Music An Explanation For Why Japanese Tracks Are Replaced In The Dub

[ii kanji]

For a long time now I have suspected Felipo to be the anime fandom's MVP. Now I know he is. How'd he even find this extract?! Can Hayashi, Goldfarb .et al just be replaced by him please?

 

[FelipoDepot]

For a long time now I have suspected Felipo to be the anime fandom's MVP. Now I know he is. How'd he even find this extract?! Can Hayashi, Goldfarb .et al just be replaced by him please?

Wow I'm hella late but also very touched! Shame I have no musical creative ability, would love a chance to be able to play with the sound assets though pff.

I guess to bump up this topic with something recent, I'm now kinda wondering if TPCi will at least dub or retain SOME of the Koko Insert songs, as they may be pretty integral to the main body of the movie. Hell, "Mori no humming" features no lyrics in ANY language whatsoever! With ALL the Koko theme songs also coming out globally on digital platforms the same day as Japan... really makes me wonder how some of them will pan out in international distribution of the film itself.


View: https://youtu.be/VbBrJN2po0U

 

[Johtoo]

I have a question. The Pokemon Company is in a far different state in 2020 than it was in 2006, where they replaced the dub handlers and ignored most of the original score. TPCI makes billions each year, and one has to wonder why are they still cutting corners? Why does the dub come off as cheap, when they obviously have the finances to fund a stronger localization. I mean, The Pokemon Company is making more money in 2020 than what they were during Pokemania, yet the Dub has never been in a weaker state. I think this is indefensible and there really is no excuse for there being a weak dub with little to no japanese music left in.

 

[FelipoDepot]

I have a question. The Pokemon Company is in a far different state in 2020 than it was in 2006, where they replaced the dub handlers and ignored most of the original score. TPCI makes billions each year, and one has to wonder why are they still cutting corners? Why does the dub come off as cheap, when they obviously have the finances to fund a stronger localization. I mean, The Pokemon Company is making more money in 2020 than what they were during Pokemania, yet the Dub has never been in a weaker state. I think this is indefensible and there really is no excuse for there being a weak dub with little to no japanese music left in.

If I were to make an educated guess, it's less out of cheapness/even greed and moreso... cuz it's proven to work. When the dub cast changed in 2006 there was still a ton of staff behind the scenes that transferred over. Even if the production companies had shifted, the PRACTICES hadn't. And as a result, the dub has essentially remained in the same state (to varying degrees) since the 90s because that 90s production still hasn't ended.
We look at other anime projects from TPC being dubbed nowadays and see them being presented a lot more faithfully from a sound/uncut standpoint, because those are BRAND NEW productions that started in the 21st century with more modern sensibilities when it comes to how to handle their localizations. The main anime if anything, while at times has proven keeping more music can easily work in terms of licensing (TPCi being more than willing to do it), the overuse of wall-to-wall dub cues, if anything, I would assume is from them playing it safe. Why license the JP music to make money off it while still paying some of the returns back to the original owners, for POSSIBLY high revenue, when the dub music can bring them in GUARANTEED high revenue? Like it really sucks for sure, and by all means TPCi should not be seeing it as a risk at all in 2021 to be just... leaving the music alone, but from a super safe overprotective standpoint... I sorta understand the possible reasoning behind still holding onto such an outdated business practice, because for them that's playing it safe, and it works.

To be honest I'd have more faith in the dub keeping the music entirely if they were to somehow impossibly shut down production today and start over completely as a modern dub, but I don't see that being possible until whenever the day would come for the anime to properly end for good. But that's all just my musings, lord knows I could be missing something major lol

 

[Johtoo]

If I were to make an educated guess, it's less out of cheapness/even greed and moreso... cuz it's proven to work. When the dub cast changed in 2006 there was still a ton of staff behind the scenes that transferred over. Even if the production companies had shifted, the PRACTICES hadn't. And as a result, the dub has essentially remained in the same state (to varying degrees) since the 90s because that 90s production still hasn't ended.
We look at other anime projects from TPC being dubbed nowadays and see them being presented a lot more faithfully from a sound/uncut standpoint, because those are BRAND NEW productions that started in the 21st century with more modern sensibilities when it comes to how to handle their localizations. The main anime if anything, while at times has proven keeping more music can easily work in terms of licensing (TPCi being more than willing to do it), the overuse of wall-to-wall dub cues, if anything, I would assume is from them playing it safe. Why license the JP music to make money off it while still paying some of the returns back to the original owners, for POSSIBLY high revenue, when the dub music can bring them in GUARANTEED high revenue? Like it really sucks for sure, and by all means TPCi should not be seeing it as a risk at all in 2021 to be just... leaving the music alone, but from a super safe overprotective standpoint... I sorta understand the possible reasoning behind still holding onto such an outdated business practice, because for them that's playing it safe, and it works.

To be honest I'd have more faith in the dub keeping the music entirely if they were to somehow impossibly shut down production today and start over completely as a modern dub, but I don't see that being possible until whenever the day would come for the anime to properly end for good. But that's all just my musings, lord knows I could be missing something major lol

I personally have little qualms with the voice acting (barring Cathcart), but the Pokemon company owns every score from the games. Why not orchestrate those? It is somewhat amusing that Goldfarb's disastrious music could bring in such a high amount of revenue, however, I would be interested to see what would happen if Netflix brought the global rights to the anime. If so, then TCPI cannot possibly sell its dub score anymore and if Goldfarb's music does persist, it would tell us that they have been cheap the entire time. TCPI are obviously aware of the importance of keeping the score, as seen in the movies retaining them, but if they're going to remove it from the anime, at least orchestrate the soundtrack from the games. They own the rights to it, and it's weird that they are not using it at all. Hell, throw in Let's Go Pikachu's soundtrack and it would already be a huge improvement, lol.

 

[WatcherMark]

I still remember how BW started off with all the BGM intact for the first five episodes, and even afterwards, wasn't nearly as heavy-handed with replacing it as it is now. I can see why they do it, but I wish they handled it the same way done with BW.

The reason this occured, I believe, was that TPCi hadn't expected the show to suddenly bin all of the music they'd used for the past decade but now they'd done it they felt compelled to follow suit and had no new tracks ready for the first few episodes.

I still remember those first, hopeful episodes when it looks like TPCi had actually decided to leave the music alone (the JP/US music ratio was actually improving in the former's favour at this point).

 

[Dogasu]

It is somewhat amusing that Goldfarb's disastrious music could bring in such a high amount of revenue

But does it though? I feel like if this "make new music so we can charge royalties for it" business model was so lucrative then other companies would be shamelessly ripping it off. Yet the number of English dubs who have replacement soundtracks in the year 2021 is at an all-time low.

The replacement soundtrack obviously earns TPCi enough money for them to keep shelling out the money to have new songs made, but beyond that?

 

[FelipoDepot]

But does it though? I feel like if this "make new music so we can charge royalties for it" business model was so lucrative then other companies would be shamelessly ripping it off. Yet the number of English dubs who have replacement soundtracks in the year 2021 is at an all-time low.

The replacement soundtrack obviously earns TPCi enough money for them to keep shelling out the money to have new songs made, but beyond that?

Hence why I think it's being done more out of tradition and "playing it safe" than really much else at this point. The dub music being so excessive nowadays too could weigh in favor for it not being all too lucrative by itself, could be them trying to squeeze more potentially out of it

 

[kantoskies]

If I were to make an educated guess, it's less out of cheapness/even greed and moreso... cuz it's proven to work. When the dub cast changed in 2006 there was still a ton of staff behind the scenes that transferred over. Even if the production companies had shifted, the PRACTICES hadn't. And as a result, the dub has essentially remained in the same state (to varying degrees) since the 90s because that 90s production still hasn't ended.
We look at other anime projects from TPC being dubbed nowadays and see them being presented a lot more faithfully from a sound/uncut standpoint, because those are BRAND NEW productions that started in the 21st century with more modern sensibilities when it comes to how to handle their localizations. The main anime if anything, while at times has proven keeping more music can easily work in terms of licensing (TPCi being more than willing to do it), the overuse of wall-to-wall dub cues, if anything, I would assume is from them playing it safe.

This actually makes a lot of sense, especially when you consider that other animated Pokemon projects (Twilight Wings, Generations, Origins) don't have this problem in their dubs. I assume they have different teams working on them since the regular dub staff is busy working on the main series. But since it's all part of the same company, if TPCI needed the dub music revenue in any way surely these dubs would have been forced to replace the music too, right? It really does seem like some higher-ups are fixated on always replacing the background music.

It still doesn't explain why the amount of original BGM/silence being kept has fluctuated so much over the years- why did season 13 keep so much silence and 14 kept an all-time high of roughly 90% of the original score, why have the films across both dubs gone back and forth on replacing the score- but at least we have a better idea of why it's still a problem after all these years.

 

[Norzan]

It also explains why Yu-Gi-Oh (who Stuart also worked on) and Digimon also changed a majority, if not all, of their musical scores too; it's a practice they kept, I guess.

As an avid watcher of Yu-Gi-Oh, the dub score sucks compared to the japanese score, even if the dub has some solid tunes here and there. The worst case is probably 5DS which has arguably the best score in the entire franchise, but all that got replaced with far inferior music.

Even if i understand why they did it, it still feels wrong having all that great music be replaced with far inferior music.

 

[uncutpokemon]

Hypothetical question here. If the people at Pokemon decided to start a gofundme (or any similar online donation sites) where if they get enough money they'll agree to start keeping the original OST in the show, and if they get even more they might even start giving us English covers of the Japanese openings/endings, would you actually donate? I'm curious here.

 

[Johtoo]

Hypothetical question here. If the people at Pokemon decided to start a gofundme (or any similar online donation sites) where if they get enough money they'll agree to start keeping the original OST in the show, and if they get even more they might even start giving us English covers of the Japanese openings/endings, would you actually donate? I'm curious here.

Stuff that. The Pokemon Company makes billions each year and could easily afford to keep the Japanese soundtrack. The reason they don't is they're either cheap or they're trying to make more money off it.

 

[Pkmndub]

There are only 3 dubs that I know of that continue to do dub music in 2021 (Pokemon, Yugioh, and Bakugan). Only Konami has provided an "official" reason, with their press release for VRAINS on Pluto TV stating that the replacement music was for "American audiences", which John Loeffler back in the day claimed was the reasoning too.

Also keep in mind Eric Stuart has been off the show for 15 years now, while his reasons are most likely the reason TPCi does so, other things might've changed too. Goldfarb once said on Twitter it was "liscensing issues". So *shrug*

 

[Johtoo]

There are only 3 dubs that I know of that continue to do dub music in 2021 (Pokemon, Yugioh, and Bakugan). Only Konami has provided an "official" reason, with their press release for VRAINS on Pluto TV stating that the replacement music was for "American audiences", which John Loeffler back in the day claimed was the reasoning too.

Also keep in mind Eric Stuart has been off the show for 15 years now, while his reasons are most likely the reason TPCi does so, other things might've changed too. Goldfarb once said on Twitter it was "liscensing issues". So *shrug*

There is still no excuses. Even if (and that is a big If) TCPI wanted to use their own musical score for the international dub for westernization purposes, they should have done it better. TCPI has access to the entire catalogue of Video Game music, yet they don't use it at all. They are also a billion dollar company and could easily afford a composer who uses real instruments, yet they don't. The issue isn't replacing the music for me, the issue has always been how cheap the dub soundtrack has always come off. They have the means to produce a much stronger soundtrack, and they choose not to do it and should be criticized for that.

 

[AxelJade]

I don't know if anyone here is still seeking answers, but I do think I can contribute here. A YouTuber by the name of TheCartoonGamer8000 did a video on the history of Pokémon's dubbing process, and it does provide a little extra insight into why the musical score is replaced, especially today.


View: https://youtu.be/FGZlMSS8fR8

But to summarize the part about the music, essentially, the company that owned the anime's music during the Black and White era (Media Factory, under the label of Pikachu Records) was more relaxed about letting others use their soundtracks. When that company was bought out by Katakawa Corporation, the company responsible for the anime's music became Sony Music Japan, who are stricter about their music usage. Now couple all of that with what's already been discussed here about the little bit of extra money the dub makes with its own music scores, and I don't think it's that hard to see why the dub barely uses the Japanese musical score anymore. Even if Pokémon makes more than enough money to afford the Japanese score, if you are a big company whose goal is to make even more money, what's the smarter move? Keep the Japanese musical score to ensure quality, but spend money in the process? Or use your own musical score to make extra money even if it lowers the overall quality of the dub?

As for why M21 and M22 still have the Japanese musical scores... Don't make fun of me, because I'm totally going "friend of a friend" here, but one of my friends on Discord actually spoke with (or at least read an account written by) an employee of TPCi, and those movies come down to being outliers with different circumstances. M21, if I remember right, something came up with their composer that would have kept the dub score from being done by their deadline, so they just used the Japanese score to save time. With M22, it wasn't a TPCi decision. Netflix paid the extra money for the Japanese score themselves. Why they don't do that with Journeys too? Beats me. Maybe they figured once for a movie is fine while once per every Journeys episode is overkill? I don't know.

I hope my contributions were valid.

 

[FelipoDepot]

I don't know if anyone here is still seeking answers, but I do think I can contribute here. A YouTuber by the name of TheCartoonGamer8000 did a video on the history of Pokémon's dubbing process, and it does provide a little extra insight into why the musical score is replaced, especially today.


View: https://youtu.be/FGZlMSS8fR8

But to summarize the part about the music, essentially, the company that owned the anime's music during the Black and White era (Media Factory, under the label of Pikachu Records) was more relaxed about letting others use their soundtracks. When that company was bought out by Katakawa Corporation, the company responsible for the anime's music became Sony Music Japan, who are stricter about their music usage. Now couple all of that with what's already been discussed here about the little bit of extra money the dub makes with its own music scores, and I don't think it's that hard to see why the dub barely uses the Japanese musical score anymore. Even if Pokémon makes more than enough money to afford the Japanese score, if you are a big company whose goal is to make even more money, what's the smarter move? Keep the Japanese musical score to ensure quality, but spend money in the process? Or use your own musical score to make extra money even if it lowers the overall quality of the dub?

As for why M21 and M22 still have the Japanese musical scores... Don't make fun of me, because I'm totally going "friend of a friend" here, but one of my friends on Discord actually spoke with (or at least read an account written by) an employee of TPCi, and those movies come down to being outliers with different circumstances. M21, if I remember right, something came up with their composer that would have kept the dub score from being done by their deadline, so they just used the Japanese score to save time. With M22, it wasn't a TPCi decision. Netflix paid the extra money for the Japanese score themselves. Why they don't do that with Journeys too? Beats me. Maybe they figured once for a movie is fine while once per every Journeys episode is overkill? I don't know.

I hope my contributions were valid.

I've been looking into the Sony Music part for a long time, and while it's likely that the buyout did maybe have some effect on negotiations for music licensing, it doesn't completely add up.

The strictness that Sony is known for is moreso in the music they sell to CONSUMERS, not so much to companies that license their material for commercial use. Often when people cite issues with the company's issue, they talk about things that have only recieved even some controversy, is how they handle things like putting exclusive Xenoblade 2 music on a DRM'd USB stick. While it definitely is something that sucks for consumers of the music, it had seemingly no effect on Xenoblade 2's use of music as a game worldwide. Not to mention the literally dozens of other anime that also use music in which Sony has some hand in, they have seemingly no issue doing so worldwide (hence Pokémon sticking out even more as an oddity).

Additionally, while the Media Factory buyout did affect the production and use of the show's music being under Sony as of XY, it was actually M15 that was the first product with Sony produced BGM. Same with M16, and those movies kept their scores like all the previous TPCi films. Again, there could have been changes behind the scenes, sure, but clearly not enough to dissuade the company from just going ahead treating the films like normal. It is important to note that the music did take a notable retention hit in XY (even as it was already lowering through BW), just as Goldfarb started. And what do you know, the first movie in his Era, was the first one in over a decade to have most of it's score replaced. From what I've gathered over the years, this is because the movies aren't actually a part of the dub composer's contract, and whether they do it or not is largely up to them, not TPCi (they just approve of it). So Goldfarb, fresh to the job, is offered up more money? It makes sense, why wouldn't he? Of course you also come to realize that doing the dub scores for both this constantly running show AND a film are a lot of work.

And so we come to the M21 situation. Yes, as it turns out, Goldfarb did decide to turn that film down for the sake of his leisure. That still wouldn't completely explain away the retention of the original score, as it was likely still very much in TPCi's power to have a dub score, whether it be in terms just hiring another composer for the project or just splicing in existing tracks that Goldfarb already made (which historically has been done plenty of times with dub scores. Dragon Ball comes to mind as having done both). Here's the thing about music licensing. For company negotiations, it more or less comes down to what kind of a financial split would be seen as mutually beneficial to each corporate entity. Cuz while yes, in cases of the modern music being owned by another company, the whole point of licensing the music is so that the dubbers not only can use the music, but they can make money from it too. This is very likely exactly why basically 99% of other dubs, not just of Japanese products but in general, worldwide, keep the scores. It's a quicker, easier, and still makes a return, while an excessive dub score like Pokémon's is likely still very expensive to produce. In order for it to be worth it, TPCi would likely need a huge revenue stream, and they have that with the 20 or so dubs they mandate to use their music. However of course, keep in mind that even with supposed Sony restrictions... TPCi not only kept the music in the films immediately under their ownership, but continued to still keep music sporadically in the show itself. If Sony was supposedly so difficult to negotiate with, it would not make any business sense to keep ANY of their music or put in the work to do so, but they continued to do exactly that, which while lower in number overall being kept, was still essentially the same practice that the dub has always done. It gives me more than enough reason to believe that while there could have been some effect, it proved to be largely minimal towards the company's practices. If anything, the hiring of a new dub composer, who for a time was willing to do more work, had much more of an effect, and it clearly shows in the numbers ever since he got started.

Of course when it comes to M22, that's largely still an unknown. If I had to take any guesses, it could have been a similar case to M21 where Goldfarb turned it down The huge workload coulda not been worth it after all, or keep in mind that M22 had JP audio for the first time outside of Asia. Could have been a mandate by TPC themselves in order to keep the product consistent enough between languages, as that's generally a more professional look. Or it could be a combination of these factors, or a completely unknown one that hasn't been considered. We may not know for a while, or ever.

All that being said, the point I make at the end of these walls of texts is, I personally don't buy the whole "Sony is strict" thing on a music licensing level. There could be some effect sure, but if it's really so bad, as a company it would not make sense to even negotiate to keep even the few tracks still present in the dub on average. If anything, we'd see an industry bloated with dubs where music owned by Sony was completely replaced in dozens of shows, including Pokémon, but instead we live in an Era where all those Sony music shows are very inclined to keep the scores and songs, while Pokémon, as replacement heavy as it is, still opts to keep some, or even all the BGM at times. They still find it worth it to do that, likely playing it safe as the practice is a relic of a time where the dub likely was required to keep more of a certain amount of score.

The key thing to remember is that consumer issues with Sony =/= companies negotiating to make money off their work in media licensing. After all, Sony themselves are a large corporation, surely they'd be very open to having their music be present in one of the most widely distributed shows of the biggest media franchise in the world. At the end of the day, it's a TPCi thing still, not an issue on the Sony end (though there is a point to be made that TPC is so complacent with the changes. Nowadays most other anime companies are very strict with keeping music for the sake of promoting their artists, however given the boatloads of money the brand makes anyways, TPC probably barely bats an eye at this long running tradition of the show getting cut up and altered so much internationally. They're still gonna earn a ton from it regardless)

 

[AgedVeteranofShow]

This actually makes a lot of sense, especially when you consider that other animated Pokemon projects (Twilight Wings, Generations, Origins) don't have this problem in their dubs. I assume they have different teams working on them since the regular dub staff is busy working on the main series. But since it's all part of the same company, if TPCI needed the dub music revenue in any way surely these dubs would have been forced to replace the music too, right? It really does seem like some higher-ups are fixated on always replacing the background music.

It still doesn't explain why the amount of original BGM/silence being kept has fluctuated so much over the years- why did season 13 keep so much silence and 14 kept an all-time high of roughly 90% of the original score, why have the films across both dubs gone back and forth on replacing the score- but at least we have a better idea of why it's still a problem after all these years.

Actually just want to clarify from Movie 4 onward to the very end of their dub in Movie 8, the original 4Kids Pokemon dub (their studio is still alive believe it or not, the Konami NY branch now essentially is where they are at these days) kept the OST for their final 5 Movie dubs in a row (IMO, this really redeemed them in the mid Johto-AG run given the Anime handling in terms of music-- not that TPCi objectively being worse in this facet, the last 10 years than they were at the very end in the Anime dub from late BW onward into JN hasn't as well, but this is also something that stood out from that Era).

It's only the current modern TPCi dub that fluctuated for some reason Movie-wise as Movie 17 was the first dub-scored Movie in 2014 after Movie 3 in 2001, and TPCi would proceed to dub score a total of 4 Movies to 4Kids' 3 alone up through Movie 20's dub (not even for a Movie that pandered to nostalgia would TPCi bring back Veronica Taylor etc. who are still active in so far as reprising prior roles they did in the English dub & in spite of most fans still deeming her the superior English dub Ash to this day etc. sticking with Sarah Natochenny etc. as they want to memory-hole basically there was a different dub staff cast prior to their Sept 2006-present one-- or even keep the OST for a 20th Anniversary film, 1/58 kept alone). For reference, Movie 20's dub kept less than Movie 2's dub, which kept 2 instances of the TR motto theme there...not even a joke.

For some reason Movies 21-23 went back to the Movie 4-16 keeping the OST again, but the damage was done to TPCi's music handling in the Movies in Movies 17-20 while 4Kids stopped that entirely from Movie 4-8 (still better than the Anime handling, but even there, TPCi replaced more of the OST than 4Kids did overall by this point).

At least DBZ's music was better by a mile.

Nostalgia goggles in full force here: Faulconer's score for DBZ is way worse than even the Saban/Ocean dub's was that he was copying prior, and the 4Kids' replacement BGM for Pokemon was 100x better than his works too.

Kikuchi >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Faulconer, the latter's DBZ dub music is the second worst dub score for the DB Series IMO, only Menza's GT was worse.

 

[kantoskies]

I suppose I could have been a bit more clear- what I meant to say when I wrote that over two years ago was looking at the dub holistically- meaning across all 20+ years- the level of original BGM has fluctuated.

My post was already rather long-winded, and this point was a brief point at the end of it, so I did not want to go through the entire history of the dub’s movie scoring and point out every small detail.

 

[AgedVeteranofShow]

I suppose I could have been a bit more clear- what I meant to say when I wrote that over two years ago was looking at the dub holistically- meaning across all 20+ years- the level of original BGM has fluctuated.

My post was already rather long-winded, and this point was a brief point at the end of it, so I did not want to go through the entire history of the dub’s movie scoring and point out every small detail.

Absolutely fine.

I actually updated the old list if you're interested, there were several errors made, Lord_Mewtwo goes by Oshawott_50001 these days and we all worked together on this, DeltaForcesX on YouTube has done some of later SM...unfathomably, TPCi's current English dub has ended up replacing more of the OST overall than 4Kids did in the original English dub, really says a lot about how dire things have gotten in general from XY onward in particular (the dub "died" way before XY for me, unlike many).

You could have made an argument in mid DP-mid BW there were some pros and cons to 4Kids' Era (generally we all agreed it was the voice acting, script writing esp. for the Rockets when they didn't make stuff up, as well as the openings were much better) and then TPCi's Era up through the end of Season 15 (up through mid BW it was arguable no censorship to very little, a tad more music kept, and less deviation though much more clunky dialogue), but from late BW to the end here in JN nosediving to unprecedented lows it makes late Johto-Hoenn's Anime dub musically look like a modern FUNimation production dubbed. The current dub becoming (IMO) so abysmal the last decade (was also bad during the late TAJ Era though), has made the 4Kids' dub the much superior English Version in almost every facet for me.

NEW, REVISED- The How Much Original Japanese Soundtrack/Music/BGM/OST is Kept in the Pokemon Anime Dub Thread for the corrected list so far.

 

[snowmint]

You would think the Japanese side would want the show to be the same across all regions.