Was there ever a given reason why most of the movies keep all the Japanese music?

[SushiBurrito]

I get the logic for replacing music "we make royalties when international dubs use our music" but what was the reason most of the movies ended up keeping all the Japanese music? Unlike the tv series it was pretty much all or nothing too. Contracts with OLM requiring them to leave the score alone? Wanting music that hasn't been heard in the tv series but not wanting to pay their composer to score music for movies?

 

[snowmint]

It seems to be contracts allowed them to have the movies have the JPN scire., but why? Who knows. Know why did TPCi start replacing movies music in the XY era. I want to know that.

 

[SushiBurrito]

Money. They like money and using their own score means royalties. It's never a mystery for why they replace music

 

[Poke Trey]

Cuz with M21, 22 and 23 they did keep way more of the score than usual. So, perhaps contracts were the reason for recent films and also royalties too.

 

[Cookiefication]

Money. They like money and using their own score means royalties. It's never a mystery for why they replace music

This is something that has both made sense, and also not made sense at the same time, at least regarding implementation. If using their own score gives more money, then I've always wondered: why are they keeping any original music at all? I don't get it. Apart from legally probably having to keep at least one piece of Miyazaki/Hayashi/Conisch music per episode... why not go all in, instead of random varying amounts?

Why the back and forth with the movies, too? Why start keeping BG silence in the TPCi era, when continued wall-to-wall music was still an option? Off the top of my head, I can only think the varying would be because it's a flat amount of money received per episode/movie/special, and not total time that replacement music played in an episode...

.....but the world may never know

 

[SushiBurrito]

This is something that has both made sense, and also not made sense at the same time, at least regarding implementation. If using their own score gives more money, then I've always wondered: why are they keeping any original music at all? I don't get it. Apart from legally probably having to keep at least one piece of Miyazaki/Hayashi/Conisch music per episode... why not go all in, instead of random varying amounts?

Why the back and forth with the movies, too? Why start keeping BG silence in the TPCi era, when continued wall-to-wall music was still an option? Off the top of my head, I can only think the varying would be because it's a flat amount of money received per episode/movie/special, and not total time that replacement music played in an episode...

.....but the world may never know

With the movies I would at least assume it's some sort of contract thing? 4kids even at their most music replacement heavy (the Advance era) kept all the Japanese music with no filler music for those movies. And that practice continued with TPCI "some Japanese music in the tv series, all Japanese music in the movies" until it stopped in the XY movies and made a full comeback from the Power of Us onward.

Maybe I'm being a bit too lenient/nostalgia blind but I feel like there was some creative thought put into when to use the Japanese music and when to replace it by 4kids during the Kanto era. Like, they replaced Masaki's Lighthouse theme in Mystery at the Lighthouse but kept it when it was recycled as Natsume/Sabrina's theme in Abra and the Psychic Showdown where it arguably fit better anyways. Or how Dance of the Pippi and Zenigame Squad got replaced in their original context but were kept for the singing Pikachu and Ivysaur call in later episodes. Perhaps 4kids thought goofier music worked better for those scenes but the more tribal sounding Japanese music worked in those later scenes?

Of course by Advance I don't think they were keeping that much Japanese music probably because of the royalties. I think the Rocket motto was the only piece consistently getting kept and that was probably too iconic to get rid of.

 

[snowmint]

Weren't there some cases that the TR theme was removed in both dubs at some moments?

 

[SushiBurrito]

Weren't there some cases that the TR theme was removed in both dubs at some moments?

Was there? I know there was at least one or two instances of 4kids swapping out the Team Rocket Forever song with the Team Rocket motto theme but I dont think they ever outright removed the Team Rocket motto theme when it's being used in its eponymous context.

 

[Dogasu]

Was there? I know there was at least one or two instances of 4kids swapping out the Team Rocket Forever song with the Team Rocket motto theme but I dont think they ever outright removed the Team Rocket motto theme when it's being used in its eponymous context.

It did happen, though very rarely. The Orange Islands episode "A Scare in the Air" is one example.

In the Advanced Challenge episode "Maxxed Out!" and the Chronicles episode "Showdown at the Oak Corral," 4Kids also randomly replaced one Japanese Rocket motto theme with a different Japanese Rocket motto theme.

 

[snowmint]

And TPCi messes as well.

 

[Nicolas721]

I think the "we wanted to make the soundtrack cooler" reason given for the first movies is genuine. They had the support of Warner so they were likely given a considerable amount of budget to produce one, and the Japanese scores are indeed more solemn and serious.

For most movies, I think the reason was that producing one was expensive, and reusing the music from the series would make the movie feel less special, and they would have to reuse score from the series anyway. For some movies TPCi took the risk anyway because they though the money would compensate it, but I assume didn't work, and the movies being placed in the alternate universe (which required BGM to sound different from the one of the SM and JN series) didn't help.

 

[SushiBurrito]

I think the "we wanted to make the soundtrack cooler" reason given for the first movies is genuine. They had the support of Warner so they were likely given a considerable amount of budget to produce one, and the Japanese scores are indeed more solemn and serious.

For most movies, I think the reason was that producing one was expensive, and reusing the music from the series would make the movie feel less special, and they would have to reuse score from the series anyway. For some movies TPCi took the risk anyway because they though the money would compensate it, but I assume didn't work, and the movies being placed in the alternate universe (which required BGM to sound different from the one of the SM and JN series) didn't help.

1. I mean I think it could be two things. Sure 4kids probably thought they were making cooler music that American kids would like better but the fact that they could then charge royalties for all the other dubs that used their dub as a base was probably a huge part

2. That's at least partially what I suspected as well. They didn't want music already heard in the tv series a bazillion times to appear in the movies (incidentally had they kept the first movie's Japanese score some of the music would have already been heard because Movie 1 tracks that were kept in the dub started showing up in the Mr.Mime episode and the first movie was released during the Pokemon League in the States). The first 3 movies were released theaterically and probably had money that could allow for brand new scores. Since the 4th one onward was released direct to dvd (well a super limited theatrical release foe the Celebi movie) it was probably cheaper to license the Japanese score than pay for brand new music.

 

[snowmint]

And 4kids was rushing these dubs of the main pokemon tv series as well as all their other new shows like Tama, Cubix, yugioh, ultraman tiga etc getting in the way.