| In 2004 or 2005, ADV launched Ghost Stories and it is considered to be by fans to be the most funniest dub ever because the original Japanese version was claimed to be a flop in Japan so the producers told ADV to create a dub as long the characters’ name, story’s plot, and the setting was kept. The result was by fans one of the most polarizing and most funniest dubs ever made. On the other hand, 4kids tried to do the same thing to their dubs as, but fans find the jokes vexatious and intolerable to the eyes and ears. Fans find the 4kids dubs of the shows that they licensed insufferable to them in advance. So why did people praise the Ghost Stories dub for deviating from the source material but bashed 4kids for doing the same thing? |
4kids General Discussion Thread
Ghost Stories doesn't really have a fan base in the US except for the dub. The prominent shows 4Kids dubbed either got so popular that people started seeking out the subs or, like One Piece, already had a bit of a fan base before the dub came out.
Compare Ghost Stories to Funimation's take on Shin Chan, a property which has a bit of a US following although not on the level of One Piece etc. Some like that dub and some don't.
Compare Ghost Stories to Funimation's take on Shin Chan, a property which has a bit of a US following although not on the level of One Piece etc. Some like that dub and some don't.
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Nobody would've cared about Ghost Stories if it didn't have the gag dub, partially because it was kind of a generic show (and how do you market a generic show?). One Piece already had an established fanbase via fansubs and such. That's the difference.
Based on the clips I've seen of the Ghost Stories ADV dub, I wouldn't say that 4Kids tried to do the same thing with their dubs exactly. Ghost Stories' dub was practically an official abridged series with nearly every line being random nonsense or jokes. 4Kids altered lines to add in more jokes and bad dialogue, but not to that degree. The closest might be GX's third season since it practically became a gag dub, but they didn't turn anyone into a born again Christian or throw in swear words.
Most of the series that 4Kids licensed already had a fanbase or became popular enough that people looked into the original Japanese version. Ghost Stories doesn't have anything like that. I wasn't popular in Japan and I don't think its redub from a few years ago got nearly as much attention as its initial ADV dub. Turning One Piece into a gag dub got people upset because it was already well received due to the manga and the Japanese version. People probably wouldn't have minded the 4Kids dubs if they had made the Japanese versions available too. The fact that the only legal way to watch these shows was from their dubs, most of which weren't faithful, didn't help matters either.
Ghost Stories being a flop in Japan turned out to be a myth. It's reaired in Japan multiple times and has gotten strong ratings. ADV just did their own thing because it's for nine-year-olds but has too many demons and panty jokes for the Western sensibility. Fuji said, "Sure, go for it, just stick to these very easy boundaries." (This is crazy considering how often the Japanese licensor won't relent on ridiculous things like very literal English translations that don't make any sense.)
The case with Ghost Stories is also that there were faithful subtitles on the discs. Also, 4kids dubs aren't funny. The only possible exception is this exchange in Shaman King:
"Yeah, and after you bite the dust, good buddy, you can be the tournament mascot! Maybe a kangaroo or a jackass."
"I'm glad we're such good friends or I might have taken offense at that last comment of yours."
The case with Ghost Stories is also that there were faithful subtitles on the discs. Also, 4kids dubs aren't funny. The only possible exception is this exchange in Shaman King:
"Yeah, and after you bite the dust, good buddy, you can be the tournament mascot! Maybe a kangaroo or a jackass."
"I'm glad we're such good friends or I might have taken offense at that last comment of yours."
Neo Ultra Mike
Creeping Shadow of "15000"+ Posts
Quite honestly Dwain345, you have a really off reading in trying to compare the dub of Ghost Stories to the dubs that 4Kids does. Because if you're going to go for a kids show comparison to Ghost Stories, you need to think of something like Samurai Pizza Cats or Duel Masters aka a PARODY dub. You know the dubs that instead of being super faithful translations of the material done in our language add a bunch more jokes and tweak the characters and scenarios played out for additional humor not found in the original source material especially laying heavy on meta humor. Typically these are done for shows the crew realized wouldn't either translate well to the US or sometimes are so enveloped in the original Japanese culture do need to be altered for people to get something out of it over here. Though that's something more like Shin-Chan which Pooky brought up but yeah Ghost Stories is more it's own just full out parody dub that only keeps as much of the original story as it needs to and then just adds in a lot of gags throughout regardless of how much they relate to the original story.
That is NOT what 4Kids really does. You will see some 4Kids show occassionally add more dry references at the expense of the material here and there (yu-gi-oh GX for example) but those are not the same as parody dubs. Because rather due to wanting to edit down or alter the material to make it more family friendsly, 4Kids dubbing was strictly playing mostly just to a young audience whose jokes and bits were meant for them regardless of if they fit the original material or not. And these weren't with series that people wouldn't have cared about or only really worked in their original language but with some rather big hits people had heard about even BEFORE there was talk of a dub. Now granted something like One Piece was more forced on 4Kids and not something they really wanted but that doesn't excuse how they treated the series and is still one of the reasons it seems like only now OP has caught on more in America. But yeah big difference in kiddifying and dumbing down a dub and doing a parody dub of something.
That is NOT what 4Kids really does. You will see some 4Kids show occassionally add more dry references at the expense of the material here and there (yu-gi-oh GX for example) but those are not the same as parody dubs. Because rather due to wanting to edit down or alter the material to make it more family friendsly, 4Kids dubbing was strictly playing mostly just to a young audience whose jokes and bits were meant for them regardless of if they fit the original material or not. And these weren't with series that people wouldn't have cared about or only really worked in their original language but with some rather big hits people had heard about even BEFORE there was talk of a dub. Now granted something like One Piece was more forced on 4Kids and not something they really wanted but that doesn't excuse how they treated the series and is still one of the reasons it seems like only now OP has caught on more in America. But yeah big difference in kiddifying and dumbing down a dub and doing a parody dub of something.
What are your Mr favorite Discotek release of a anime that was licensed by 4kids? Mine would be Shaman King and Sonic X because their voice cast was so popular and so beloved to the point that VSI got most of the original cast of Shaman King 2001 dub back for the 2021 reboot dub and Studiopolis was smart enough to bring back Mike Pollock for Dr Eggman.
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Everyone knows that the 4kids dub of One Piece was the burning topic of the day when it came to bad localizations. I want to find out if the 4kids dub of One Piece was really a big deal to people back in the 2000s. If so, why was it a big deal back then?
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SpecialColorfull
Well-Known Member
You know we need you to name a specific dub, it has to be a dub of SOMETHING. And we have lots of threads on this topic already.
One Piece
Yes, it was a big deal to people back in the 2000s. One Piece was still a pretty popular series when it started in Japan. People had become fans from reading the manga or watching the Japanese version. So 4kids watering down the series so heavily in their dub with bad dialogue, bad edits and poor characterizations did not make fans happy. One Piece just could not fit properly as a Saturday morning cartoon, but 4Kids tried to make it fit regardless. It is largely considered their worst dub, if not their most infamous dub.
The fact that there was no legal way to watch One Piece subbed did not help matters either. It may not have made fans less upset with the 4Kids dub, but being able to watch the series subbed still would have been something to make up for the poor dub quality. Even years later, fans consider that One Piece didn't become hugely popular in the U.S. due to starting off with the 4Kids dub. I'm not sure if it had that much of an impact on its popularity long term. Funimation was still able to redub the portions of the series that 4Kids had covered, the dub is still on-going and clearly the Netflix series became a huge success too. It may not be at DBZ levels of popularity, but One Piece is still a relatively popular and successful series even with starting off with a bad dub.
The fact that there was no legal way to watch One Piece subbed did not help matters either. It may not have made fans less upset with the 4Kids dub, but being able to watch the series subbed still would have been something to make up for the poor dub quality. Even years later, fans consider that One Piece didn't become hugely popular in the U.S. due to starting off with the 4Kids dub. I'm not sure if it had that much of an impact on its popularity long term. Funimation was still able to redub the portions of the series that 4Kids had covered, the dub is still on-going and clearly the Netflix series became a huge success too. It may not be at DBZ levels of popularity, but One Piece is still a relatively popular and successful series even with starting off with a bad dub.
If you mean big deal as in did the average person know about the One Piece 4kids dub, I would say probably not. The show was only on Saturday mornings for around a year. Even though it ran longer than F-Zero GP Legend and Funky Cops, it was still not that big of a hit on the Fox Box.
I think the 4kids dub did better on Toonami, but that is partially just because there were lesser expectations at 10-11 pm on Saturday nights. CN was aiming for a younger audience after previous 10:30 pm shows like Gundam Seed and Rurouni Kenshin were skewing too old for the City era CN. Even though it did well enough to move earlier in the block and air the Alabasta saga that Fox never touched, it alienated the older fans as Toonami became increasingly kid oriented with other 4kids shows like Pokemon Chronicles and Yu-Gi-Oh GX coming next.
I don’t think it did especially well on Miguzi. It came and went within a few months, just like other Toonami shows like Zatch Bell and Megas XLR.
It never really achieved mainstream success in the mid 2000s. At times I would ask in 6th grade about One Piece and they either hated it or didn’t know it existed. No one at that age really hated it for reasons relating to censorship. People just thought it was silly or annoying. Part of that is Oda’s cartoonish art style and part was the obnoxious voices of the 4kids dub. The switch to the FUNimation dub with new voices didn’t really help matters, and the show got cancelled around six months into season three on Toonami.
I think the 4kids dub did better on Toonami, but that is partially just because there were lesser expectations at 10-11 pm on Saturday nights. CN was aiming for a younger audience after previous 10:30 pm shows like Gundam Seed and Rurouni Kenshin were skewing too old for the City era CN. Even though it did well enough to move earlier in the block and air the Alabasta saga that Fox never touched, it alienated the older fans as Toonami became increasingly kid oriented with other 4kids shows like Pokemon Chronicles and Yu-Gi-Oh GX coming next.
I don’t think it did especially well on Miguzi. It came and went within a few months, just like other Toonami shows like Zatch Bell and Megas XLR.
It never really achieved mainstream success in the mid 2000s. At times I would ask in 6th grade about One Piece and they either hated it or didn’t know it existed. No one at that age really hated it for reasons relating to censorship. People just thought it was silly or annoying. Part of that is Oda’s cartoonish art style and part was the obnoxious voices of the 4kids dub. The switch to the FUNimation dub with new voices didn’t really help matters, and the show got cancelled around six months into season three on Toonami.
I’ve been watching the Ultimate Muscle and Shaman King blu-rays. They are two of 4kids’ better dubs. I am especially surprised at some of what Ultimate Muscle got away with, in terms of both violence and sexual innuendo.
Neo Ultra Mike
Creeping Shadow of "15000"+ Posts
From how I understand it, One Piece was actually offered to 4Kids BY Toei themselves due to how well Yu-Gi-Oh had done in America for them. 4Kids actually mostly wanted Ojamjo Doremi (that later got dubbed into Magical DoReMi) wanted a magical girl series to attract a young female audience but Toei only agreed if they wound up taking One Piece as well. Which oddly enough as OP was the bigger brand they actually had to put DoRemi on hold for like a year before even getting to that despite that being the actual show they wanted from the deal.
This is important I feel to bring up because a lot of people do ask why 4kids was given OP considering how much they had to condense the material down and it's because it was asked of them to get a show they wanted that was more in their wheel house. And yeah 4Kids didn't really have a clue the scope of what OP is and how it should be handled thus as a result having to cut down a lot of the content in so many ways just so it could play on Saturday mornings even if yeah it really wasn't that kind of show.
Granted due to the art style and especially in the anime kind of slow beginning it is hard to determine if OP at first could have been a mega level hit. I guess Naruto was and it also had a slow opening but was presented well but Naruto also had a more conventional/easier to generally appeal art style while OP's one that grows on you and first impressions like that are especially important with kids. Still I do feel if better presented OP would have been a bigger hit in the states in it's debut since yeah it's been rather niche for decades and really it's only been with the Netflix series does a more general audience know about it. OP is this humongous deal overseas and though sells well enough in the states, America probably is one of the territories it took the longest to be made a big deal thanks yeah to the dub that split a lot of folks at best. Granted some have fond memories of it but it likely hurt OP's reputation then helped.
This is important I feel to bring up because a lot of people do ask why 4kids was given OP considering how much they had to condense the material down and it's because it was asked of them to get a show they wanted that was more in their wheel house. And yeah 4Kids didn't really have a clue the scope of what OP is and how it should be handled thus as a result having to cut down a lot of the content in so many ways just so it could play on Saturday mornings even if yeah it really wasn't that kind of show.
Granted due to the art style and especially in the anime kind of slow beginning it is hard to determine if OP at first could have been a mega level hit. I guess Naruto was and it also had a slow opening but was presented well but Naruto also had a more conventional/easier to generally appeal art style while OP's one that grows on you and first impressions like that are especially important with kids. Still I do feel if better presented OP would have been a bigger hit in the states in it's debut since yeah it's been rather niche for decades and really it's only been with the Netflix series does a more general audience know about it. OP is this humongous deal overseas and though sells well enough in the states, America probably is one of the territories it took the longest to be made a big deal thanks yeah to the dub that split a lot of folks at best. Granted some have fond memories of it but it likely hurt OP's reputation then helped.
Ghost Stories was the opposite of what 4Kids did--they added as much vulgar humor as possible. They didn't sanitize anything or tone it down for kids; they turned it into a black comedy for adults.
What ADV and 4Kids did is not comparable. At all.
What ADV and 4Kids did is not comparable. At all.
EDIT: This and the above post were from two separate threads that have been merged together. I did not post twice.
It was a big deal. YouTube didn't exist yet, so streaming anime on the Internet was harder back then. The 4Kids dub was the U.S.' first exposure to One Piece in the mainstream. Only certain Internet circles knew about the show before it was eventually licensed and debuted on the Fox Box, and it left a pretty bad first impression to those who were seeing it for the first time. Not only was it poorly produced with the cheesy voice acting, emotional moments ruined by goofy sound effects, and the infamous rap theme, but they also skipped whole arcs.
Add to that the terrible VHS releases--sanitized dub only and no uncut version--and that was the version we were stuck with for a few years. Thankfully, FUNimation would later snag the license and fix all their mistakes, but the damage was done and the show's poor reputation in the States would take time--A LOT of time--to heal.
It was a big deal. YouTube didn't exist yet, so streaming anime on the Internet was harder back then. The 4Kids dub was the U.S.' first exposure to One Piece in the mainstream. Only certain Internet circles knew about the show before it was eventually licensed and debuted on the Fox Box, and it left a pretty bad first impression to those who were seeing it for the first time. Not only was it poorly produced with the cheesy voice acting, emotional moments ruined by goofy sound effects, and the infamous rap theme, but they also skipped whole arcs.
Add to that the terrible VHS releases--sanitized dub only and no uncut version--and that was the version we were stuck with for a few years. Thankfully, FUNimation would later snag the license and fix all their mistakes, but the damage was done and the show's poor reputation in the States would take time--A LOT of time--to heal.
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Ryu's voice was definitely a lot better.
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