Zoids

[Gary L Thompson]

Re: Zeke, meet Guilemon

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Originally posted by Deltamon
Haven't finished dubbing the last 4 eps you say?

That's funny. Digimon Tamers had to rerun last week because a similar thing had happened (last 4 eps were still being dubbed over). However, we are indeed getting the series finale in 2 weeks from now, and they only teased/annoyed us with a mere two eps instead of the KidsWB-like mixing of eps like we're getting now.


Arguably there are two differences in the situation:

1)Time. Forgetting about the reruns aired on ABCFam for now, Digimon and Zoids have very different timeslots to deal with: While Zoids:CC is stuck in its horrid 6:00-6:30 AM limbo and forced to air once a day (5 times a week), Digimon has been blessed with having to only air twice on Saturday mornings, snuggled between Wild Force, Medabots and Mon Colle Knights. This gives the dubders a weekday to work with rather than a weekend.

2) One is Fox and one is CN. While Fox is notorious for mistreatment of Japan imports in the past, Digimon has been one of the lucky few Animes to survive with but a few proverbial scratches and bruises and has even had scenes unscathed that woul've been removed otherwise in Toonami or even ASA (the Beelzebumon ordeal comes to mind). CN, even with their superior track record, is far from being perfect: With the pressure they had to just show the thing, its no surprise that deadlines have been a tad on the tight side. A shame, too-so far Zoids:CC (and Zoids/Zero before it) seem to have been handled quite nicely dub-wise, with few hardly noticeable edits scattered here and there.


What irony-the FOX has outdone the Cartoon Network hound.

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I don't know why Zoids had to be done under such pressure. We're talking about a three-year-old series, already long in the can (ironically, the 2001 sequel, Zoids Zero, was completed and shown first on CN). This was a situation where they should have taken their leisure dubbing episode 1 through episode 93 before ever airing the series.

In contrast, the job done on Digimon this year seems mighty impressive in retrospect. When Digimon 03 AKA Digimon Tamers started airing in April of last year, Fox followed with its own episodes a mere five months later. Moreover, apparently trying to complete the series in time to air the climax during May sweeps (evidently they just missed), Fox started airing Digimon twice a day, following the Japanese original by a mere month when the show ended in Japan! Under the circumstances, I'd say their delay of a couple weeks is very forgiveable. Incidentally, since each season of Digimon has started airing here before it ended in Japan, that largely explains why Fox and Saban have been unusually leery about doing too many edits, down to many of the characters' names. Since they didn't know how the story was going to end, they were careful about not doing edits that could be impossible to reconcile with a later story development. Considering the third season was done by the same guy who did Evangelion (which has become a byword for audience-disappointing endings), Fox was running quite a gamble this year, but it seems to have paid off handsomely for them.