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How much did 4K!ds have to do with the success of Pokemon?

Well go ask any Japanese speaking fans on this site, its not like the info is hidden.

You seem to ignoring the fact that that site is a fan site. Bias exist. When you ask someone in the target audience your likely to not get bias just a straight forward answer.
 
That's why the script for the first several episodes actually seemed like a translation instead of being a script that involved them taking liberties with the dialogue - they were extremely careful with it.

Except for that whole deal with Lola, of course. :p
 
I don't know who came up with "Gotta Catch 'Em All", but whoever it was is a genius in marketing. I would still say 4Kids had a lot to do with pokemon's popularity since the anime was the first thing to reach here, and most people came to pokemon because of the anime. It didn't have full influence on it, though, as the merchandise was handled by a lot of different people back then, and the games did well even without the influence of the anime for some people. How this all happened is a mystery to me, but there is no denying that it shall be remembered for a long time.
 
About the slight change to Getto Daze, considering the entire premise of the games is to complete the Pokedex by catching all pokemon, Gotta Catch 'em all is way more appropriate then what roughly translates to 'Get it!'
"Getto Daze" is just the catchphrase used with the anime, while "Gotta Catch em' All" was used for all English media - even the toys. You don't see anyone trying to catch them all in the anime. They're just "getting" Pokemon. :p

The only thing I really hated was when they said 'Rai-KOW' instead of 'Rai-KOO'
The dub pronounced it correctly.
 
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I think 4kids had a lot to do with the success of Pokemon in the United States. If it wasn't for them I don't think it would have lasted more than 3 seasons.
 
dont kid yourself 4kids are the ones who made it famous without them it wouldnt be know as globally as it is
 
I dislike 4Kids as much as the next guy, but without them, many of us might not have ever seen the anime. Say what you will about the quality of the dub, but they did their best to promote the hell out of it and keep it appealing to the target audience.
 
You people are thinking too much about the specifics. It doesn't matter if they came up with the phrase "Gotta catch em all" or edited the dialogue, what matters is that they were the ones that dubbed the show. The fact that we got any dub at all most definitely helped the game's popularity explode, and I'd be willing to say it was at least half the reason.
 
I dislike 4Kids as much as the next guy, but without them, many of us might not have ever seen the anime. Say what you will about the quality of the dub, but they did their best to promote the hell out of it and keep it appealing to the target audience.

If 4kids hadn't dubbed it, someone else would've. Nintendo obviously wanted the series out on the market.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the series premiere in early September on UPN a few weeks before the games came out in America?

The distribution during that period might not have been as much of a factor for the series overall popularity due to how most UPN stations were syndication wastelands in that period, and Kids WB picked it up the following April and chose to keep going out of order or something.
 
People are under the impression that we owe something to 4Kids. ANY dubbing company could have picked up the rights to dubbing and do it better than 4Kids, while still retaining its popularity on the market.

I mean, who wouldn't jump at the chance to dub an anime based on one of Nintendo's biggest cash-cows in Japan? If 4Kids didn't pick it up, someone else probably would have.
 
People are under the impression that we owe something to 4Kids. ANY dubbing company could have picked up the rights to dubbing and do it better than 4Kids, while still retaining its popularity on the market.

I mean, who wouldn't jump at the chance to dub an anime based on one of Nintendo's biggest cash-cows in Japan? If 4Kids didn't pick it up, someone else probably would have.

pretty much this^ not much more i can ad to this

however i do wonder what the dub would have been like if someone else had gotten a hold of it
 
It's near to impossible to figure whether or not Pokemon's popularity could have been achieved by 4Kids' hands alone, but logic tells me we indeed don't need to feel that we "owe" 4Kids for anything. Sure, Pokemon was one of their better (possibly best in the early days, at least) dubs, but like it was said already, Pokemon was a hot-hot-hot franchise in the mid-90s; if 4Kids didn't pick it up, some other company definitely would have.

The thing to keep in mind, though, is that in the mid-90s era, a good chunk of dubbing companies weren't much better about hackjob dubs. I think Funimation existed back then, but we all ought to know how well they fared with their first major outing with Dragon Ball Z. Similiarly, prevalent in those days were DiC, Nelvana (well, they did make Donkey Kong Country's animated series prior to Beyblade...), Ocean Productions (yanno, the company responsible for "Over nine THOUSAAAAANDDD!"?), and so on that likely would have given Pokemon similar treatment. ADV/Viz/Geneon would've likely given more faithful dubs, but I wonder if Pokemon's established age group had something to do with preventing them from getting ahold of it. I figured anime dubbing logic here is that the more your show is geared towards a younger audience, the more likely it is that said show will get hack-dubbed, since Japan and America have different standards on what's appropriate for kids, blah blah blah. And of course, for some reason our culture's pretty quick to shun anything that isn't ULTRA SUPER SERIOUS MATURE by the time we reach our teens, so a faithful dub of a kids' show aired in a block where an older group is more apt to be watching is something I imagine most American networks figure wouldn't "do well". Even though I swear I think Pokemon would be the best for an evening/primetime slot for reruns at least, still.

All in all, any of these companies would've been perfectly capable of making Pokemon a success as 4Kids did, with or without the unncessesary crap 4Kids put into the show. We'd still have our nostalgia... just of a different kind. It's basically an alternate universe of nostalgia, which is really weird to think about. But I do still curse 4Kids for upping the number of Pokeshipping notions greatly, since I agree their comparatively aggressive deviations from the original canon is a big catalyst in why a certain portion of our fandom is nigh unbearable even several years after the events that caused the wank have come and gone.

Yeah... I dug things like the Pokerap, but I could've lived without 'em. I think it's safe to say if another company held this series and didn't needlesly paint out cleavage, lengthen skirts, change the color of any liquid that looked even remotely like wine, change onigiri into sandwiches, or erased every trace of text, Japanese or otherwise, in every single solitary scene... that this show would be just fine and without complaints and the ratings wouldn't suffer a bit.

(I'd really love to somehow test that on a group of kids in regards to all of the censoring made in the AG era, and the Japanese neutering overall...)
 
Ocean Productions (yanno, the company responsible for "Over nine THOUSAAAAANDDD!"?)

That was Funimation back in the day before they had their own actors, hiring Ocean actors instead.


(I'd really love to somehow test that on a group of kids in regards to all of the censoring made in the AG era, and the Japanese neutering overall...)

I really really doubt they'd even notice any changes at all.
 
^^ Exactly. Then I'd like to rub the results in Al Kahn's face. Many, many times.
 
Apart from producing my favorite theme songs, I'd say 4kids helped my enjoyment of Pokemon.

I can't say that 4kids definitively made Pokemon more enjoyable, since most kids just watched for the newness and battling but for me the voices and deliverance of each character were perfect and definitely added to the likeability of them.
They also kept the dialogue simple, where as these days they've made more of an effort to make it hip and cool and as a result, I sometimes want too smack Ash whenever he opens his mouth.

Modern Ash reminds me of K-Fed more than he does of good old 4Kids Ash Ketchum :/

Eurgh, don't even get me started on PUSA Iris!
 
4kids has quite a bit to do with it. But most of that was due to illegitimate deals to get the show on the air, of which got the license taken away, similarly to what is likely to happen to Yugioh.
 
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