several 4Kids's dubs rated on how good or bad they are

[mochi]

note: I'm only including the shows I remember anything about

 

first the best and worst

 

Best: Pokemon/ it was actually a very well produced dub, and when Kids WB would allow them to they actually tried to retain that the show was Japanese(like the Kodomo No Hi and Hina matsuri episodes), it's also worth pointing out that Kanto is the name of a real place in Japan so 4kids couldn't just say the show wasn't set in Japan like with all the other regions, I also belive it is the only Dub they produced that retained it's Japanese background music OST (sans vocal songs but even their replacement vocal insert songs were decent), basically if every dub they produced had been like Pokemon we would not remember them as negatively as we do

 

Worst: One Piece/ I largely attribute how bad this dub was, to the fact that it was on the more violent and sexual side of the Shonen anime spectrum, and 4kids was not used to dubbing shows of that type, note, they actually tried to get the original Background music track and retain the openings, but Fox Kids said that "We Are" was boring and told them that today's kids like Rap, demanding 4kids replace We are with a rap song, they then dropped getting the BGM due to not having a reason to retain an OST that heavily featured a song they no longer had in their show's dub, they were also forced to remove anything remotely resembling violence or sex, which was basically impossible in a show about Pirates

 

other good dubs

Ojamajo Doremi/ I believe they only dubbed one season, but the show was already so child friendly that they did not actually have to do ANY editing, and as a result, the show's dub was done very well, they even retained Doremi's catch-phrase and hired a few voice actors outside of their usual rotation of actors

Yugioh/ there's a reason this show still has a fanbase, it's dub wasn't perfect but it was one of their better ones, they also once made a concious effort to Produce an alternate "uncensored" dub....but the sales did terribly and the uncut DVD's were discontinued after the Duelist Kingdom arc, they also dubbed the later series in a self depricating Parody manner (in direct Homage to Little Kuribo's Abridged series) which I personally feel excuses bad dubbing

Shaman King/ dispite similar censorship Issues to One Piece they managed to not make this show's dub terrible, as much as could be retained of Japanese culture was

Kinnikuman/ this show was too bizzare to begin with for them to mess it up in any way....plus I give them Kudos for somehow getting the censors to let them rename Gazelleman "Dik Dik van Dick" and air tons of Promos on Fox Kids that just consisted of them saying the word "Dick" a million times, apparently the show did so well for them they had an additional season Produced just for American TV

Kirby right back at ya/ again, it wasn't adult enough for them to do any damage to it's source material....I will point out how weird it is they made Dedede Black though (and made Escargoon sound like Paul Linde)

Cubix/ this was just an honestly good dub, almost as good as pokemon, **shrug**(it also had one of their catchiest opening songs)

 

Actually terrible dubs

Tokyo Mew mew/ lets face it when they produced this dub they had no idea what a Magical girl show was and were producing the dub based on having seen clips of DiC's 90's dub of Sailor Moon, they even made the girls older to make them match the age of the Sailor Guardians, Basically they wanted their own Sailor Moon so they just copied what they'd seen before and made an awful dub

 

 

dubs that may not have been bad of their doing (I.e. the source material or network meddling made the dubs suffer)

Sonic X/ this show itself was plagued with executive meddling, Tokyo Movie Shinsha wanted it to be a sequel to the older Sonic Saturday morning cartoon WHICH THEY HAD DONE ANIMATION ON IN THE PAST (i.e. they wanted it set in Mobius and wanted it to use the Archie Sonic comics as a basis) but Sega demanded it adapt the storyline of the Sonic Adventure series of Games (even though they were already old games by the time the show started production) and with Chris being forced to remain in the show it kinda made it impossible for Sega to make the show any good

Winx Club/ the show was in effect a deliberate rip-off of Sailor Moon in and of itself, and 4kids Dub seemed solely focused on drawing attention away from that fact, so it just was a bad show to begin with and they couldn't salvage it

 

[moose]

Well, yeah, even though 4Kids had other Shonen Jump affairs like Shaman King and the original YuGiOh.... all of them paled in comparison to the content One Piece has.

 

And it's not like OP is this REALLY violent series or anything... I mean it can get pretty gritty when it wants, but its in no way a Berserk. However, compared to everything 4Kids had at the time... it was clearly on a whole different level when it came to objectionable content.

 

I mean, when one of the main characters is a chain-smoker, you already should have known you done f**ked up by trying to air this on Saturday mornings with US children tv standards in mind.

 

But of course, it's common knowledge that One Piece apparently came as a packaged deal and 4Kids did the 'best' they could with it (which is a damn lie, but whatever).