Remember when we thought 4Kids butchered the Pokemon anime?

[TapLover]

For starters, 4Kids rarely butcher anything that falls into the "America-friendly" category. This mainly includes adaptions of video games (eg. Sonic X (which ended up becoming more popular in the US than it was in Japan) and Pokemon), European animation that gets passed on between dubbers (Winx Club) and other stuff. While most people see their One Piece dub as "the archetypal 4Kids dubbed program" due to how horrible it is, not everything they did was butchered (for some time they did "uncut" dubs of Yu-Gi-Oh which sold well on DVD), and the above category was one of them.

Reading TV Tropes' "Pop Culture Urban Legends" page, there is a section making small references to what people thought the Japanese dub was like before it became accessible. I believe that the only accessible ones in this period were the two non-Porygon "banned" episodes, which were banned for slight nudity and firing blanks respectively and people thought the entire JP version was like that. The most common one might be the "Butterfree died in the original version", which is mentioned on the page.

no ending

 

[Flynn]

I still think that.

 

[Fan of Jarrus]

They had this "Kids are dumb. Lets hide other cultures from them." mindset. A damaging attitude.

 

[LuxrayOfTheWild]

Their mindset of hiding other cultures from kids and some of the things they'd censor was absolutely ridiculous. You gotta admit though, the BGM and dub openings were a lot better than things have been since TPCI took over.

 

[Daenerys]

I think 4Kids was bad regardless of my hate for TPCi. I view 4Kids as the lesser of the two evils in most cases, but I will never forgive their music edits, pointless paint edits, awful dialogue and just general inconsistencies with dubbing the series.

 

[RetroPokeFan]

I would always chuckle at those moments where they would claim that a character's parents got kidnapped or abducted or some crap like that when I would almost always know that in the Japanese version that they died. It's a thing that the Yu-Gi-Oh series is still doing with VRAINS because I saw a clip of someone telling another person that their mum and dad got kidnapped despite the fact they're standing right next to their gravestones.

And let's not forget the classic finger guns and jelly donuts too.
Or what they did to One Piece.

Actually let's forget that one, let's always forget that ever happened

At the same time though I do enjoy some of the voice acting with these shows and the actors involved too. Obviously the early Pokémon stuff was fantastic and so was Yu-Gi-Oh too though I'll admit both did decline a bit in terms of voice direction.

And the company's not entirely bad in my books, in fact they sort of hold a place in my nostalgic heart even if they did a bunch of questionable crap.

 

[marshiyanmisuta]

...they didn't butcher it?

 

[Moonbyum]

I think the 4kids dub was pretty decent at best with the voice acting,openings,etc. But with the overall localization that they did with the show was absolutely ridiculous. The music changes they've done was felt really generic especially since they used less of the JP ost from Advanced Generation and the 2nd half of the Johto seasons of Johto League Champions and Master Quest. But to me the dub is still watchable with it's pros and cons

 

[Kairyu]

Better script writing
Better openings
Better rate at which original music was kept (even if it was really bad in late AG...)
Better voice acting

Yeah, I can't think of a single thing TPCI has done better.

 

[RustyTrubbish]

The only thing that TPCI has done better than 4Kids is release the episodes quicker and make better scripts but that's practically it. 4Kids was crap but still better than TPCI when it came to voice acting and music.

 

[marshiyanmisuta]

How can 4Kids have better music and openings when literally the same guy made most of them? I also don't buy "better voice actors" argument; I just watched "Bulbasaur's Mysterious Garden" previous week and most voices were horrendous.

 

[The Power of Pika]

I don't mind the 4kids dub since I enjoy it as much as sonic X. I like both TPCI and 4kids Pokemon. I recognise they both have issues but understand why they do it. Though sometimes I felt 4kids went a tad too far.

Does anyone know why 4kids movie 5 had the entire beginning with the latios and Latias back story removed and then had a changed backstory during the main movie?
I couldn't see what was wrong with the beginning story at all and it had a lovely art style to it.=(

 

[HeHeItsIshrak]

Rewatching the XY dub; they're miles ahead of the 4Kids' crap, change my mind

 

[Poke Trey]

Honestly, still prefer New Dub over 4kids anyday. I just get so used to them over what we had back then.

 

[Daenerys]

The only thing that TPCI has done better than 4Kids is release the episodes quicker and make better scripts but that's practically it. 4Kids was crap but still better than TPCI when it came to voice acting and music.

Well I'd say that their scripts at least had more pizzazz and attitude than TPCi's scripts, but unfortunately there were a lot of translation errors and ad-libs too.

 

[Dogasu]

The 4Kids dub wasn't really butchered when compared to its contemporaries (Dragon Ball Z, Sailor Moon, Card Captor Sakura etc) go but it would absolutely be considered that by today's standards. If a modern show like My Hero Academia or Dr. Stone got the 4Kids Pokemon treatment - poor casting choices, heavily rewritten scripts, character personalities changed, new theme songs, replacement music, edits made to hide the fact that these shows are from Japan - then people would definitely be grabbing their torches and pitchforks.

 

[Poke Trey]

There are kids who are most likely growing up with the DP/BW/XY/SM Dub, that they enjoy and still do. Most older fans don't because it's not like the 4kids Dub and especially with the JP version right there for us.... Why even bother? Change here people. Older guys won't like it but younger ones will, what we liked back then, the others just won't because it's not like now these days. Give TPCI another couple or so years, it's going to be the same thing all over again and never end.

 

[TapLover]

A few other issues include much of the overrated "soundtracks" for the first two movies. It's way more common for movies to use all-purpose music for wordless scenes rather than use a dump of "new" tracks by popular artists since the later options doesn't work for Americans, but it's 4Kids and we know what they're going to do. Plus I prefer Brother My Brother to be the "hit single" rather than an ballad by a new European female duo since it plays in a very important scene, right?

 

[Daenerys]

A few other issues include much of the overrated "soundtracks" for the first two movies. It's way more common for movies to use all-purpose music for wordless scenes rather than use a dump of "new" tracks by popular artists since the later options doesn't work for Americans, but it's 4Kids and we know what they're going to do. Plus I prefer Brother My Brother to be the "hit single" rather than an ballad by a new European female duo since it plays in a very important scene, right?

By soundtrack you're referring to that CD that had tons of rejected late 90's teen pop music right? Because I actually didn't mind dub's instrumental music in the first movie, but I hated Brother My Brother. Soda Pop was cute though, but then again it was a Britney Spears song. And Don't Say You Love Me might have been really out of place and just random on that soundtrack, but it was still a pleasant song with a campy music video.

 

[TapLover]

Soda Pop was cute though, but then again it was a Britney Spears song.

But then that was just an album track, not really recorded for the movie. Plus it was in Pikachu's Vacation god dammit.