4Kids Rant

A Rant About 4Kids and Their Dubs

Hi, Wish here. I'm gonna be ranting about 4Kids and the dubs that they do. SO PREPARE FOR THE LONGEST TWO TO FIVE MINUTES OF YOUR LIFE IF YOU LIEK 4KIDS WHICH I HIGHLY DOUBT YOU DO.

Basics first, they change the names of the characters in any anime they can get their hands on. Take Pokémon for example. Satoshi to Ash, Takeshi to Brock, Kasumi to Misty, Haruka to May, Masato to Max, Hikari to Dawn, and so on. I mean, come on. There was nothing wrong with the original names! In fact, if 4Kids hadn't dubbed Pokémon first, the names would've stayed the same. It's really their fault that Japan has pwnsome and/or pretty names and we have cheesy dub names.

Also, they like to mess up perfectly good voices. Sure, it's not like they can go over to Japan and hire those voice actors and actresses, we have to cut them some slack for that, but they hired the worse possible voices! I mean, sure, they were decent. Veronica Taylor did a pretty good job dubbing Ash for the first few generations. But it seems like the voices got worse and worse for every generation. But when you compare the dub voices to the original Japanese voices, even Veronica Taylor looks pretty bad (I have nothing against her when I say this, I'm just trying to make a point). I mean, take Max's voice for example. His voice went from cute and shota-like to nasaly and annoying. And I saw a clip from some random season of Yu-Gi-Oh (I don't watch that anime, I just saw a clip in a rant on YT that I lost the link to), and the supposed villan in that clip sounded like a steriotypical nerd with a cold. How messed up is that?!

Alright. I think I've made my point about the voices. Now their edits. They take out all Japanese references. I mean, look at the first couple of generations of Pokémon. They used onigri (sp?) in a lot of scenes, and 4Kids decided to be a bunch of buttheads and poorly edit in a sandwich or something. And in a very popular scene from the first generation, they did keep the onigri, but called them donuts. Isn't that the most screwed up thing you've ever seen and/or heard of? (Imagine if 4Kids got their hands on Keroro Gunsou. That anime is built on Japanese references.) Also, in the same rant I mentioned in the previous paragraph, they showed a YGO clip that took place in a public bath. There were no wrong parts showing, just from the head to the shoulders. There's nothing inappropriate about that, right? Well, 4Kids thought so and added in badly edited swimsuits. They didn't even bother to shade them!

Long story (rant) short, if you watch an anime that was dubbed by 4Kids, abandon the dub immedietley and look for the original anime with subtitles, unless you like watching screwed up anime that fails. You'll be a lot more satisfied. Trust me.

-Wish