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Dogasu's Backpack Discussion

I think it's silly to "hate" 4Kids like that, the way some people talk about 4Kids you'd think they gleefully murdered puppies or something like that. I don't think the show was trying to "hide" anything, it was just a case of having to change the show to appeal to a broader audience, fact is there's a lot of jokes on the show that just wouldn't make sense if you translated them word-for-word, so they had to be changed, and there's a lot of culturally specific that would make no sense to a western audience, sometimes trying to be too faithful of an adaptation can be your undoing(the Warcraft movie being prime example of that, if you don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of WoW you won't have a damn clue what's going on in the film).

Are there some things 4Kids could've done better in the show? Sure of course, but to me hating them just comes off as childish and immature IMO, disagreeing with them is fine. To me hating a company should be reserved for companies like Activision and Ubisoft that did FAR worse things like covering up sexual assault and doing nothing to fix the problem, somehow a company that makes change to an anime that some people don't like just simply does not compare, so I simply don't have it in me to "Hate" a company just for dubbing a show in a manner some people don't like.

After seeing dub like Sailor Moon Eternal, I've started to appreciate localization a lot more. However, I don't think many of the changes of 4kids were really necessary.

The dub I grew up with was Mexican. In this dub, several shows (not Pokemon) were very faithful to the original Japanese anime and the biggest changes being the characters names, but the stories still proved very popular in Latin American.


PS: Pokemon Mexican dub adapted the 4kids version. So, it was faithful to the 4kids version.
 
Is it just me or were "shojo" female centric shows given even more bizarre localization than regular shonen boy shows... Examples of magical Doremi, mew mew power, cardcaptors etc.
 
What always killed me about 4Kids was, much like TPCI, they proved themselves capable on quite a few occasions of “doing it right.” Even the original Pokémon dub in its really early days was often held up in the online anime fandom (at least among those who cared about this sort of thing) as a gold standard for anime dubs on American TV. Obviously it still had a lot of problems but compared to something like Saban-era Dragon Ball Z, or DiC-era Sailor Moon, it’s pretty easy to see why.

Like I don’t know why their dubs of Yu-Gi-Oh, Sonic X, One Piece etc. are considerably worse than Pokémon’s both in terms of censorship/localization and overall production value, but they clearly are (like Dogasu said, One Piece is especially bad, setting aside any fanboy gripes of mine). You’d think they’d just try and do what worked for Pokémon, but maybe Nintendo kept them on a tighter leash.
I think what helped in Pokémon's case is that there's almost no realistic violence and very few actual deaths. The cuts and rewrites 4Kids made in their dubs of shows that did have that content almost always ended up either creating a plot hole or two or just sounded really silly (the Shadow Realm and such).

In 4Kids' defense, though, a lot of the changes they made were quite normalized or at least not unheard of in the American dubbing and localization industry as a whole back then. Altering or removing anything overtly Japanese, changing names and dialogue as they see fit, spotty voice direction... Other dubbing companies like Funimation were definitely guilty of those as well at the time, and it frequently happened in video game localizations too including some done by Nintendo themselves. Even now, you can see that mentality occasionally resurface in the American dubs and localizations of certain anime and video games, for consistency with previous handlings of the franchise or otherwise.
 
I think what helped in Pokémon's case is that there's almost no realistic violence and very few actual deaths. The cuts and rewrites 4Kids made in their dubs of shows that did have that content almost always ended up either creating a plot hole or two or just sounded really silly (the Shadow Realm and such).

In 4Kids' defense, though, a lot of the changes they made were quite normalized or at least not unheard of in the American dubbing and localization industry as a whole back then. Altering or removing anything overtly Japanese, changing names and dialogue as they see fit, spotty voice direction... Other dubbing companies like Funimation were definitely guilty of those as well at the time, and it frequently happened in video game localizations too including some done by Nintendo themselves. Even now, you can see that mentality occasionally resurface in the American dubs and localizations of certain anime and video games, for consistency with previous handlings of the franchise or otherwise.
I actually how they handled the Shadow Realm stuff, this TvTropes page for Woolseyism(a term that describes an instance where a dub of a show is in some ways better then the original) for Yu-Gi-Oh shows some good examples of what they did right:https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Woolseyism/YuGiOh

Also agreed that 4Kids wasn't doing anything that other dubbing companies hadn't already done before, and it certainly wasn't on the same level as Robotech where they combined three anime series into one. Nintendo were exceptionally guilty of editing out anything vaguely controversial in their games stateside(religious stuff, blood, etc). There's nothing shocking or mind-blowing that made 4Kids a special kind of bad like all those "uncensored" websites made them out to be(I.E. YGO Uncensored, dear god the guy who ran that page was delusional and frequently got numerous facts wrong).

P.S. I looked more in depth into that lawsuit, and it turns out that in the end 4Kids actually WON that lawsuit, so looks like I was right about it being nonsense.
 
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I'm not going to bother responding to every single wall of text on here so I'll just speak broadly:
  • Just because there have been worse dubs than Pokémon doesn't mean it's not still a very bad dub. It's not the worst, not by a long shot. But it's still not a good dub.
  • The FCC edits have never been the real issue. I couldn't care less if they edit out guns pointed at Satoshi's head or Sanji's cigarettes or blood or whatever else. What affects the 4Kids dubs (and the TPCi Pokémon dub, while we're at it) are the problems I outlined regarding the 4Kids One Piece dub. The voice acting, the shoehorned-in jokes, the confusing rewrites, the choppy editing, the music, etc.
  • It would be a lot easier to swallow the whole "oh it was the 90s, everybody was doing what 4Kids did!" if that old made-for-TV dub wasn't literally the only version of the show ever released in the show's nearly 25 year history. Most of the major shows that had heavily localized dubs in the 1990s -- Dragon Ball Z, Sailor Moon, 4Kids One Piece, etc. -- eventually got bilingual DVDs and faithful redubs. Fans of those series can treat those 20-year old dubs as the quirky dubs that they are, marvel at how far we've come, and then go back to enjoying the original. Pocket Monsters fans, on the other hand, have never been afforded that luxury.
 
I'm not going to bother responding to every single wall of text on here so I'll just speak broadly:
  • Just because there have been worse dubs than Pokémon doesn't mean it's not still a very bad dub. It's not the worst, not by a long shot. But it's still not a good dub.
  • The FCC edits have never been the real issue. I couldn't care less if they edit out guns pointed at Satoshi's head or Sanji's cigarettes or blood or whatever else. What affects the 4Kids dubs (and the TPCi Pokémon dub, while we're at it) are the problems I outlined regarding the 4Kids One Piece dub. The voice acting, the shoehorned-in jokes, the confusing rewrites, the choppy editing, the music, etc.
  • It would be a lot easier to swallow the whole "oh it was the 90s, everybody was doing what 4Kids did!" if that old made-for-TV dub wasn't literally the only version of the show ever released in the show's nearly 25 year history. Most of the major shows that had heavily localized dubs in the 1990s -- Dragon Ball Z, Sailor Moon, 4Kids One Piece, etc. -- eventually got bilingual DVDs and faithful redubs. Fans of those series can treat those 20-year old dubs as the quirky dubs that they are, marvel at how far we've come, and then go back to enjoying the original. Pocket Monsters fans, on the other hand, have never been afforded that luxury.
Well many many people would very strongly disagree with you on that front, plenty of us think it's a damn good dub, i'll defend it on my deathbed as would many other Pokemon fans, so like it or not your opinion on the 4Kids dub is very much in the minority.

I'll grant you that it is strange that we've never seen the original version of Pocket Monsters released stateside like we have for other anime, but I suspect there's more to that story then just "4Kids didn't want to release it", because they had no problems putting out uncut DVDs of Yu-Gi-Oh and Shaman King, so logically they wouldn't have had an issue doing it for Pokemon either. My suspicion is those who created the show don't want the original version being released outside of Japan(i've heard that the reason Anime DVDs are priced higher then normal in the USA is because of fears from the creators that Japanese fans will otherwise import the DVDs over from the west, because that would still be cheaper then buying them domestically)if 4Kids was what was holding the original version back from coming out outside of Japan, you'd think TCPI taking over the reigns would've changed that, but no the original version is still being held hostage, so that tells me the creators really don't want the original version getting released outside of Japan.

Personally I'll gladly take the 4Kids dub over the more "faithful" TCPI dub, as they change way more of the background music then 4Kids ever did(and the new music they created sounds bland as hell for the most part), screwed over the 4Kids voice-cast by firing them for daring to ask for more money(which led to the death of Maddie Blaustein as she was unable to pay for the necessary operation to correct the stomach virus she'd contracted due to the loss of income from getting fired as the voice of Meowth, so for that reason I will never forgive TCPI) and have much worse voice-acting IMO(sorry but the guy who voices James sounds like ass).
 
The red tape surrounding the Japanese version being available outside of Japan is pretty curious, to say the least. At first I thought it was just a TPCi issue but even in other Asian countries (which would be outside their jurisdiction) releases of the Japanese version are apparently pretty rare with only a handful of subtitled theater screenings and bilingual DVDs.
 
Isn't 4kids influence the reason the show was toned down by Orange Islands and Johto? Besides bringing in Tracey to replace Brock, a lot of the violence like guns and slightly darker themes Kanto had pretty much died down by Orange/Johto.

For example in the first episode with Todd Ash thought the camera lens was a sniper rifle and that Misty and Brock would be shot. Even the dub kept those scenes in. Can you imagine any later season where Ash thinks his friends would get shot by a gun?
 
Isn't 4kids influence the reason the show was toned down by Orange Islands and Johto? Besides bringing in Tracey to replace Brock, a lot of the violence like guns and slightly darker themes Kanto had pretty much died down by Orange/Johto.

For example in the first episode with Todd Ash thought the camera lens was a sniper rifle and that Misty and Brock would be shot. Even the dub kept those scenes in. Can you imagine any later season where Ash thinks his friends would get shot by a gun?
We don't know that for a fact, in general anime in Japan got toned down quite a bit in the late 90s and early 2000s(with violent and sexually charged anime like Elfen Lied being the exception rather then the rule) as Shonen anime got more popular. So I don't think you can put the show's increasingly lighter tone on 4Kids(at least not entirely)I think as the show got more popular the creators decided to tone down the darker aspects so as not to alienate the kids and families watching the show. I remember Dogasu mentioned in one section on his website that the show was originally supposed to have a pretty dark ending where the show basically became "Pokemon vs Humans"(and episodes like "Dig Those Diglett heavily hinted towards that original ending, plus the original trailer for the first Pokemon film showed what looked like an adult version of Misty and Ash with a kid, hinting that it was possibly intended as a series finale originally)and understandably the anime distributors balked at such a dark ending for such a money-making franchise and likely asked the creators to not make the show that dark and nihilistic.
 
The red tape surrounding the Japanese version being available outside of Japan is pretty curious, to say the least. At first I thought it was just a TPCi issue but even in other Asian countries (which would be outside their jurisdiction) releases of the Japanese version are apparently pretty rare with only a handful of subtitled theater screenings and bilingual DVDs.
That's very curious indeed, i'd love to hear the whole story behind that(maybe the creators made the licensing for releasing the show outside of Japan on DVD so prohibitively expensive that other companies decided it simply wasn't worth paying the costs to release more DVDs anymore). It's weird that Pokemon is seemingly the only anime today still being dubbed that has no subbed version officially available.
 
Well many many people would very strongly disagree with you on that front, plenty of us think it's a damn good dub, i'll defend it on my deathbed as would many other Pokemon fans, so like it or not your opinion on the 4Kids dub is very much in the minority.
I like the 4Kids dub as much as the next person, but I wouldn't really defend it that intensely. There are plenty of valid issues with it. I also have my doubts that the idea of the 4Kids dub being bad is that much of a minority opinion, mainly because I've seen other people complain about both the 4Kids and TPCI dubs over the years. Even if that opinion is considered in the minority, I don't think that makes anyone's opinion on the dub less valid.

Personally I'll gladly take the 4Kids dub over the more "faithful" TCPI dub, as they change way more of the background music then 4Kids ever did(and the new music they created sounds bland as hell for the most part), screwed over the 4Kids voice-cast by firing them for daring to ask for more money(which led to the death of Maddie Blaustein as she was unable to pay for the necessary operation to correct the stomach virus she'd contracted due to the loss of income from getting fired as the voice of Meowth, so for that reason I will never forgive TCPI) and have much worse voice-acting IMO(sorry but the guy who voices James sounds like ass).
As far as I'm aware, the 4Kids actors weren't fired because they asked for more money. TPCI just decided to hire different actors. I remember Maddie mentioning before that they were about to start work on the Mastermind of Mirage Pokemon special when they found out about being replaced. While I wouldn't be surprised if TPCI just wanted to get cheaper actors, there was no indication was the decision was made because any of the original cast asked for more money. Since they were all free lance voice actors at the time, I'm not sure if they'd be in the position to demand for more money like that either.

Claiming that losing her role as Meowth led to Maddie Blaustein's death is in such poor tastes. Not only because I don't believe the whole "they were fired for asking for more money" theory, but because there's no way to prove that keeping her role would have prevented her death. I don't know what else she was doing after losing her role as Meowth, but I don't think she was poor and on the streets exactly either. Voice acting in general isn't a high paying gig, especially for anime, and I don't think she'd be making huge amounts of money if she didn't lose her role in the anime. Money might not have been the issue either in her death. From what I remember, her passing was very sudden and unexpected, which still could have happened regardless of whether or not she still had her role as Meowth at the time. Acting as if losing the role was the only factor that led to her death doesn't really work when there's no way to prove something like that at all.

It's perfectly fine to not like the TPCI dub or how the original cast was replaced, but using Maddie Blaustien's death to justify why you don't like the TPCI dub or to paint TPCI as more of a villain comes off as just cold, cruel and heartless.
 
I like the 4Kids dub as much as the next person, but I wouldn't really defend it that intensely. There are plenty of valid issues with it. I also have my doubts that the idea of the 4Kids dub being bad is that much of a minority opinion, mainly because I've seen other people complain about both the 4Kids and TPCI dubs over the years. Even if that opinion is considered in the minority, I don't think that makes anyone's opinion on the dub less valid.


As far as I'm aware, the 4Kids actors weren't fired because they asked for more money. TPCI just decided to hire different actors. I remember Maddie mentioning before that they were about to start work on the Mastermind of Mirage Pokemon special when they found out about being replaced. While I wouldn't be surprised if TPCI just wanted to get cheaper actors, there was no indication was the decision was made because any of the original cast asked for more money. Since they were all free lance voice actors at the time, I'm not sure if they'd be in the position to demand for more money like that either.

Claiming that losing her role as Meowth led to Maddie Blaustein's death is in such poor tastes. Not only because I don't believe the whole "they were fired for asking for more money" theory, but because there's no way to prove that keeping her role would have prevented her death. I don't know what else she was doing after losing her role as Meowth, but I don't think she was poor and on the streets exactly either. Voice acting in general isn't a high paying gig, especially for anime, and I don't think she'd be making huge amounts of money if she didn't lose her role in the anime. Money might not have been the issue either in her death. From what I remember, her passing was very sudden and unexpected, which still could have happened regardless of whether or not she still had her role as Meowth at the time. Acting as if losing the role was the only factor that led to her death doesn't really work when there's no way to prove something like that at all.

It's perfectly fine to not like the TPCI dub or how the original cast was replaced, but using Maddie Blaustien's death to justify why you don't like the TPCI dub or to paint TPCI as more of a villain comes off as just cold, cruel and heartless.
I wouldn't say it was in "poor taste" or "cold, cruel and heartless" at all(if anything "cold cruel and heartless" is exactly what i'd call TCPI), as I read an article that said that being fired certainly contributed to her death:article (never said it was the "only factor" BTW, I also never said the opinions of those that didn't like the dub weren't "valid". It's just 4Kids haters in general seem to think their opinion is more common then it actually is.):
 
I wouldn't say it was in "poor taste" or "cold, cruel and heartless" at all(if anything "cold cruel and heartless" is exactly what i'd call TCPI), as I read an article that said that being fired certainly contributed to her death:article (never said it was the "only factor" BTW, I also never said the opinions of those that didn't like the dub weren't "valid". It's just 4Kids haters in general seem to think their opinion is more common then it actually is.):
I would because you're using a person's death as a prop for your argument. It's so tasteless and doesn't really help your case at all in my opinion. I read the article and the part about being fired was more of a theory rather than anything more solid. They were wondering if it was a factor because of Maddie's financial situation at the time. If that was the case, that is incredibly sad, but I think that says a lot more about the U.S. health care system than anything about TPCI specifically. Maddie still could have sadly struggled with getting proper medication and medical treatment even if she was still voicing Meowth at the time because our country's health care system is so terrible.

You didn't say that it was the only factor, but you were acting as if it was a confirmed fact as opposed to a theory. Or that Maddie would still be alive if she wasn't replaced when there's no way to confirm that either. Demanding for other people to provide evidence to disprove the theory that she would still be alive if it wasn't for TPCI gives off a different impression as well. Considering how common it was to see people complain about 4Kids back in the day, including the Pokemon dub, I don't think that those opinions are uncommon either.
 
I would because you're using a person's death as a prop for your argument. It's so tasteless and doesn't really help your case at all in my opinion. I read the article and the part about being fired was more of a theory rather than anything more solid. They were wondering if it was a factor because of Maddie's financial situation at the time. If that was the case, that is incredibly sad, but I think that says a lot more about the U.S. health care system than anything about TPCI specifically. Maddie still could have sadly struggled with getting proper medication and medical treatment even if she was still voicing Meowth at the time because our country's health care system is so terrible.

You didn't say that it was the only factor, but you were acting as if it was a confirmed fact as opposed to a theory. Or that Maddie would still be alive if she wasn't replaced when there's no way to confirm that either. Demanding for other people to provide evidence to disprove the theory that she would still be alive if it wasn't for TPCI gives off a different impression as well. Considering how common it was to see people complain about 4Kids back in the day, including the Pokemon dub, I don't think that those opinions are uncommon either.
No i'm not using it as a "prop" for anything, i'm merely repeating what i've seen others post online about her death. So it seems to be you should be aiming your grievances and claims at them. TCPI is still not blameless here regardless of the whole health care thing, them firing her definitely didn't help her any, even if Maddie hadn't died their treatment of the 4Kids cast would've still been unbelievably shitty and totally uncalled for. Evidence seems pretty compelling to me.

I wasn't "demanding" anything, literally ALL I said in response to that one user was "if you have evidence that proves otherwise i'd love to hear it", I didn't say anything demanding like "give me proof or else!".

I believe those opinions aren't that common as I rarely see any negative comments on Youtube videos or elsewhere disparaging the 4Kids dub, this site and forum are one of the only places i've ever seen anyone expressing dislike for it.
 
Maddie was still working for 4kids at the time, wasn't she Rex Goodwin in yugioh 5ds and Helga in dinosaur king along with being an artist?
 
No i'm not using it as a "prop" for anything, i'm merely repeating what i've seen others post online about her death. So it seems to be you should be aiming your grievances and claims at them. TCPI is still not blameless here regardless of the whole health care thing, them firing her definitely didn't help her any, even if Maddie hadn't died their treatment of the 4Kids cast would've still been unbelievably shitty and totally uncalled for. Evidence seems pretty compelling to me.
Repeating what other people have said really doesn't help your case. You're not the first person I've seen using her death like that and I'd happily call out other people for doing this too. Telling me that I should focus my issues with those people when you're repeating their argument doesn't make sense when you're part of the problem. Just because other people have said it before doesn't negate your involvement here either. It just sounds like you want to be upset at TPCI, which I'd be fine with if you weren't trying to use Maddie's passing to further justify it.

I wasn't "demanding" anything, literally ALL I said in response to that one user was "if you have evidence that proves otherwise i'd love to hear it", I didn't say anything demanding like "give me proof or else!".
It does come off as demanding, or at the very least you're expecting people to provide evidence for a claim that can't really be proven either way. We don't know what Maddie's life could have been like if she was still voicing Meowth at the time of her passing. We don't know if having that bit of income would have helped her with getting medical treatment. I can't say for certain that she'd still be with us if she still had that role, but neither can you. You're treating it as if having that role would have made a significant difference in preventing her death, but neither of us can know that for certain. That's why you're statement bothered me because you're treating a theory as something more like a fact and needed evidence to be proven wrong when no one can know for certain if Maddie would be alive or not if she still had her role.
 
Maddie was still working for 4kids at the time, wasn't she Rex Goodwin in yugioh 5ds and Helga in dinosaur king along with being an artist?

And plus she came back to the PUSA (TPCI's old name) dub before her passing to voice chatot in a pokemon mystery dungeon special. Damn it i miss her a lot.
 
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