Hi I'm Dranzerstorm
You may remember me as a regular contestant on the caption battle contest.
Welcome to Retro Retrospective, my world dedicated to the old guard of the Otaku world; expect some reviews of the old & obscure, and in-depth geeky knowledge with the occasional top ten and I now have a logo.
Little info about me
Well I'm British and I'm in to all things animated and nostalgia.
I've grown up with every cartoon going and have watched hundreds of anime.
Oh and to answer a question I was asked once, no I don't wear glasses in real life, I would wear Loke's sunglasses though.
To end my run of bad translations I'll end with a top 10 worst 4Kids Anime. Same rules as previous ones, I cannot put down what I haven't seen and for this feature I shall not be putting Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh! on this list because they were actually good and I've not seen Zexal. So let us begin the top 10 worst 4Kids Anime. Trust me it'll be worst than invisible guns
10. Pretty Cure
Rated quite low due to the fact that it mostly works well with 4Kids but at the same time it's European Translations are way more superior.
9. Shaman King
4Kids tried to release an uncut version of Shaman King on dvd but failed miserably but one thing that stands out for me was a scene that was supposed to be censored but 4Kids forgot. Anna defeated both the red & blue ogres which causes Hao to bleed from his forehead, 4Kids forgot to censor it.
8. Ultimate Muscle
The series itself was already silly to begin with but at least watchable, it remains as a lost gem of tv anime but I can also see why people hate it.
7. F-Zero
This surprisingly worked well but nothing in the dub could ever rival the epic Falcon Punch Scene. The dub will never make that scene epic.
6. Kirby
Kirby doesn't talk. Good!
Everyone else does. Bad!
Yes the voice acting was enough to ruin some perfectly good ears.
5. Dinosaur King
I can forgive 4Kids for wanting to license a Dinosaur anime because nothing says kids like Dinosaurs but it felt like watching a poor mans Pokemon. For every nice design there was horrible dialogue and ear grating misery.
4. Fighting Foodons
I'll sum up this show with this.
I've suddenly got a stomachache.
3. One Piece
Everyone knows how bad this dub was. The Rap Music, the stupid edits, the horrible script. The only reason this isn't number one is that, at least this anime was saved by Funimation.
2. Tokyo Mew Mew
This was unforgivable. The fact that they weren't even allowed to keep the Tokyo part of this show was worst than renaming all the characters. This is why Magical Girl shows are dying in the west. This is why were stuck with Winx Club.
1. Sonic X
But nothing did more damage to a franchise than this. I've always wanted a proper Sonic anime but what we got was this putrid pile of mess. Sega abandoned the console race, Sonic's established voice actor was gone, it took years before Sonic would ever have even a half decent game ever again. The American cartoons are Oscar worthy compared to this, even Zelda Wand of Gamelon is better than this. I would carry on but this is a PG-13 post and the language I want to use is very unpleasant.
So that's your lot, be glad 4Kids are bankrupt so they can't ruin anymore shows.
I am from the United Kingdom, so getting anime is easy as we don't need to re-dub the series we receive from America and we can sometimes borrow licensing from France for more hard to come by stuff, but that's not to say that we didn't try dubbing, so I am here to share an urban legend with you. This is the tale of the All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku OVA British Dub. (Try saying that after a few drinks)
I'll do a proper review of the series later on, but lets review what we have so far. We British don't do things by half so when we picked up this obscure title back in the VHS era in the early 90s (it may even pre-date the American release), we did a full new opening theme and we were keen on giving the characters the most strongest accents we could give, thick Scottish and plenty of cockney, in fact some voices aren't that bad but with so little to work with and hardly any experience of dubbing it's almost like looking at Samurai Pizza Cats. (Another series for later on)
Just to prove this really does exist, take a look.
You can even do a comparison and decide which is better, in fact the guy who posted it had the full list of companies before the feature starts, that's a real classic VHS.
To give you a fair idea how obscure this title is, Anime News Network don't even have the credits listed and videos are so obscure I'm convinced that this guy has the only copy. So there you have it, the British have attempted dubbing before, I'm just glad they didn't try anymore, however I do like the idea of Naruto with a thick Scottish accent.
As I said in my Saban Moon feature, there was another series that had the same awful treatment. This is the story of the Americanized Gundam Series Doozy Bots.
It's probably better to see for yourself how bad this is.
The story goes that Sunrise wanted to bring the Gundam franchise to the States but were blocked with the simple problem that at the time, 1991 to be exact, Gundam wasn't exactly the most child friendly series in the world, even the over the top G Gundam would have to wait until the Dragonballz era before getting TV coverage. Sunrise then remembered that over the past three years they had developed SD Gundam, a series of five OVAs played over three years as a child friendly alternative to the kill frenzy that was the original series, so it was decided that it would use that to create an American equivalent but the results sadly ended up as a McDonalds style super fun kids cartoon with a serious amount of cliche characters. We have a Wacky Scientist, Wacky Scientist daughter that may become the love interest of the main character, a Jock, a token female, a fat guy, a skater/surfer boy, a black guy that is also disabled and two kids who always get involved with one of them unfortunately called Tagalong, wow that's cruel, his role in this is actually his name. As for the villains they are escapees of the Scientist who want to ruin fun.
I don't know what's worst. The fact that they even attempted this or the fact that Sunrise actually made it themselves; At least with Saban Moon, Toei at least had the decency to go with a dub, this is just fail. And it's based on SD Gundam! A series which according to Anime News Network is the second worst anime series ever, only an OVA named Hametsu no Mars is worst.
I'm glad this never made a series but sad that it was actually made and it's because of this that we had to wait so long for a decent Gundam series and thankfully Gundam Wing delivered.
90s may have delivered the best of cartoons but they also delivered the worst, let this be a lesson to those making cartoons now.
Everyone knows Dragonball and it's sequels far too well but what if I was to tell you that long before the series ever became a household name in the west, an attempt was made to dub the original series as early as 1989.
This is the story of Harmony Gold's Dragonball.
First some background on the company; Harmony Gold is an 80s tv production & distribution company; it didn't produce much in the way of decent programming but did a fine job with the Robotech series, largely known as their only success story. It's other anime were mostly unknowns but did manage to release Leiji Matsumoto's Captain Harlock & Queen Millennia, along with the Minky Momo film, the first episode of Dr Slump and the subject of this urban legend, the Original Dragonball.
Now for die hard fans of this series, I warn you now that the information I'm about to type is more painful than the live action Dragonball film, so read with caution.
The story goes that Harmony Gold dubbed five episodes and two of the three films during their attempt to release the series, but sadly it failed to find an audience and the show was immediately cancelled before seeing the light of day with only the movies surviving in VHS form and are on the list of rarest anime finds along with the Nuku Nuku British Dub.
Now the painful bit; while the series wasn't edited that much the names were changed. Yes I said it, the names were changed. It's not unusual for it to happen but take a look at these changes.
Goku called Zero/Bulma called Lena/Oolong called Mao Mao/Yamcha called Zedaki/Puar called Squeaker/Krillin called Bongo/Launch called Marilyn/Tien called Shinto/Shenron called Dragon God/Korin called Whiskers the Wonder Cat.
I wish I was joking, that's what all the cast were called; Roshi, Tao & Chaotzu escaped the name change which is a relief, I dread to think what name Chaotzu would've got.
Well that's the story, Dragonball had a worst dub but I can't honestly say I was that impressed with Ocean's dub of Dragonballz, Goku on his own went through three voice actors before Funimation took over. Some elements were good like Vegeta's infamous over 9000 line, but others like the tv releases of the first three films were horrific. Let that be a lesson to all western companies, never buy a license on hindsight that the dub would actually work.
Time for another half-hearted attempt at a 90s anime as we dive into the obscure Jewel BEM Hunter Lime.
This definitely has a 90s feel when you know that Atsuko Nakajima is the one in charge of animation design. If you don't know who that is, she's the one behind the animation design for Ranma 1/2, but if you still don't know she does Key Animation for Bleach.
We start off the show as two demons chase another demon who has stolen some multicolor jewels, something goes wrong and the jewels get lost in the human world and turn into Big Eyed Monsters which is what the abbreviation means in the title. Before we go further I must make a point that this OVA was cancelled after 3 episodes so it's unfinished anyway so as not to point out the ending because there isn't one.
The two demons, Bass & Lime search for these monsters which take on the form of the vengeful spirits of forgotten items.
That idea is interesting, it makes a change to see demonic possession take on items instead of humans, it makes for some interesting stories but when you actually see the items that are taken on and what these monsters look like, your in for some disappointment, these monsters are laughable and the second monster doesn't even fight. In fact it's better to describe each one.
1. A candle angry at the world for turning to light bulbs.
2. A purse full of money who is meant to be angry at the world for turning to credit cards but forgets what to do
3. A syringe angry at the world because people keep getting scared of needles.
There was a planned monster shaped like a Daikon but it never made an episode.
To be honest that's it. I don't have much to work with on this one in terms of plot, so I'll move on to characters.
Now Lime's basic functions are all to do with fan service and it's made even more obvious by the fact that she has her own disguise power which she exploits to full effect, the American DVD release even has a fun dress-up game as an extra. Bass on the other hand is strangely well spoken for a demon and strangely reserved for someone who has to spend all day with a sexy partner, even during an ecchi scene when he's describing fondling to the Purse Monster he still maintains a sense of dignity, that's rare for a character when it's easier to just draw a pervert. The other characters are mostly forgettable, being rehashes of 80s archetypes including the over the top manly girl character.
There's a lot of nice ideas in this OVA but building a fan service series from a plot that almost passes for a pre-school show isn't really going to pass, especially during an era where the best were or already had been created.
Final Verdict: It's not a strong attempt at a series, it's ideas would work under different guidance, otherwise it's just forgettable; the name is hard enough to remember.
