Those of you growing up in the current climate of the anime 'scene' (or whatever the kids call it) may not be familiar with the concept of a hackdub- and you should be thankful. Hackdubs were loose translations of anime dating from any period from the late 70s to the late 90s where American (sometimes Canadian, I'll admit) companies would pick up an anime from Japan and attempt to "retool" it for North American audiences. This concept lived for a long time, until it was eventually discovered (by Funimation, no less) that an accurate and loyal adaption of the source material could bring wider appeal to more than just those who watch them for disposable entertainment.
That era has ended, but I figured we would make a thread dedicated to this awkward period of anime where censorship was not the only issue in regards to parachutes added to exploding planes, re-purposed stories by shuffling scenes, main characters relegated to second string status by minor editing, whole plots being changed under the animation's nose, and pointless retranslations that can change a whole character's destiny with a single bad voiceover.
I'll get around to specific examples later, but first I'll leave you with some OPs of some gross offenders:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJUDNaGUe48 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJUDNaGUe48)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6-vS4aj-Zo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6-vS4aj-Zo)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMTB-_4LAVQ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMTB-_4LAVQ)
But don't think I hate hack dubs blindly. Samurai Pizza Cats is WAY better than the original version, for instance. It manages to take the best aspects of the original concept and make it even crazier, making it even funnier in the process. Also Robotech aims for a totally different story and even edits in two completely different series (which sucked regardless), but it did not dumb the material down and managed to contain the original spirit of Macross making it a fun show in its own right.
Anyway, hackdubs. Thoughts?
While there are some good in hackdubs, like the ones you mentioned which I'll take your word for, I think we're better off without them being prevalent anymore. Since the age of the internet makes discovering the original version of most series a lot easier than back in the day, modern audiences are a little too clever to latch onto things like the 4Kids One Piece dub again, and the further away we are from those, the better.
I think part of the reason One Piece was hated on as hard as it was is because the internet was prevalent at the time and pretty much the entirety of the audience knew they were getting screwed out of a superior adaption.
Whereas you have things like Duel Masters which again tries to make the existing idea better.
I think there's some merit to the idea, but only in extremely rare occasions. It's definitely not acceptable as common practice anymore.
I dunno, even the recent stuff which try to do that, like Shin Chan and the Sgt. Frog test, suck.
Here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0ov2ZIgC88) is Funimation's opening for One Piece, just for the sake of comparison. Also, here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPPstJE5QuU) is a direct comparison of a very big scene in One Piece between the 4Kids and FUNimation dub. I have to be honest, I actually laughed at the 4Kids butchering of this scene....for all of the wrong reasons. :sweat:
Anyways, as far as hackdubs go, I'm not sure what exactly counts, but I believe that Digimon, despite staying true enough to the source material in essence, really did screw around a lot with the script enough to technically be considered a hackdub. But, you know what? I like it for what it is. Don't get me wrong, its by not means good writing, but it seemed self-aware enough of how goofy it was that I found myself having fun watching the series regardless of the butchered dialogue, because it was clear that the writers were having fun, and that feeling sort of got emulatd in the dub, IMO, at least for the first season of Adventure.
Here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0ov2ZIgC88) is Funimation's opening for One Piece, just for the sake of comparison. Also, here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPPstJE5QuU) is a direct comparison of a very big scene in One Piece between the 4Kids and FUNimation dub. I have to be honest, I actually laughed at the 4Kids butchering of this scene....for all of the wrong reasons. :sweat:
Anyways, as far as hackdubs go, I'm not sure what exactly counts, but I believe that Digimon, despite staying true enough to the source material in essence, really did screw around a lot with the script enough to technically be considered a hackdub. But, you know what? I like it for what it is. Don't get me wrong, its by not means good writing, but it seemed self-aware enough of how goofy it was that I found myself having fun watching the series regardless of the butchered dialogue, because it was clear that the writers were having fun, and that feeling sort of got emulatd in the dub, IMO, at least for the first season of Adventure.
Quote from: Ensatsu-ken on April 29, 2011, 11:03:47 PM
Here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0ov2ZIgC88) is Funimation's opening for One Piece, just for the sake of comparison. Also, here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPPstJE5QuU) is a direct comparison of a very big scene in One Piece between the 4Kids and FUNimation dub. I have to be honest, I actually laughed at the 4Kids butchering of this scene....for all of the wrong reasons. :sweat:
Anyways, as far as hackdubs go, I'm not sure what exactly counts, but I believe that Digimon, despite staying true enough to the source material in essence, really did screw around a lot with the script enough to technically be considered a hackdub. But, you know what? I like it for what it is. Don't get me wrong, its by not means good writing, but it seemed self-aware enough of how goofy it was that I found myself having fun watching the series regardless of the butchered dialogue, because it was clear that the writers were having fun, and that feeling sort of got emulatd in the dub, IMO, at least for the first season of Adventure.
Eh, I don't really view Digimon as a hackdub since they managed to retain most of the names, acknowledged that the characters were Japanese, and didn't do anything like cut and paste episodes together. Still not something that holds up well, though.
Eh, Well, I suppose it depends how you specifically define a hackdub. Its certainly not a complete butchery of the source material, so I guess it might not count, but either way its probably the closest thing I can think of to a hackdub that I actually saw a good portion of.
Well, I also saw a decent amount of the Fox Kids version Vision of Escaflowne, which I believe counts as hackdub. I lost interest in it pretty fast because the story made no sense to me....possibly because they cut out the entire first episode and started with episode 2....
Digimon, while loose in "literal" translations is probably what I wouldn't consider a traditional hackdub. I know some digifreaks still nitpick over every little thing from this show but honestly it's only the changed music and random lines of dialogue that were really effected. It's got some questionable choices, but there are FAR worse out there.
Escaflowne was a really good example of how far you can pull a series down with bad decisions. Digimon at least kept the original tone and atmosphere of the story.
But there are different techniques for hacking. I mean, Samurai Pizza Cats didn't actually cut anything or merge episodes, it just had a really gonzo translation that improved on the source material because they had to. I think they cut two episodes total, both of which were clip shows. Whereas even some non-hack dubs like Sailor Moon (name changes aside) had episodes cut from its run, but I wouldn't consider that a hack dub either.
Quote from: Avaitor on April 29, 2011, 10:49:06 PM
I dunno, even the recent stuff which try to do that, like Shin Chan and the Sgt. Frog test, suck.
Well, I think that's more to do with poor writing than anything else. Funi doesn't seem equipped for that style of writing.
Samurai Pizza Cats at least had the DIC-like puns and kids jokes that made it as entertaining as the Super Mario Brothers Super Show.
I grew up in the Japanimation era with Battle of the Planets, Star Blazers, and Robotech, so those are considered classic even if the voice acting was just getting started. I might throw Voltron and Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs in this mix, and hmmm who knows about the live-action dude in a mascot costume Godzilla films and their outrageous dubs.
The more recent offenders in the 2000s:
Cardcaptors for WB Kids - although I blame this partly on CLAMP's production company letting this over-Americanization go through. Totally changed the plot of the first movie too.
Initial D Tricked Out - special effects worthy of a cheezy music video, and the cheezy music to go with it. Funimation recently redubbed the entire series.
Would you guys consider Ultimate Muscle a hackdub of Kinnikuman Nisei? For the most part, I actually found the 4Kids dub of it to be more humorous than the original Japanese version. I guess it does help that the few episodes I saw in the Japanese, the humor felt a little bland to me.
Though, considering the controversy surrounding Hetalia over at toonzone, I decided to check the series out thanks to my local library. I'm still questioning how this is a hackdub like their take on Shin-Chan when I'd say that a good percentage of the original dialogue is still there. Sure there are a few jokes they threw in to make it more "edgy," but considering that this is basically a show that gives the nations of the world a human form, gives them stereotypes surrounding their countries, and that was created by a Japanese Man (You read that right, Hetalia when it started off as a web-comic, was created by a Japanese MAN!), it sort of fits with the show a little bit more.
As for hackdubs in general, it mostly depends on my tastes or not. I will admit that in this day and age of digital distribution and such, that pulling something like One Piece wouldn't fly by with me. Hell, it didn't even fly by me when I was a young kid in my weeaboo phase. I could take things as "Shadow Realm/Different Dimension" and just think of them as another meaning for the word "death" just like that, since that what they basically were. I don't really care for a literal translation, since that would be stupid, I just hope for a good localization.
Oh shit, I totally forgot about Initial D. The number 1 reason why Tokyopop hatred started. They wanted it to be a modern day Speed Racer despite it, y'know, not being ANYTHING like Speed Racer.
Ultimate Muscle is the type of show where hackdubs are usually more acceptable since crazy comedies need to be at least slightly Americanized to work here, but I don't really consider it a hackdub. It isn't like anything was massively changed or butchered from the source material aside from some names and lines.
While a lot of people hate 4Kids, I think their most hackerrific show was definitely One Piece. I don't think anything they did really comes close to how they hacked that up.
I still haven't seen the Dragon Ball season one uncut, so that one is hard to tell how much of that got censored up.
Case Closed tried to place the characters and situations in America and claimed that Richard barely learned Japanese. But after seeing over a hundred episodes, it's safe to say they didn't stray from the heart of the program on solving mysteries.
The Saint Tail dub was hacked up enough so that they removed religious references in the transformation sequence, even though the whole point of the show was that it's about a Catholic school girl who doubles as a Robin Hood like thief (same story as DN Angel) and her best friend is a nun-in-training.
Another potential hack dub was Kodocha episode 1 where they removed the early joke about Sana calling her agent Rei a pimp. That got restored after episode 5. I'm just irritated they haven't released the second half of that series since Funimation licensed it.
Also would love to hear Samurai Pizza Cats. Hurry up and release it to DVD already!
G-Force (also from Gatchaman derivates) had that really bad 1980s synth soundtrack. I have no idea if that was on the original, but ugh that was totally useless. I'm glad that Dragonball Z got the Japanese audio track; such a different experience than the English dub, and closer to the fun of the original Dragon Ball.
I actually loved FUNi's Shin Chan dub, to be honest. But I also loved the original version of the show as well.
Cardcaptors has to be one of the worst offenders of a hackdub I've seen. Butchering the show to try to make Li the main character over Sakura to appeal to boys and skipping the first group of episodes? It was awful.
I could argue that back in the day, we didn't know better and that's why hack dubs were so commonplace 10-15 years ago.
But that would be taking the easy way out wouldn't it?
A show should be able to stand on it's own merits without any kind of revisioning but if you tell that to someone at a toy company that see's potential for bringing over a highly successful toyline and they'd probably ask you if you "hate making money" or something like that. Art be darned if there's money to be made and the like.
Thankfully there's only a handful of these kinds of dubs on the market with 4Kids being the last major offender after DiC and Saban had their time.
Of course the Japanese producers are just as much to blame if not more to blame than the American staff because they don't really care what happens to a show as long as it makes them money. Toei sold all their biggest properties to hit the states first and foremost to people looking to merchandise them and get them on children's television no matter what it took to get it there. Fueling the fire for World Events Productions, DiC, Saban, early FUNimation and 4Kids to take the hottest properties with kids in Japan and make them barely resemble their what they were in a sedated westernized form intended not to offend anyone. The truly regrettable thing is that a lot of those dubs became the basis for international dubs of those shows. Of course Toei wasn't the only company to do this but I felt it was a particularly good example.
Modified dubs can be more entertaining than the originals if the original is bland but of course purists would find the modification appalling regardless if the dub was more entertaining than the original. Or at least they'd never admit that they actually did find entertainment value in it.
Of course there were many more failed attempts to jazz up a script that success stories because for every Pizza Cats and Duel Masters you have Card Captors and One Piece.
If a show is really good, sometimes the quality can shine through the poor dubbing. I feel that's the case with Sailor Moon and to a lesser extent Dragon Ball Z (because it's overall decently accurate). Yes the dialogue can be groan worthy but it gets the heart of the show.
A hackdub should imply cutting footage so I don't tend to think of "westernized" as "hackdub" particularly in the cases of SGT Frog, Case Closed and Hetallia but Shin Chan which I believe splices some episodes could maybe be considered a "hackdub".
Though in most cases I don't mind necessary edits nearly as much as I mind westernization. You can edit a show without butchering it depending on the original content level and the content cap but often westernization is merely an attempt to hide where the show came from. However with comedies in particular the translation may not be funny to western audiences and thus a snappier dub script written with western viewers in mind The most important thing is getting the intent across. If you can't do that with a straight translation then I have no qualms with loose ones or even notable changes to a script as long as it's entertaining in it's own right and the company provides the original subtitled version as well. Shin Chan didn't get the original and that's unfortunate but I'm glad SGT Frog and Hetallia have not shared that fate.
Hackdubs are becoming less common place due to the rise of Japanese animation fandom and the lack of success of most hackdubs in recent years. Really only Pokemon, Bakugan and Beyblade remain other than 4Kids hold-overs and DBZ Kai's Saturday morning broadcast dub. Companies aren't interested in new shows from Japan. They want shows they know people here are familiar with or if they're willing to risk money on new ideas they might go as far as to fund animation in the style that isn't coming from Japan and thus they can craft however they please. Hence Redakai.
I think what makes the 90s and 2000s hackdubs stand out is what American shows they aired with. Voltron was not a well handled dub but it was pretty on par with Transformers, G.I. Joe and He-Man. Then you compare Yu-Gi-Oh! to Batman Beyond and you see the drastic difference in their handling. One of the things that made 4Kids dubs of foreign animation (not just from Japan) seem particularly bad is their home grown TMNT series was excellent. Sure ADR is harder to get good performances from than pre-lay but the direction on most 4Kids dub was horrendously bad while TMNT had great direction and while still having plenty of that 4Kids brand humor at least most of the dialogue was delivered in a manner that it could be funny and not just funny for the wrong reasons. None the less some notable hackdubs got along just fine with less edited material and some outstanding American cartoons on a little block called Toonami. Most of the Japanese cartoons to air on it did get edits but few would be considered actual "hackdubs".
It's good that so few shows are getting hackdubs today but edited dubs are how a lot of people became fans of Japanese animation and not having many Japanese cartoons targeting kids will likely be detrimental to growing fandom and contrary to what some weeaboos will say, every fan counts.