I read a rather shocking story on the Anime News Network. It seems that 4kids is being sued by a couple of companies for their own exploitation of the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise. 4kids apparently owes both companies a big chunk of change. For more detailed information, click here. Now I've never been too happy with 4kids. Especially with their dub of 5D's. The voice actress they got for Aki just does not fit the character at all. Quite frankly, I've always thought that 4kids has gone overboard with a lot of the changes that they've made to make the 5D's and the previous shows in the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise more suitable for a younger viewing audience. Then of course we have the thing with the Tokyo Mew Mew anime, but that's another story.

Anyway, now we have 4kids short changing these two companies and making shady Yu-Gi-Oh! home video deals. This is the Upper Deck thing all over again. The bigger question is, what does this mean for the Yu-Gi-Oh! fans here in North America? There's a good chance that once the dust settles with this law suit thing, 4kids will no longer be able to air any show in the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise. It could be that I'm being a bit overdramatic. After all, the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise is quite profitable, mostly because of the card game. There's a good chance that some other company will take over the dub of Yu-Gi-Oh!, though I don't know if that means that they'll have to redub the previous Yu-Gi-Oh! shows. Although with 5D's that'd be an improvement. Anyway, I just needed to rant about this new development. Thanks for reading.