Hackdubs

[Spark Of Spirit]

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=W6-vS4aj-Zo
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?

[Avaitor]

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.

[Spark Of Spirit]

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.

[Avaitor]

I dunno, even the recent stuff which try to do that, like Shin Chan and the Sgt. Frog test, suck.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Here is Funimation's opening for One Piece, just for the sake of comparison. Also, here 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.

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.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Here is Funimation's opening for One Piece, just for the sake of comparison. Also, here 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.

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.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Here is Funimation's opening for One Piece, just for the sake of comparison. Also, here 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.

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.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

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....

[Spark Of Spirit]

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.

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.

[Angus]

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.

[Daxdiv]

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.

[Spark Of Spirit]

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.

[Angus]

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!

[Angus]

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.

[Eddy]

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.