charizardmaster125
New Member
- Joined
- Mar 7, 2012
- Messages
- 73
- Reaction score
- 1
Normally, I would wait until the latest movie to give my thoughts on the dubs opening themes since they are usually presented in full if they are used but here are my initial thoughts.
At the time when we didn't know whether or not we would have a new theme for Season 18, my expectations were set pretty low considering past theme songs post the 4Kids era. Today's efforts by the dub are as generic as you can get, though I can hardly blame them because the song writers (in this case Ed Goldfarb) are not really able to use their imaginations and stretch out their creative minds because thanks to Cartoon Network, openings are tied down by an invisible piece of string to a 30 Second time limit or less for the sake of more advertising revenue.
Despite how generic this song sounds, "Be A Hero" is good, certainly better than "It's Always You and Me" which to go back on that theme in particular, it started good but then it let itself down with the dreaded lyrics "Oh oh, we belong together" and the extended version for Movie 16 just drove the whole issue of John Leoffler and David Wolfert's desire to only write about nothing but "friendship" and "togetherness" home. It's likely that they couldn't be bothered to think of anything better because they knew that they were restricted by time.
Whilst we are on the subject of "generic", I couldn't help but link this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovcUgFxV_GQ
It is actually quite disheartening because theme songs don't get to show their true potential until the movies, provided that they have a chance of being used in the movie and unfortunately, the themes for Seasons 6, 7, 10 and 13 did not get extended versions and although the "DP Rap" was not universally liked, it could have easily been the theme for Movie 10 had the producers decided to reserve "We Will Be Heroes" for Season 11.
I guess that the themes that were not used as movie openers could have worked just as well in the end credits of the movie but I digress. It also sounds like Ben Dixon and The Sad Truth who provided the vocals for Pokémon Theme XY have been brought back for this song which is good. I predict that they will be a staple set of vocals like what David Rolfe was for 4Kids and what Crush 40 is to Sonic the Hedgehog.
As others have pointed out, the visuals are very much redundant and out dated given upcoming events without going into spoiler territory. Now I really wish that they updated the opening visuals for each major arc like they did with Season 16 and I now predict that they will use footage from the latest Japanese opening "Getter Ban Ban" for Season 19 where future events may once again be redundant.
This I find is a huge step backwards in terms of presentation because for the most part, openings have been relevant enough to bring the dub in line with its Japanese counterpart. Despite the questionable presentation for the opening, the lyrics are good and Ed has at least given me a bit of hope that future theme songs will now be more about Ash rather than just being friends which is one of the major themes and messages of Pokémon but we don't want to be brainwashed by it.
At the time when we didn't know whether or not we would have a new theme for Season 18, my expectations were set pretty low considering past theme songs post the 4Kids era. Today's efforts by the dub are as generic as you can get, though I can hardly blame them because the song writers (in this case Ed Goldfarb) are not really able to use their imaginations and stretch out their creative minds because thanks to Cartoon Network, openings are tied down by an invisible piece of string to a 30 Second time limit or less for the sake of more advertising revenue.
Despite how generic this song sounds, "Be A Hero" is good, certainly better than "It's Always You and Me" which to go back on that theme in particular, it started good but then it let itself down with the dreaded lyrics "Oh oh, we belong together" and the extended version for Movie 16 just drove the whole issue of John Leoffler and David Wolfert's desire to only write about nothing but "friendship" and "togetherness" home. It's likely that they couldn't be bothered to think of anything better because they knew that they were restricted by time.
Whilst we are on the subject of "generic", I couldn't help but link this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovcUgFxV_GQ
It is actually quite disheartening because theme songs don't get to show their true potential until the movies, provided that they have a chance of being used in the movie and unfortunately, the themes for Seasons 6, 7, 10 and 13 did not get extended versions and although the "DP Rap" was not universally liked, it could have easily been the theme for Movie 10 had the producers decided to reserve "We Will Be Heroes" for Season 11.
I guess that the themes that were not used as movie openers could have worked just as well in the end credits of the movie but I digress. It also sounds like Ben Dixon and The Sad Truth who provided the vocals for Pokémon Theme XY have been brought back for this song which is good. I predict that they will be a staple set of vocals like what David Rolfe was for 4Kids and what Crush 40 is to Sonic the Hedgehog.
As others have pointed out, the visuals are very much redundant and out dated given upcoming events without going into spoiler territory. Now I really wish that they updated the opening visuals for each major arc like they did with Season 16 and I now predict that they will use footage from the latest Japanese opening "Getter Ban Ban" for Season 19 where future events may once again be redundant.
This I find is a huge step backwards in terms of presentation because for the most part, openings have been relevant enough to bring the dub in line with its Japanese counterpart. Despite the questionable presentation for the opening, the lyrics are good and Ed has at least given me a bit of hope that future theme songs will now be more about Ash rather than just being friends which is one of the major themes and messages of Pokémon but we don't want to be brainwashed by it.
On a side note, the end credits now list Akhil Gopal as "Music Editor and Additional Score" so now we know who is responsible for inserting the dub music in each episode OR getting rid of the Shinji Myazaki's score if you look at it that way but this is a different topic in itself for another discussion.
Last edited:
