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Dogasu's Backpack Discussion

I figured that they were'nt gonna use the main shows VAs. -_- I had a feeling that the casting will be diff. It will be nice tho hearing naruto's and speed racer's (go mifume's) va will be there.
 
This seems to suggest that, as expected, Red's character will probably be more or less similar to Ash (the usual "street smart, book dumb" Shonen protagonist) since the actress seems to specialize in them.
 
Iteru said:
Have you got a plan/schedule for the comparisons? Already rather liked the comparisons on the newer stuff myself so was wondering if you had any plans to do XY ones soon after the dub airs.

I sort-of kind-of have a schedule. After I finish the one I'm currently working on (which is a random Kanto episode I've been wanting to look at for a while now), I'm thinking of going back to the oldest BW episode I haven't done a comparison for (the Darumakka episode) and filling in the rest of that season.

Once I finish that, I'll go back and finish Kanto.

I don't know if I'll even do any XY comparisons, to be honest. The newer episodes are extremely boring edit-wise (doing the rest of those BW episodes feels like a chore more than anything else) and I feel like working on episodes that actually have substantial edits to them is a better use of my time.

I might do an XY comparison if we get another Aloe-type situation on our hands, but I don't see myself going back to do any more "here's the comparison for the episode that aired this past Saturday" type of updates.

Tendou Soujirou said:
This seems to suggest that, as expected, Red's character will probably be more or less similar to Ash (the usual "street smart, book dumb" Shonen protagonist) since the actress seems to specialize in them.

Which is why it baffles me why so many people want Satoshi to leave. Whoever he gets replaced with is pretty much guaranteed to be seen as a cheap copy of him so they might as well just leave him be.
 
This seems to suggest that, as expected, Red's character will probably be more or less similar to Ash (the usual "street smart, book dumb" Shonen protagonist) since the actress seems to specialize in them.
But she's voiced other types of characters. Let's not jump to conclusions: Shokotan's Keldeo didn't have a girly voice, nor was it anything like her other characters. Even Rica could make Red seem different than Ash, and I doubt that the special will include many "book dumb" opportunities, anyway.
 
Where's that Kanto Comparison!

Also to note did you notice 4Kids replaced the music no the first episode almost 70% of it...so we didn't get to here the famous Kanto ending piano song until like episode 7. I notice it more on rewatching the episodes now.

The Kanto Comparisons are better because more was changed and it's actually interesting to see what was changed/covered and Dogasu's thoughts.

I still like that they covered up Japanese text so I could understand what the signs said...I dunno what's the big to translate the signs?
 
The thing is, they actually don't translate the signs; 90% of the time they just erase the text without putting the English equivalent in its place. It's less "we translated a sign so that English speakers know what's being said" and more "OMG look at them Jap letters KILL IT WITH FIRE!!1!!1!!1!" Which is pretty freaking xenophobic of them.

Also, the new Kanto comparison is about 80% done.
 
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Hasn't the dub pretty much always been done for many non-Japanese languages and not an 'English' dub as such. Erasing Japanese text for English isn't really an improvement for someone watching it in Spanish.
 
No, it's very much a dub made for the U.S., the rest of the world be damned. The few signs that they do bother to translate are translated into English, and those English signs remain in English for the Spanish, French, German, etc. dub. The presence of things like the American penny (which is just as foreign to a European as the original Japanese five yen coin was) are also telltale signs.
 
Although it should be noted several episodes aired overseas in less cut form than domestically.
 
The presence of things like the American penny (which is just as foreign to a European as the original Japanese five yen coin was) are also telltale signs.

Far moreso, actually. "The Japanese currency is yen" is far more common knowledge than "A penny is slang for a 1-cent coin, which is 1/100th of a dollar, the American currency".
 
Indeed. I'm pretty sure most non-US people associate "penny" with British currency, not American.
 
Most little kids probably wouldn't associate it with that either.
It's common knowledge, even among kids, that the American currency is "dollar", the British currency is "pound" and the Japanese currency is "yen". What, if anything, these currencies are further divided into is nowhere near as commonly known.
 
The xenophobia of 4kids actually annoyed the hell out of me doing it tenure. Japanese letters and later on food are'nt gonna kill kids. -_-
 
That new comparison was great Dogasu! While Nyasu may not be my favorite character in the series, his backstory is rather endearing and I'm glad dub fans can look at the whole story through your website. That's one of the reasons why I switched to watching the Japanese version, there's so many hidden depths to the show that the dub never touched upon and it's sad that so people who watched the show years ago are in the dark about them. Watching Pocket Monsters in its original language is a completely different and unique experience.
 
4Kids was xenophobic and said Japanese letters would kill kids, burn their eyes, and do all these horrible things? My god!

Show me where they ever said any of that or stop with the straw man arguments. It's a freaking kids show that is from one country being adapted for another, and for most of these edits you have no clue what exactly prompted them to make the change in the first place and instead go off on them as if they punched your mom in the face or something. Translating text or removing Japanese text doesn't make the xenophobic, racist, or any other argument any of you can throw out. Period.

I enjoy your comparisons, and hope to see you do many more as it's interesting to see what the two countries get in terms of dialog. However, the vendetta against the dubbers whenever they change something is tiresome.
 
I don't know if I'll even do any XY comparisons, to be honest. The newer episodes are extremely boring edit-wise (doing the rest of those BW episodes feels like a chore more than anything else) and I feel like working on episodes that actually have substantial edits to them is a better use of my time.

I might do an XY comparison if we get another Aloe-type situation on our hands, but I don't see myself going back to do any more "here's the comparison for the episode that aired this past Saturday" type of updates.
.

It's perfectly understandable but I gotta admit I'm a little bummed by this. Your website's episode comparisons and everything in them, from edit notes to simply the comments about each episode, is the reason I gave the anime another try and get hooked into sticking to it.
Well, just felt like saying it. But you have a point. There probably haven't been as many edits as back then. (I'm assuming, since I don't watch the US version) And you don't really gain much from doing this.
 
Charmander4 said:
Translating text or removing Japanese text doesn't make the xenophobic, racist, or any other argument any of you can throw out.

Translating text and removing Japanese text are two very different things. I'm actually OK with the first one, and back when that was what 4Kids was doing you rarely ever heard me complain about it.

It's the erasing text and then not bothering to put anything in its place that's bothersome. Aside from the fact that there is absolutely no benefit to it whatsoever - having the characters go to stores with blank signs on them isn't any "better" than having them look at signs with either Japanese or English writing on them - it also sends a message that nobody outside Japan wants to see Japanese writing. That it is something shameful that needs to be covered up, scrubbed away, and erased from the show before foreigners (i.e. we) will accept it. The text isn't being removed because it's anything offensive, either culturally or content-wise, nor is it being erased because its presence prevents a Westerner from understanding what's going on. It's being erased simply because it has the gall to be Japanese.

Most of us here are Western and so we have no idea, really, what it's like to have our culture be something that's deemed "unacceptable" for foreign markets. But what if we lived in a world where the shoe was on the other foot - what if English was the language that some company decided was something that needed to be erased from a show before it could be marketed overseas? And what if, say, the people behind the The Simpsons decided not to include any more English writing in the show in order to make it easier for the foreign dubbers out there? That would be pretty freaking insane, wouldn't it?

Though I will admit that some of 4Kids' blank signs cause some unintentionally hilarious moments, like that time in the Butterfree farewell episode where the English dub spends a good five seconds with the camera trained on a blank banner because they couldn't be bothered to translate Team Rocket's motto.
 
And thanks for clearing that up about "Hollywood", Big D :)

Even as a kid I wasn't sure what was with the place being so derelict. I even wondered if the movie was premiering in a bad part of town.
Heck, I never even knew that Hollywood went through that slump until you explained it, which explains a lot.

I especially don't get what was up with 4Kids removing references to the previous episode. Removing connections to the James' Boobs episode from "Tentacool & Tentacruel" was one thing, but removing references to the episode that directly set up this one? WTF, 4Kids?!?
 
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