For some reason, I wasn't expecting Al Kahn to be in any kind of employment. I thought that he would just live off of what money he did get from leaving 4Kids and stay out of the business world. Considering that he's going back into work not too long after leaving 4Kids, it does make me lead more towards believing that he did see the writing on the wall for 4Kids, especially with this legal situation for the Yu-Gi-Oh! license, and got out when he can.
As for the ratings, they are a bit lower than usual, especially with the reruns of DBZ Kai and Sonic X. 5D's did do a bit better than it normally does, but few shows actually got to the 0.8 mark.
I also have some news regarding the 5D's dub. According to the MSN schedule here:
http://tv.msn.com/tv/series-episodes/yu-gi-oh!-5d%27s/, the June 25th episode is called "Eyes on the Prize" and the summary states that Team 5D's is getting ready to face Team Ragnarok. Apparently, after they finish the five-part Primo's Plan duel this week, they're going to skip about twelve episodes so in order to get to Zexal in the fall even sooner. I'm not too surprised that they're skipping some episodes, although the amount of episodes was much larger than I expected. Considering that they want to dub Zexal for the fall, I had a feeling that they would go this route and the skipped episodes, similar to the ones during the Dark Signer arc, will most likely end up on their website at some point in the near future. While I was kind of disappointed that they were skipping so many episodes when I first heard about this, I wasn't too upset since they'll at least put it up on their website.
But then I heard this other piece of information. There is a rumor going around the dub for 5D's ends at episode 137, eighteen episodes before the series actually ends. Now, this is only a rumor from someone on twitter, although she apparently does tweet about Yu-Gi-Oh! news, but until either she is proven as a creditable source of information or 4Kids mentions it later themselves, I try to see it as a rumor Here's the link to the twitter page since the link to the specific tweet is a bit spoiler-ish:
http://twitter.com/#!/DemonAtemu
While I'm going to hope that this is only a rumor, I'll still describe how I feel about it in case it actually does turn out to be true.
I am seriously upset with 4Kids now if this is accurate. Not only does it just leave the storyline that they are building up to with no conclusion, but the characters themselves won't really have a proper sendoff with ending it right there. While I'm not completely aware of the storyline in the original version at that point, I do know that there are still quite a few loose ends to the Yilaster storyline and they still need to confront/deal with the other villains besides Primo. I didn't like how they ended their dub of GX with implying that Jaden had died and leaving off with poor Syrus crying, but at least it was the end of an arc, rather than the middle of the last one that I believe 5D's is at that point. One other reason why this decision bothers me is that they acquired the rights to the rest of the episodes. It wasn't like with GX, where I believe we weren't sure if they had acquired the rights to the last few episodes and they actually confirmed not too long after 5D's started that they got the materials to start working on 5D's before season four of GX. They released information stating that they had acquired ninety episodes of 5D's, which along with the first 64 episodes adds up to 154 episodes, the entire series' run. So, I don't think that they'd have the same excuse as they did with GX. This is also just disappointing to learn this shortly after finding out that they're going to skip twelve episodes. It just makes their decision feel pointless in the grand scheme, especially when they're only going to have 5D's on for another couple of months.
Granted, I'm sure that the lawsuit issue has a factor into this, especially since they do want to dub Zexal, most likely in an attempt to still look innocent and get what money they can out of this franchise while they still have the chance. The legal costs they must be dealing with to defend themselves in court combined with their already poor financial state also means that they probably couldn't handle dubbing three shows at the same time. However, this decision just makes their company look even more incompetent to me. Assuming that this is true, they easily could have avoided having another GX season four situation by dubbing more episodes at a faster pace, especially since 5D's was the only show they were working on for quite some time until they acquired Tai Chi Chasers, and having double premiers so that it wouldn't take as long to finish the series. The fact that they haven't been able to finish a Yu-Gi-Oh! series since DM just feels so sad to me. Leaving a dub incomplete is just a waste of the time, money and effort it took to get the show off the ground and onto the air in the first place. That was the main reason I disliked Viz Media for years and I just started to feel better about them once they had their anime titles available online and had much better iTune releases than they even did with DVDs. Again, I can understand the financial reason behind doing this, but it just feels so unprofessional to me.
There's also the fact that I'm upset that they're going to work on Zexal over 5D's, even though they probably won't have Zexal for too long given the claims in the lawsuit. It just comes off as desperate to work on the newest Yu-Gi-Oh! series without even trying to complete their third one. If this does turn out to be true, then I may not even watch their Zexal dub out of anger and disappointment. Though, I probably will just to see what voices they do choose for the characters and what kind of odd/questionable/unnecessary edits they make for what little storyline there is in the first few episodes. I can easily see them using Dan Green in a Yu-Gi-Oh! series one more time, but I'm not sure which one. Anyway, I will be extremely disappointed in 4Kids if this does turn out to be accurate. A decision like that would destroy what little support for them I had left, as a company since I still feel bad for the innocent people that their poor business decisions affect. Despite the anger, I'll still buy the Bonds Beyond Time movie, if only because it's way too awesome and I had too much fun in theaters to not buy it. I seriously hope that whoever gets the Yu-Gi-Oh! license at some points either redubs all of the previous series, although I can still see how that might be too much, streams legal subs on their website or include it along with the 4Kids dubbed episodes for DVD releases, as well as actually have DVD releases in general. I'd be content with any of those choices.
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