User:Angel Emfrbl/4Kids One Piece - Review

Okay... Second time (My net explorer decided to "back" before I could save my work... T_T).

Beforehand
I originally learnt of the word manga from Rosemary Gordon at High school. Everyone who has read my anime fan article may know my history, that as far as I'm concerned I'm an anime first and a One Piece fan second. On that note, I have more reason to hate 4Kids then most because its not just one show they've screwed up to me its many...

...And considering I won't be seeing season 3 of the Legion of Superheroes because they bought up the Kids WB! timeslot, keeping this neutral is like stopping a shark with two peas and a bucket of water. Yeah, I'm one of the fans who thought Brainiac 5 was cute (not on good looking as he is like 14, a cartoon character and I'm 24, no I know better, but what I mean is adorability level, as in cuddly kitten level) and I really wanted to see Shadow Lass and Wildfire kicking 455 as well as B5 get over the fact he tried to destroy (Digitalise) the universe (convert everything into pure strands of data).

History: Me and 4Kids
I won't reframe from admitting 4Kids isn't completely bad as they were part of the reason why I'm an anime fan today. But when you compare their original and first dub, Pokemon, to their dub of Tokyo Mew Mew... You'll notice there is a big dip in quality since their first dub.

I'm not a fan of Americanisation, as British people don't like the America culture stuffed down our faces. I can watch Americanised dubs usually because their one of the few things that came out of America that doesn't spew out "Truth, Justice and the American way...". Most shows seem to touch on this sooner or latter like its trying hard to make the rest of the world hate it. It doesn't need to do that... And besides... The Mad mod episode of Teen Titans where he takes over the city and "Britishes" it up was crap and even the American critics didn't like it. Incidentally, I was laughing throughout it as its 50 years at the very least out of date...

Though in anime of course it replaces it with Japan, but thats okay because you don't here about things in Japan everyday like you do with America. _'

All that aside my first encounter with 4Kids was yonks before they even dubbed anime when they were under a different name(s)(there was several companies linked together as one group - they merged them all, which I believe is half the trouble here). Pokemon was my first encounter with anime and 4Kids and I'll admit it was the show and not them that let their dub down. That aside once more, Pokemon is a crap show and should never have gotten past the first series.

Now I enjoyed Pokemon, as I have said, but do not seek a Japanese version of the show. Which is what all dubbers should leave anime fans feeling after they've watched the show. Get it Generation 3 and 4 Anime fans - its okay to change names and things and it still can be enjoyable so stop asking for the world and then some! But as time went by with Pokemon, things changed. Okay, the show was bad from the start and GOT worst... But something else was happening, things were being "cheapened".

I don’t know the life of me I can explain that, but subtle things were happening, the lines, the voices… Things were slipping. Okay now that my encounter and familiarisation with the company is out of the way lets move onto the review of One Piece.

One Piece Review
I can’t blame 4Kids on everything I hate about the show… If not for their efforts I wouldn’t even be watching your show. So I’ll start by getting my applause for their dub out of the way;

“Thank you 4Kids… Because of your dub I decided to raise the tolerance standards level on watching anime so now I’m struggling harder then ever to enjoy the old shows I grew up with and should love as a Generation 1 anime fan.”

Yeah I said it was going to be hard to avoid it…

First impression
I have quite a few opinions on what is and isn’t a good anime:

Good;
 * Devil Man (if you don’t mind nudes, this one is for you!)
 * Outlaw Star (Sci-fi must see!)
 * Rune Soldier (funny)
 * Dragon half (Funny as hell)
 * Pat Labour (Can’t remember the reason why)
 * Metropolis (good twist of plot… but hasn’t aged well though)
 * Kimba the White Lion/The Jungle King (Title name sound familiar to any Disney fans – now you know the 50 year old show Disney ripped off).
 * Cities of Gold
 * Eyeshield 21 (sheepishly admit it)

Bad:
 * Dragonballz (you know the reasons if you know me)
 * Crayon Shin Chan (does anyone like this show?)
 * Hello Kitty (Naff!)
 * Dragonball GT (See Dragonball Z)
 * Thunder Prince
 * Naruto (same as Dragonballz… With ninjas)
 * Pokemon

And this is a short list. I enjoy a lot more animes then I hate and I’d list them all if I had time. On the list of shows I’d include the dub of OP on the “Bad” list for many reasons. Now, as a Generation 1 anime fan I will just say it takes a lot to make me hate a show as those shows are inferior in quality to many of today’s anime and yet I can still enjoy (though harder since 4Kids OP) many of them with a smile.

My first impression to OP; is this it? I almost didn’t watch episode 2, only watched 3 because I was bored and had I stopped before episode 4, I’d never have been a OP fan. It bored me to tears.

This resulted me in seeking out the show via the internet… Here I am today admiring my P.O.P. Zoro, Nami and Vivi figures (okay maybe not Vivi) and waiting every week for the next issue of OP.

Intro/Outro
I hate rap, most people do. If you do rap, you have to do it right to make it acceptable, if I did the intro I’d avoided it for that reason alone… Seriously. But besides that, I watched Sailor Moon, Digimon, Beyblade, the intro never effected me that it was different. Sure the Japanese ones were most often better then the dub, but who gives crap lets just move on!

An introduction is 1 minute of your life you’ll never notice anyway, it’s the bit at the start of the show where you go and grab that bag of popcorn you left in the kitchen and hurry back anyway…. And who pays attention to the outro anyway? If you want to create an alternative to the J.Pop of any anime – stick with metal or rock, most people happily tolerate it or enjoy, but rap is an “acquired taste” so to speak, no matter how catchy you make the song.

Also, I stand o the line and say, if it makes the Japanese laugh at the dub, that’s bad…

Voice Acting and Voice Actors
Anyone who has the faintest idea on show quality will know that the FIRST thing you will be hit by is the animation, then the second thing the voices. In many cases, even if you can’t stand a character, you’ll watch the show if he is played right.

I can think of a few shows that had good voices… Transformers being the first that springs to mind. As a collective, the entire cast was enjoyable to listen to. Optimus Primes character sounded as heroic as he was meant to be, Grimlock played his part incredibly and set the level for that character completely, to this day, no other Transformer can compete! Megatron had you believing his character was as evil as Starscream was a weasel. This is a show that even without those special voice-altering tricks would have worked (Optimus Prime sounds just as good with or without the voice being altered – as seen on DVD).

Generally the first thing that springs to mind when bad voicing comes to question is Thunder Prince (1987). Comparing it to Monkey (1978 –1980) which was also a dubbed TV show (but not a cartoon) makes me feel sad that dubs vary so much even with the notion that technology progresses with time.

With that in mind, 4Kids and One Piece… Now I felt like everything was lifeless from the word go. Luffy started (and ended) screaming like a happy chipmonk. Now having watched Monster Rancher this doesn’t bother me that much as I’ve seen it before. What bothers me is unlike in Monster Rancher, there was no “acting” from the Voice Actor. When a character sounds angry, it should sound different from happy… And even if the main character fails, the other Voice Actors can make it up. Monster Rancher did this with their main character, Holy had the emotions, Tiger had both the normal voice and the anger, Hare had the plucky and cheeky attitude, Mochi was… Mochi… And Golem sounded like a big softy. Between the cast, Genki was able to use them to bounce off of if he couldn’t do it himself.

Okay, So the main character was a flop. He could bounce off the other cast of OP surely. This is where the problems begin. The whole crew (exception of Zoro and Sanji) where just as bad… A lot of people say Sanji was fine and many would have been just as happy if he was in Funimations dub, the reason being is the actor was able to bend it into happy, sad and sacrastic enough to be enjoyable. Okay, it could have been better, but using an accent is hard. I get the impression that 4Kids was selling this show on Zoro rather then Luffy, which may have been why things ended up bad. His voice is the default voice of both Grand Battle and Adventure, he had the best acting overall and was the least annoying of the cast. Robin would have also been better if the accent wasn’t brought down by her lack of acting also… She should sound sad when she was sad… Shanks and Sanji could manage an accent and emotion… Why couldn’t she?

I go “Nah” at the rest of the crew as they were boring. The worst Vocie Actor though was by far Vivi. It exceeds into Grand Adventure to the point of I enjoy playing as her, I know how to air juggle with her (so I’m a cheap game – deal with it). Its that voice. If I had one day with that Voice Actor of hers I would beat what “emotions” are into her. You don’t have to “force” yourself into the role woman let it come naturally!

Generally with progression of storyline comes progression of acting as voice actors feel more confident and in role with the character. There was actaully a slump in quality at the end over the beginning that noticed. Maybe it was the way things were done, the VAs never were allowed to feel what the characters were suppose to be like.

Okay, I can talk about Voice Acting for hours, I’ve watched enough bad dubbing to be at the level where I know my stuff and can flaunt it. It comes down to several things in the end:


 * 1) Portrayal of Emotions
 * 2) Portal of Character
 * 3) Recording Quality
 * 4) Confidence in Voice Actors doing their job

You don’t need experience or expensive VAs so long as they can cover those 4 things. If 4Kids had succeed on this part, we’d not be talking the way we do about the show.

On a side note; every show needs one veteran VA in it to show the younger VAs or inexperienced VAs how things are done. They make a show work half the time… For Beyblade, Grandpa was the veteran and did his job so well he completely changed the personality from grumpy to hip-hop and it didn’t affect anything at all. In Legion of Super Heroes, Brainiac 5 was the star and it noticed, especially in the last episode… I won’t drop any spoilers. But its worth listening carefully to that last episode. Samurai Jakes’ show would never had worked if not for the evil sorcerers VA, sadly he killed the show off when he died because there was no one any other VA could replace him.

In One Piece the closet VA to a star is Usopp’s voice actor… AKA; Voice of Shadow… You know, the drab monotoned voice that had as much emotion as concrete…. Nuff’ said.

And seriously, that’s enough on VAing.

Cuts and edits
Okay, I’ll say this once; cutting out a scene changes nothing. Its when the animation jumps suddenly (like in one episode of Sailor Moon where the two cats insult the girls and in turn are hit for it the animation jumped to avoid the cats being hit) that notices. Cutting whole episodes though, repercussions. Like when Flint the Time Detective missed out the Christmas episode and showed it last … Suddenly halfway through the series there is a Time Shifter in the house you never seen before and your wondering who the hell he is and where he has come from. As for cutting whole arcs, from a series that isn’t even finished production, that will always kicked your behind when your not looking. Hell knows how 4Kids would have handled Brook.

Edits over text was unneeded; many companies simply translate with a subtitle now and its been accent as norm.

Know the Audience
Never treat kids like kids! Every cartoon that has ever been made will have a fair share of adult viewers. Its okay to include stuff adults will only know the meaning of; kids don’t have a clue on this stuff and it simply goes over their head most of the time. I didn’t notice half the things I saw in Bugs Buggy cartoons, yet watching them now, I see all the things I didn’t notice as a child because it was beyond me. Adults tend to sit down with their kids and watch the show as well and there hasn’t been a cartoon produced that adults haven’t watched for that reason alone. Hell my dad couldn’t stand half the junk me and my bro watched, but a good parent will always watch to voice an opinion… Good or bad (“Soccer Mums”). _’

4Kids knew their audience was eight year olds, since they designed it for that audience. Unfortunately the show is for kids older then 13 and anime fans… And few people were impressed. Now most people buying the DVDs won’t be the eight year olds. They’d prefer action figures and Yu-Gi-OH cards over a nice DVD which has more value then anything in the world simply because once its gone, its gone and it’s a treasured memory lost – TV rarely repeats the shows you want to see ten years later.

Seeing Ulysses 31 and Wheeled Warriors made me so happy I cried rivers and mountains and had nothing else bad to say on Foxkids for weeks until they became Jettix and killed over. Now if Cities of Gold were ever shown again, I’d never say a single bad word against that channel ever. T_T

Generally three people buy DVDs mostly to do with Japanese animation; kids, One Piece fans and Anime fans.


 * 1) Please the kid; make it simpleb, bold and exciting, kids have a shallow curve on these grounds and will like just about anything. In fact they won’t know what they really like and hate until years later when they have an adult opinion and can’t remember the shows they didn’t think much of.  But otherwise, they’ll watch it regardless so just produce something.
 * 2) One Piece fans – will always be asking for more then is on show. Can’t please them – nothing is happy for them.  Don’t try to please them, give them what they need, anything else is a liberty.
 * 3) Anime fans – in sharp contrast, you HAVE to please anime fans, because to them, OP is “just another show”. They won’t buy a DVD unless its convenient for them.  Box sets with extras are a must have.  (yeah, I know, anime fan myself _ )

Depending on who your pleasing depends on what going to happen to the overall success of the show. 4Kids pleased the Kids. Gave them a bright, cheerful coloured anime. Didn’t please even half the One Piece fans and never got many Anime fans interested… It became the sort of DVD you picked up in a bargain bin.

Point is half the time it sounds like the dub was talking to someone with the brain of a bean and forgot they were impressing the anime fans who are likely to “buy” their work of art.

That said, 4Kids did one success; like other shows, introducing it to 8 year olds made it become wide spread, though it put many people off the show. This is the only good thing about 4Kids method of dubbing; they allow more people to see the show then anyone else.

Translations
Okay, cork gun against Shanks’ head aside, the translation was BETTER then FUNimation’s dubbing in the beginning of the show. You can’t deny it, you can kick it for all its worth but there are areas where the translation just surpasses more then you’d like it to. That aside, there is no room for toilet jokes that aren’t there in the orginal, nor the need to keep adding more and more as the series progresses. Adding text where they never was, was already done (badly) in Digimon. They often fall flat because another part of making the character work is seeing the reactions as they speak, if you see the character looking angry as he speak, you’ll accept it easier then if he has his back turned and you see nothing.

That said, if you do add things… Great! For a brief moment a Voice Actor isn’t restricted to forcing her/himself to matching words with mouth movements…

…Yet there is no improvements in the quality at all, making the scene sound awkward completely. The other part is because they often have nothing to do with the story line and are random dribble; as per Digimon, they just feel out of place. Incidentally why scriptwriters use this time to write bad jokes I don’t know… It’s beyond me.

Music
Rules if you use your own music:
 * 1) Don’t make it boring
 * 2) Don’t make it loud
 * 3) Keep it touch with the show (make sure it matches the setting of the show)
 * 4) Know the value of silence
 * 5) Vary it (should be about 8-12 music scores with slightly different instruments in each one. Per season, (not series!))
 * 6) Use the right music for the right scene (E.g. violins for the sad scenes, guitars for action scenes, flute for happy scenes, etc)

There were no silent moments… The others failed during the series in every episode. They used the same instrument and dull scores over and over from start to finish. They used the wrong music in the wrong places over and over again. It did get loud at times (which didn’t notice anyway because the Voice Actors were louder). Digimon worked because it had uplifting songs, Beyblade worked for the same reason.

Budget
Put little money into a show… Get little back from it most of the time. Okay, sometimes you can pull it off, but you have to use the money WISELY to do that. Get the right formula working, you’ll find yourself making back much, much more. Think of the movie “Grease!” (But not Grease 2). 4Kids spent a lot of money buying the show… Then had nothing left to put into it (they do this all the time, which is how they go the Kids WB! Slot and replaced all the good shows in my opinion like Legion of Superheroes).

Okay if the formula isn’t working, everyone knows you change it. Unfortunately we’re dealing with a big co-operate business. Somewhere in the middle of the dub things slipped up… Instead of improving the formula they continued on, making it worst and worst.

On the introduction of Vivi, they should have put a lot of money into one star VA to play her, using her to try and fix what is broken. That’s what I would have done, and I would have spent hours considering things. I would have gone with at the least one of the Sailor Moon characters… Or someone on the lines of Holly of Monster Rancher, or Outstar Stars female android at the very least, she was pretty close sounding to Vivi’s VA and could actually act. If any of them are dead, then just find someone else on their level.

Low budget means you have little to put into music, translations… It affects all the gears of war. Low budget could have meant nothing; The Odex version of One Piece was low budget and it sounded x2 as good as the 4Kids. So really they had no excuse for it.

Marketing
Aside from the ad on TV, I say nothing. There was the introduction interview when 4Kids acquired the show… Then that’s it. Most Americans won’t know who One Piece is no more then Dragonball when it first came out. So get the merchandise moving! Promote the show! Make it seem the best show ever… Make people WATCH it. This goes with budget. The more you put into, the more you get out.

Overall
Okay once I saw the Japanese version I never turned back. I couldn’t bring myself to watch the 4Kids version and later episodes strained my tolerance level. It just felt like we took two decades worth of steps back and forgot what quality was. Some people did like this version… They are entitled to their opinions. You have to walk around the block, know what is and isn’t good quality, then come back and tell me your opinions before judge something. For the life of me, having watched all kinds fo shows, I can’t bring myself to love the show.

And this is the end of my review. Its long. Took me two hours to write. Its 8 pages long on word. If you’ve reached the end, I shake me hand with you.