4Kids Talkback: The Crossroads of Destiny - The 4Kids Discussion V10

Don't get me wrong, I loved Yu-Gi-Oh, but that was almost 8-10 years ago and in this day and age there is a need to move onward and not stay stuck in one place for too long, only certain series can prove to be able to do that and classic Yu-Gi-Oh isn't one of them. I also really like 5D's quite a bit, but again, it isn't pulling it's weight as far as ratings go and it's time for something new to be brought in to (hopefully) pick up the slack. If they continue on with the same old programming then they will continue on with the same old ratings, in turn they will find themselves out of business before long. Now, there is no promise in a ratings increase by bringing in something new and fresh, but there is room for improvement and 4Kids should take this oppertunity to give something new a shot, if it doesn't work then they still have the Yu-Gi-Oh franchise to fall back on in the end.
 
Oh snap! I remember WMAC masters lol.

Also: im looking around the toonzaki website, and this thing has SPEED RACER in it, along with a buncha other cool anime. One question though, where is the subtitled stuff at? I haven't looked really hard yet, but its not very obvious either....

edit: ok lemme rephrase this. After looking around some more, It seems that certain shows are subtitled while others (like magical do-re-mi sadly) are not. Seems that mostly the shows without any kind of us release (like slam dunk) are the ones that are subbed.

edit edit: one more thing i wanted to add that i just found. Apparantly toonzaki takes shows from other websites too (like hulu) as in this one show i just found which appears to be a SUBTITLED edition of digimon Adventure 2, otherwise known as series 2 (which involves older versions of the original cast, and the armor digivolutions)

This is interesting to me, as i've never EVER seen Digimon subtitled. Surprised toonzaki isn't showing the dubbed version of this....or are they? Also: this show was found under the COMEDY channel.
 
Yeah, I knew about Tom Wayland. I would have loved to seen that Bella Hudson one though, since I'm curious if it sounds true or not. Oh well.

EDIT: I can't find anything on her being in the show. So, I'm curious where that's from.
 
As much as I enjoy some of their toyetic series, I agree that the lack of variety in the anime on their block is kind of a problem. I remember reading some pre-release statements prior to the start of Toonzai that claimed it would have edgier anime titles. While I think that the block is overall decent and enjoyable, I have to admit that it has been kind of disappointing after all of that build-up to rebranding the name of the block and bringing only DBZ Kai for it. Though, hopefully we'll hear about more shows later in the spring.



I think Al Kahn or some other higher up at 4Kids mentioned shortly after the name of the block was announced that it was actually a reference to Toonami. I believe that's the same case with Toonzaki, although I wouldn't be surprised if it also references Miyazaki considering that they claimed that the Toonzaki website would be generally for an older audience.
 
I don't think that the previous Yu-Gi-Oh! series had that much lighter content, with the possible exception for the first two seasons of GX. While Duelist Kingdom was a fairly light start to the series, Battle City was a bit darker due to Marik's past and wanting to kill Yugi, at least in the Japanese version. The Noah's Virtual World arc was a bit intense near the end with the discovery of Noah and his father's ultimate fate. The DOMA/Waking the Dragon arc really felt like the darkest arc for the series with pretty much everyone in the main cast, except for Atem, temporarily dying with their souls being taken away and the reason behind the three duelists, Rafael, Valon and Alister, reason for helping Dartz achieve his goal. Even though GX started out fairly light with only a few dark/intense moments, such as some of the Shadow Rider duels, Aster's father being murdered and Zane become Dark Zane, season three was pretty dark, especially in the Dark World arc with Jaden becoming the Supreme King, almost every character except for Syrus, Jaden, Crowler and Jesse temporarily dying and Yubel taking control of Jesse just to get revenge on Jaden for abandoning her.

At this point, the darkest part of 5D's I've seen was the Dark Signer arc. The current arc that's on the air now isn't really that dark at all and while it would help to watch the other two arcs, or at least the last few duels in the Fortune Cup and the Dark Signer arc, in order to appreciate some of the character interaction and understand some of the references they make, I'm not sure kids would be lost if they didn't see all of the previous episodes. It's really not that complicated and there aren't a lot of references to previous arcs. The most common one I've heard was just referring to Yusei as the Fortune Cup winner, along with the Crashtown arc referring to Yusei dueling against Kalin.
 
I think that 5D's will not end by the end of spring. Chances are the one new episode a week will be for a while.

Hopefully, there aren't new episodes in the summer and they'll wait until Fall.

I'm wouldn't be shocked if Zeal doesn't come out in the Fall. The dub usually stays about a season behind or so.
 
I think you're talking about Cardfight Vanguard since I believe that there's already an anime series named Battle Spirits. It premiered last week and I could see 4Kids being interested in picking up the license, but I could easily see it going to another company as well.



Sonic X and DBZ Kai do seem to do well more so than the other shows on the block, so I could see 4Kids trying to get a couple more action-based series. I can understand why they've kept in that toyetic series formula given how most of their most successful shows, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh! DM, Sonic X and arguably Dinosaur King, as it was really popular outside of the US, were toyetic and they seem to do really well with merchandised based series. Given that interview from a few months ago where Mark said they didn't really know what they were getting into with One Piece, I wouldn't be surprised if they were kind of nervous, but I agree that an action anime with little editing involved for them would be a good choice. I think they could have a better chance going for another DBZ Kai situation where they simply get the broadcasting and streaming rights to the series and then have to do little to no edits with the series.



Even if the new CEO wanted to have 4Kids make their own shows again, they'd still need more money to make that happen. I wouldn't mind seeing 4Kids create their own shows again since most of them were really fun, but I don't think that will happen anytime soon. For now, I think that it's better for the company to acquire licenses to series since I believe that is overall less expensive than creating an entire series from scratch.



Well that is an interesting idea. While an animated series that follows the storyline to the Inheritance Cycle more so than the movie did sounds kind of cool, along with seeing the magic, dragons and other character in animation form, I don't know how likely that could happen. Not only did the movie bomb, but I'm not sure if the book series is even that popular to warrant an animated series. If Harry Potter couldn't get one in its hay day, I don't think that the chances of Eragon getting one are that good. They'd have to reduce some of the fighting and death in the later books, as well as the romance between Roran and Katrinna. It has interesting potential, but I don't see it as a likely scenario to happen.



I thought that Eragon, the book, was much better than the movie adaptation. It wasn't groundbreaking material, but it was fun and enjoyable fantasy read. While Eldest did drag on a bit here and there, Christopher Paolini did a better job than I expected with focusing on the point of view of two characters and it was still overall good. With Brisingr though, it dragged on way too much in the middle for me to care that much about the little bits of events relevant to the plot stuck in the beginning and ending of the book. It's a decent book series at best, but I don't think it would be something kids could look forward to watching on Saturday morning. I think that there are a lot of other better developed fantasy series out there that would appeal to kids more.

As for the permission from FOX, the movie was distributed by 20th Century Fox, so they might hold some short of license over the name Eragon. If that was the case, then 4Kids would need to get their permission to do an animated series around the book series. I still doubt that they would go that route with this series in particular, but I'm guessing that's what they'd have to do with FOX.
 
Actually Digimon 02 has been available on the internet for a few years now (only in subtitled format though).

But yeah, a lot of the videos are Hulu embeds. The goal of Toonzaki is to get one huge library of anime titles together in one place so casual viewers will discover titles or old favorites that they might not have before.
 
I think Blue Dragon might fit in really well on Toonzai. The second series, Blue Dragon: Trials of the Seven Shadows is fully dubbed by Viz and has already aired on Cartoon Network in Pakistan. I think it would be a great fit for the block, especially since they would be able to advertise it as a US premiere.
 
I originally was going to be far more specific, and heavily condense a series bible I made as an example, but I'm really ornery about it and have not decided whether to expose one of my ideas to a public forum where it can be easily stolen.

So this could be a part one or a stand-alone post, depending on if/when I stop feeling ornery.



Again, I have not decided whether to go into more specifics and expose one of my ideas openly. It depends whether I want to take the risk of something being stolen.
 
I don't know how long this has been there, but 4Kids has created an online channel on 4KidsTV.com called Last Week on Toonzai where you can watch the shows that aired on Toonzai the week before. Pretty convenient if you've missed the block for whatever reason.

In other news, looks like 4Kids no longer has Huntik, as it has been taken down from 4KidsTV.com, Toonzaki and YouTube. The rights probably expired at the end of 2010. Same deal with Di-Gata Defenders.
 
By holding onto Yu-Gi-Oh for too much longer is justgoing to cause them impending grief and misery, eventually they are going to have to let it go and learn to fly with a new set of wings. Hopefully their new wings won't cause them to crash and burn. Seriously though, holding onto Yu-Gi-Oh for too much longer is like holding onto a girlfriend who is unfaithful, it will cause pain and suffering with the knowledge that eventually you are going to have to wash your hands of it all.
 
If 4Kids is found completely innocent, most likely yes, since they have a contract through 2015. However, it seems pretty unlikely at this point.
 
There seems to be a lot of discussion as of late about the variety of anime that is shown on Toonzai, as much as I find fault in Toonzai's scheduling, behind the scenes operations and refusal to budge on certain topics, I can't fault them on showing toyetic anime geared toward children. I'm sure that they could probably go slightly deeper in their anime selection, but when you're airing cartoons aimed at children in the AM hours I'm sure there is only so far you can go with the content that you can show, 4Kids is probably just airing stuff that they wouldn't find themselves in hot water for airing. I'm sure 4Kids could get away with a Disney XD style cutdown of Shippuden or another similar series that has been edited for content but I wouldn't expect to see something as adult as Cowboy Bebop on Toonzai or anything along those lines.
 
Toonzai on The CW4Kids: December 25th, 2010:
07:00 AM Cubix - Tomorrow's Robots Today (#19)
07:30 AM Cubix - Media Storm (#20)
08:00 AM Sonic X - Beating Eggman, Part 1 (#12)
08:30 AM Sonic X - Beating Eggman, Part 2 (#13)
09:00 AM Yu-Gi-Oh! - Mime Control, Part 2 (#66) The CW Network Premiere
09:30 AM Sonic X - That's What Friends Are For (#14)
10:00 AM Dragon Ball Z Kai - Goku?s and Piccolo?s Desperate Attack! (#3)
10:30 AM Dragon Ball Z Kai - The One Million Snake Way! (#4)
11:00 AM Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's - The Super Genius (#80)
11:30 AM Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's - Get With the Program, Part 1 (#81)

Notes:

  • Network premieres of Yu-Gi-Oh! continue
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's goes into reruns, starting with episode 80
 
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