bit of dialogue with a mature joke at the beginning (Noal/Ringo's "hey maybe we could move to a new planet and be like Adam and Eve" line). From what I read on a forum port on Tekno-Mania a large chunk of the episodes were mostly unchanged in the international dub aside from the odd one or two and the final episode being 4 episodes crammed together.

Plus you get Shuki Levy's amazing theme music along with it.

 

[TheVileOne]

I did watch Teknoman on UPN back in the day and it did seem pretty well done and mature for its time.

It didn't really become feasible to start getting uncensored anime so readily accessible until the 00s. I'm not really a fan of a lot of 4Kids or Saban stuff. But some of it did serve as gateways for a lot of fans into more sophisticated anime. So it did its job.

No we can get like 20 different versions of Dragon Ball Z and we can get new shows like Dragon Ball Super completely uncut and unedited. A lot of the original Japanese versions are simulcast straight to the US crowds either through Crunchyroll, Funimation Now or Daisuke.

It took time, but fans have options now.

I'm not a huge Pokemon fan, but back in the idea, it was pretty taboo if you were in middle school or high school to be a fan of it. Now everyone loves it. Even among anime fans, the dub of Pokemon was highly derided and made fun of.

 

[Light Lucario]

I'm not a huge Pokemon fan, but back in the idea, it was pretty taboo if you were in middle school or high school to be a fan of it. Now everyone loves it. Even among anime fans, the dub of Pokemon was highly derided and made fun of.

It was pretty taboo to be a fan of Pokemon back in elementary school for me and that was only a couple of years at most after the games and show came over here. Pokemon has the nostalgia factor to make it kind of cool again for the general crowd. Plus, I think fewer people in general are subscribing to the thought that you're too old to enjoy something like Pokemon. Either that or I just see that argument used a lot less than I used to.

 

[TheVileOne]

While there are things I'm not crazy about with the nostalgia era, I'm definitely on board that it's acceptable to like and be a fan of things like Pokemon now even if you're older. Times have changed to a degree.

But I mean even in the eyes of pop culture, Pokemon was made fun of quite a bit and widely derided as dumb. I'm not saying that was wrong, but let's be honest. In the 1990s, Pokemon was a very easy target, and it made for some low hanging fruit in terms of comedy and parody.

Now the games and cartoons have been around so long, and younger fans have grown up and still like the games, it's OK to be older and like Pokemon now. Nothing wrong with that.