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.
I've dug up a lot of dirt on bad translations of anime, whether it be the Doozy Bots, Saban Moon or the various useless attempts at dubbing by 4Kids, but what about an example of a good translation. Step forth Nelvana and their take on Medabots.
Nelvana's track record is a bit hit & miss having cut a lot out of Cardcaptor Sakura and sticking to licenses that involve big toy sales such as Bakugan & Beyblade having dubbed every series in both franchises, but compared to it's big business rival 4Kids, at least it understood that these shows were Japanese and that a lot of the original content can pass as long as it made sense. Granted a spinning top game with monsters, a monster marble game, a robot combat game and a quest to find a number of mystical magic cards sounds weird to normal people, at least it didn't try to force Americanisms into it's shows (Like switching a riceball for a sub sandwich) or make stupid edits. (Like the lollipop cigarette)
So here's their first anime attempt Medabots.
We start with Ikki Tenryo (Yes he kept his name) who buys a robot called a Medabot so he can participate in a playground game called Robattling; he ends up buying a smart-mouthed Medabot called Metabee who'd rather do things his own way. The entire series is basically Ikki & Metabee fighting until they either defeat all the villains or become champion of the Robattling World Championship. The series goes through the usual miracle rookie cliche in which they win numerous battles by dumb luck and include other cliches such as the rival you didn't want, the female childhood friend who kinda likes you but doesn't show it, the character of the day and the useless likeable villains; there is even a tournament storyline that takes up much of the final part of the series, along with the "Special Power" that makes the lead character unbeatable and the mysterious character with a sketchy past. You'd think that a series with such obvious cliches wouldn't pass for proper entertainment but you'd be wrong and here's why.
The so called useless villains despite having such dodgy dress sense actually have some dignity, so much so that at various points in the series they fight under their real name rather as a henchman.
The designs of the robots are very original; they may look similar to mini Gundams but I assure you that I've never seen anyone use a proper combination of animals and mechanical design without being goofy or ripping off Megaman.
The comedy timing and dubbing is just perfect; Metabee steals the show with the type of energy and humor which keeps cartoons like Adventure Time on the air. I also have to bring up Mr Referee, a character that has to host every battle that takes place, without him this series is absolutely nothing.
Finally the biggest reason I like this series is that it keeps it's identity, it could've been so easy to Americanize this series but it keeps it's Japanese setting and keeps practically all it's culture and despite some silly stereotypes it's mostly fair to other nations that show up later on.
When I think that tv dubs fail, I look at this and see that they can win.
Final Verdict: This is a classic that shouldn't be missed and exists as an example of good TV Anime.
Warning! The following review will be the manliest review you'll ever read.
You need to be this manly to read this review.
Without further delay here is the review of Little Snow Fairy Sugar
We begin our story in the fictional German town of Muhlenberg, (Based on the actual German town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber) about a young girl named Saga, who is very strict with the idea of a structured routine but things get complicated when a Weather Fairy named Sugar appears before her looking for Twinkle; Saga who is the only one who can see Sugar decides to help Sugar search for this Twinkle.
That's pretty much it, basic plot so lets look more in depth.
The concept of the Weather Fairy is interesting, based on an old European Tale about Sprites who can control the weather. In this production they do so with Musical Instruments, although being named after spices is not really that original.
Saga herself is a very typical Shoujo heroine following a checklist of attributes as follows.
Dead mother, unexplained disappearance of father, a memento of her mother that she treasures, getting angry at other characters and making up later, getting upset when other people don't understand what she's going through, looking & acting weird when it looks like you are talking to someone invisible, two friends you'll never break-up with, a rival you didn't want and finally looking cute & smiley enough to sell this series.
Sugar is a very typical child character following this checklist.
Very curious, eats more than she can handle, looks up to her mother, gullible, throws a tantrum when upset, easily misled by bad people, makes silly mistakes, laughs far too much and looks cute enough to sell this series.
Even the episodes follow a checklist.
Short back story explaining connection to fairies, introduction and meet-up first episode, main character looking strange for a bit, attractive male turns up that steals lead character's heart, falls out with fairy but kisses and makes up afterwards, pointless silly antics, a convenient local event that becomes the focus of the episode, dramatic plot twist which takes away lead character's treasure but is then resolved and finally the series ends with lots of happy crying.
The reason I'm reviewing it like this is because I found this series far too predictable, so much so that I only managed 15 episodes and I pretty much guessed the rest of the series and on a quick run through I was right, the only original part of this series was the hauntingly beautiful ending theme; and with episode titles like "Twinkle-Twinkle, Comfy-Warm, Puffy-Fluffy" it was only a matter of time before I started wearing a pink dress and decorating myself with pretty bows. Although if you're male I challenge you to watch the entire series and still keep your manliness afterwards.
Final Verdict: It's a nice series with a great soundtrack and great story but far too predictable and you'll probably work out everything by halfway.
Having watched Wreck it Ralph on Sunday, (Yeah we in the UK only got it now) I came to a realization that Disney is now an accepted part of geek culture much in the same way as Sci-Fi epics, Video Games, Anime & Comics are, but why is a compan...
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.
