Controversial opinions

[R.O.B.]

DP Brock is voiced by Bill Rogers, that alone makes him inferior to Cilan.

Is Callagy the one that replaced Cathcart? Hate to say but he sucks too from what I heard. I still wonder how we went from Eric Stuart's peak (in the Hoenn episodes) to... what we got after.

What's your favorite dub season?

I think the three Advanced seasons were the peak.

 

[AgedVeteranofShow]

DP Brock is voiced by Bill Rogers, that alone makes him inferior to Cilan.

Is Callagy the one that replaced Cathcart? Hate to say but he sucks too from what I heard. I still wonder how we went from Eric Stuart's peak (in the Hoenn episodes) to... what we got after.

What's your favorite dub season?

I think the three Advanced seasons were the peak.

Lmao.

Yes, and personally I think he peaked in early to mid Johto with the role & that was the best dub James of them all, but I agree even the often maligned one is quite a bit better than people gave it credit for being and was still tolerable— unlike most of what would succeed it for over a decade.

Season 3, Johto Journeys, my favorites are mid Season 1/mid Kanto the end of early Johto for the Anime dub (early Kanto is super rough VA wise as well as stilted to me vs mid Kanto to the end of late AG, and I only really missed the episode titles and slavishly faithful script writing from those episodes). For the Pikachu Shorts, I thought late Johto and early Hoenn/AG were the peak. For the Movies, the triad from AG was the peak pre-TPCi M09 for the dub for me.

 

[JollyYoshi]

The dub of Origins was TRASH. Origins is kinda overrated as a whole but the dub I think gets more praise than deserved.

Yeah, Pokémon Origins isn’t that great when really looking at it. It’s mostly just a rehash of what happened in the games in an art style that is not to my tastes.

Pokémon evolutions definitely has a bit more to offer.

 

[AgedVeteranofShow]

Veronica Taylor's Ash is at its very worst in the first 12 episodes of Kanto, and sounded better for the rest of her entire tenure in the OG English run from Sept 1998-Sept 2006 there. I respect that she was trying to emulate Rica Matsumoto's take, but she actually sounded closer to her once she dropped the stuffy, nasal tone and let it relax post-her pregnancy.

Sarah Natochenny's Ash in Movie 9 and DP005 are the very worst Ash has ever sounded in the entire English run of Pokemon over 25 years: a super deep, gruff voice coupled with wooden, stiff acting. It doesn't fit at all, and I'd argue is worse than Taylor in EP001: if this was her trying to sound like her predecessor or Rica, it sounded like neither.

 

[PokeFanForever1]

DuArt's dub scores sucked in DP, much worse than the later 4Kids dub scores and even the late TAJ synth when they weren't used in random S9-10 eps: it's so incredibly bland, boring, and dry faux-violin/baroquey synth. At least the later 4Kids & TAJ cues have some energy and emotion in them, and generally passion in where they are placed in comparison- the problem was more with how often they were spammed/shoehorned into every scene, but examining them individually, that's my two cents.

DP's dub was worse than BF's dub for a multitude of characters in voice acting, even Ash who is the sole one to improve rather than deteriorate from the prior Series as it goes on of the recast roles-- starts off absolutely godawful and with the same croaky, extremely deep, throat-ripping voice for the first 1/4 of it as he had in the last several BF eps. ("Gettin' Twiggy With It" provides the single-worst performance I ever heard from Ash in the entire 25-year English dub run, I would even take Mastermind Sarah and OG Kayzie over this rendition or "Pokemon, I Choose You!" Veronica Ash).

The XY-JN dubs have many more issues plaguing them besides Ed Goldfarb/Akhil Gopal's music scores and placement: IMO, are on a constant descendance with each passing saga (JN's dub being handled worse than SM's dub, and SM's worse than XY's in turn). The only thing to be better than a prior season or saga in the English dub is the Ultimate Journeys dub opening vs. With You from Master Journeys, to me.


I don't believe it for a second, TPCI is a multi-billion dollar corporation: they're just cheap, and know the Anime is targeted for 5-12 year olds, so can generally get away with cutting corners and making more w/less expenditure via royalties with the dub score as was the case with 4Kids-- to whose credit, never replaced as much of the OST in the mainline Anime dub as TPCi did from 2014 onward at any point. It's to make profit Internationally via distribution, they can afford better & choose not to do so, if TPCI really wanted can easily afford it all IMO.

I actually personally think JN's dub has been handled much better than SM's dub was tbh, both musically and voice actor-wise, tbh in terms of sheer voice talent I don't think the dub's ever been better, can't say the same in terms of music THOUGH I think there has been slight improvement both in terms of the dub music itself for the most part and the amount of tracks kept on a regular basis. Compare Ultimate Journeys to Ultra Legends, we'd be lucky to get 3 jp tracks if that and regularly we would usually get less and in terms of tracks kept we've heard more variety, even tracks you wouldn't expect to be kept normally. Basically Ultra Legends was pretty dire, Ultimate Journeys isn't great or anything in this regard but it's not as bad as that season was! So I do think it is an improvement personally, I do think SM's dub itself was weaker than XY (though I did enjoy it) though!

 

[AgedVeteranofShow]

I actually personally think JN's dub has been handled much better than SM's dub was tbh, both musically and voice actor-wise, tbh in terms of sheer voice talent I don't think the dub's ever been better, can't say the same in terms of music THOUGH I think there has been slight improvement both in terms of the dub music itself for the most part and the amount of tracks kept on a regular basis. Compare Ultimate Journeys to Ultra Legends, we'd be lucky to get 3 jp tracks if that and regularly we would usually get less and in terms of tracks kept we've heard more variety, even tracks you wouldn't expect to be kept normally. Basically Ultra Legends was pretty dire, Ultimate Journeys isn't great or anything in this regard but it's not as bad as that season was! So I do think it is an improvement personally, I do think SM's dub itself was weaker than XY (though I did enjoy it) though!

Fair enough. I will say this, Goldfarb's dub score for JN is at least better than SM's even if I think the dub scores for OS-XY were much better, if nothing else (don't get me started on the Batman theme, I just...and it played like 200+ times in an episode- I'm glad that's gone!).

 

[AgedVeteranofShow]

I actually liked it a lot, too, a lot of people who interact with her only talk about Ash while not paying much attention to her other roles.

I did like her Ash the most out of the dub versions, more than both Kayzie's and Sarah's despite the latter doing the role longest, but her May is pretty underrated (and I love Delia's original dub voice, actually prefer it to Hanako's!).

I still think the DP dub was fairly subpar, is the only place I tend to not agree with most of the fandom these days, outside of the music handling in Seasons 11-12 and silent scenes I was very dismayed at the intros, voice acting & script writing vs the prior dub: other than that I'm aligning well with it (in particular, the preview episodes left me the most bitter & angry as a child, I remember the Claudina, Ash, and Brock scene distinctly from DP002 made me want to punch someone in the face hard for so many reasons- acting, writing, music, it was all dreadful to me compared to prior and that was still the portion of the DP dub where TAJ had the rights for one last Season too IIRC).

This made me cringe really hard, found it:

Brock's finally turned gay!

Because Darklink told me to. Brock has finally lost it after traveling with Ash for so many years.

www.youtube.com

In Japanese, there was no gay joke as it is (disturbing as this is a 15 year old interacting with a 10 year old): this was JCC being typical JCC back then.

He was originally talking about "let's go Ash, I'll be the best Pokemon breeder," the music was different among silence present, and Ash didn't have a gravelly deep as sand voice either. This is a perfect example of where early TPCi had the same problem as early FUNimation DBZ with making your voice deeper and low pitched =/= voice acting (Ash at least stopped the gruff, I wish that was true for his friend...).

 

[ekatheparas]

Real controversial, but I sure do prefer Sarah Natochenny as Ash and Delia (From Sinnoh to Galar+). This doesn't go without reason, however! I honestly preferred how much younger they sounded, and how expressive she did them both! I feel she did the dub puns in a slightly funnier way compared to the older ones (to me, at least).
Veronica Taylor worked phenomenally for the OGs, and Sarah Natochenny was awesome for the newer ones.

 

[AgedVeteranofShow]

Real controversial, but I sure do prefer Sarah Natochenny as Ash and Delia (From Sinnoh to Galar+). This doesn't go without reason, however! I honestly preferred how much younger they sounded, and how expressive she did them both! I feel she did the dub puns in a slightly funnier way compared to the older ones (to me, at least).
Veronica Taylor worked phenomenally for the OGs, and Sarah Natochenny was awesome for the newer ones.

I feel the exact opposite, personally, I thought Ash hit puberty in Sinnoh as the voice was much deeper than prior, and then when I found out he was still 10, I was furious about the recast (it turns out they canned Taylor etc. just to save money, TAJ was a cheaper studio than 4Kids at the time). I strongly to this day prefer Taylor's Delia (Sarah IMO just doesn't fit the motherly role as well, Taylor's was more natural), and still somewhat prefer her Ash, though I heard Natochenny longer (her Ash is IMO better than her Delia, to be fair, I could hear some attempt to drop the super deep, gruff late BF-DP voice by Unova, but nowadays, I feel it's turned into an effeminate, teenager sounding portrayal- I thought she peaked somewhere in late DP-mid BW, but starting going South again in S16 & XY+ is much like the dub, my all time low point).

There's about a third of the fandom who share your opinion, FWIW, but I still prefer the OG after all this time despite Sarah doing so for 17 years to Veronica's 8 years in general: I just think the way Taylor was canned was APPALLING, and she had really perfected her Ash voice by the end into sounding like a normal 10 year old boy with tons of emotions (I even think sometimes she toppled Matsumoto, not a joke) so it really just rubs me the wrong way how they handled that change.

 

[R.O.B.]

Even when he got focus in DP it never added much of anything to his character. I hated the way he came back, and the fact that he came back yet again after leaving... Boy was I glad to find out he was gone! I didn't shed a tear when he departed in DP, as I was already so sure he would come back for BW.

 

[Hidden Mew]

I don't know why people keep complaining about Brock staying for so long when he's been gone from the main cast for over a decade at this point. It isn't even a controversial opinion when it was a major issue people brought up during DP's run. I was fine with Brock staying for as long as he did. He was still likable, had good chemistry with most of the other characters and he still had better focus episodes in both AG and DP than he did in the original series. It was still for the best that they replaced him after DP, but I never had a problem with Brock being part of the cast for so long.

 

[AgedVeteranofShow]

Even when he got focus in DP it never added much of anything to his character. I hated the way he came back...

I agree with this, he came back in AG in Hoenn literally rescuing everyone from a flock of Taillow attacking them at the last second in an epic way, and in BF, he at least rejoined the gang near the end of the Reunion Kanto ep. but with much less fanfare I guess...

And then DP comes, and his reason is borderline stupid for how he got there first because he let his perversion override his friendship hitchhiking in Pewter City, then on top of that he acted like an idiot after she dumped him near Ash to boot (TPCi made it MUCH worse in the dub with Ash sounding like he smoked heavily then- which Sarah DID used to smoke back then, fortunately she probably cut it out around BW & Brock's voice is also very rough/coarse sounding, PLUS on top of all this, you have JCC rewriting the script to make a gay joke ergo "These two men are gonna do it, with or without a good woman at their sides" whereas in Japanese, he said "Let's go Ash, I'm going to be the world's best Pokemon Breeder," etc).

 

[Dr. Gro 3001]

Not sure how controversial this is, but I honestly think anime Giovanni is boring as sin. He spends so much time in the background, sitting in his chair and barking orders to his subordinates. Sure, he had some interesting moments in the past like being involved with the development of Mewtwo and being at the forefront of the Forces of Nature plot in Black and White. But that is all that he really had. He lacks any intrigue that his game and manga counterparts have and just sits around not really doing anything, while his lackeys do the very nebulous goal of "catching all of the Pokemon in the world for Team Rocket."

 

[PokeFanForever1]

Yeah Brock in DP has always felt like a bit of a spare part to me. I do enjoy seeing him but I think him leaving was well overdue so it's not surprising they finally did that at the end of DP.

 

[R.O.B.]

I agree with this, he came back in AG in Hoenn literally rescuing everyone from a flock of Taillow attacking them at the last second in an epic way, and in BF, he at least rejoined the gang near the end of the Reunion Kanto ep. but with much less fanfare I guess...

And then DP comes, and his reason is borderline stupid for how he got there first because he let his perversion override his friendship hitchhiking in Pewter City, then on top of that he acted like an idiot after she dumped him near Ash to boot (TPCi made it MUCH worse in the dub with Ash sounding like he smoked heavily then- which Sarah DID used to smoke back then, fortunately she probably cut it out around BW & Brock's voice is also very rough/coarse sounding, PLUS on top of all this, you have JCC rewriting the script to make a gay joke ergo "These two men are gonna do it, with or without a good woman at their sides" whereas in Japanese, he said "Let's go Ash, I'm going to be the world's best Pokemon Breeder," etc).

The way he came back doesn't even make much sense, Ash had to cross the sea by boat to get there but Brock & that girl (does she even have a name?) got there via truck?

 

[Dr. Gro 3001]

The way he came back doesn't even make much sense, Ash had to cross the sea by boat to get there but Brock & that girl (does she even have a name?) got there via truck?

If we use the logic that Kanto and Sinnoh are connected on the same landmass, it doesn't seem impossible. I could buy someone driving from one country to another via truck as long as there are roads passing through said countries. What I do wonder is if we accept the idea that both regions are on the same landmass, where did Ash depart from? If it was Vermillion City to Twinleaf Town, that would require a very roundabout way to get there.