The 4Kids Hate Discussion Thread

No one cared about Pokemon and Yugioh.

I hate to say that but it is true for the most part amongst the anime fandom on the whole. The mindset was this: these KIDS SHOWS are edited for KIDS and made more appealing to KIDS and they're KIDS SHOWS so why should we care about them?

Yes, there was one group educated as to what extent 4Kids edited their shows, but the rest of the industry largely didn't care and wrote them off as whiners.

Did you notice that 4Kids only rose to such infamy after One Piece premiered? It was the first major "real anime" that they had licensed, ignoring smaller series such as Shaman King and Tokyo Mew Mew. Yes, 4Kids had severely edited Yu-Gi-Oh!, but as far as everyone was concerned, that was only a dumb kids show designed to sell cards. This was One Piece, one of the biggest series in Japan even today.

The only actual 4Kids sympathizers at this point were the ones who didn't care enough about One Piece to keep up with their edits. People still express surprise that 4Kids cut almost 40 episodes out of the series. It was certainly frustrating when everyone acted like the only edits 4Kids had made to the series were the necessary ones, like smoking and violence, and on occasion someone knew as much as them having a rap theme song or miscasting Sanji.

Yes, ignore the revisionist history plotline, skipping over major story arcs (how ironic that the two arcs 4Kids deemed unimportant were the ones that came back later in the manga), re-scoring the fantastical soundtrack with - for lack of a better word - CRAP, or even the less prominent issues such as the stilted acting or awkward writing. ANN exemplifies this, choosing to highlight something as insignificant as the black pirate -> white pirate edit over skipping Little Garden for example, yet [adult swim] cutting a 2-minute scene from Eureka 7 was headline material.

I've rambled a bit here.

Going back to my original point, no one really cared about how badly dubbed and edited Yu-Gi-Oh! was because, like I said, it was a dumb anime for kids that was meant to sell a card game. It's lame that it works that way but them's the breaks. For the record I think Yu-Gi-Oh! was worse off in its editing and script "modifying" (read: what script?), but One Piece was ultimately the worser dub for its overall shoddy production.

(I suppose I'd better bring this up. I'm well aware of the Yu-Gi-Oh! article that was posted on Dogasu's backpack. In fact it's what led to me earning my extremist anti-4Kids reputation today)
 
Yash I don't care about the company's performance in the past, present, future. I want to know the changing thoughts of 4Kids hating people from One Piece to now.

I have to admit One Piece was the last straw, and a very heavy straw as well.

Strawhat.:shrug:

EDIT: Yash, be careful not to rant about the current 4Kids. I consider you one of the friendly people.
 
Maybe its because I'm not completely aware of that exact conversation, but it looked to me like they were joking more than being serious. Considering how they've improved with their dub for Dinosaur King, 5Ds and practically leave GoGoRiki uncut, I would imagine they have some knowledge of the original versions of their series.



There is some truth here. If you're in the public eye and get any kind of bad reputation, it is quite hard to change a bad reputation into a good one. Even if they did a total 180 like FUNimation did, there would still be people hating them. Honestly, I think that is kind of sad, considering how they are basically improving with their dubs and showing little interest in anime that doesn't have Yu-Gi-Oh! in the title or a SEGA property.



Thank you. I usually feel pretty nervous in these 4Kids threads, especially when I'm stating the opposite of most others' opinons.

I'm also kind of confused about the point of this thread though. I know that Bratbat wanted to see why some people hate 4Kids, but I thought that was basic knowledge by this point. Besides that, if you ask a question about hate, then you're bound to get a flame war started at some point.
 
Since this topic seems to be about the discussion of 4Kids' image, (and not 4Kids themself) I'm going to make a counterpoint. Let's continue to keep it civil.

Back when said article was posted, Cardcaptors was a big buzzword. It wasn't so much that people did or didn't care about Yu-gi-oh/Pokemon, they were offended by the liberty of the situation. (something that I personally don't agree with) I do admit that One Piece spawned a headache-inducing amount of hate for 4Kids, but even before it was licenced, people were constantly making "if 4kids got it" jokes. ("Nathan the ninja" was one of the big ones)
 
I know what a watch is and what it does, but this thread is suppose to examine the system of gears that makes the hate not just self-sustaining but a perpetual motion machine.

What keeps it going and going and going...
 
Okay, maybe Dinosaur King and 5Ds weren't as much of hackjobs as their past localization efforts were, Chaotic is now cel-animated and they're still doing at least a decent job with TMNT, but that doesn't mean they should be treated as if they were Pixar or any other arthouse studio, as they've still yet to develop original intellectual properties of their very own other than that WMAC Masters show.
 
People hate 4Kids because of their history with anime. It started with Yu-Gi-Oh, with Pokemon beimg called out a bit. As time went on and they aquired more shows, more people began to see the effect on a show/shows they originally enjoyed and how they were, often unfavorably, modified from the original versions (I, myself, saw it firsthand in Sonic X). Their practices grew more and more exhuberant and unexplainable, and you could see even early eps of shows like UM and Kirby were given greater slack than later episodes; fewer jokes being crammed in, fewer paint edits, actual musical silence, etc. It was actually around the time SX and SK began that things began to snowball. And of course, by the time TMM and OP rolled around... And these practices, however residually, still do exist in YGO and DK.

The point is, many haters probably want 4Kids to completely change their ways in terms of editing; not just leaving a little, not just a piece of BGM or a sign or a line, but leaving alone anything that can feasibly be left as-is. It won't happen of course, and it's aggrivating for many fans of the original shows to deal with. Still, it is just YGO and DK now in terms of Japanese-produced shows; YGO is a forgone conclusion, and I'm not fully aware of DK's current popularity in general. I believe the hate mostly comes from that nightmarish nostalgia of past disasters, and the inbred fear of what other shows could potentially be effected in the same manner. We've seen what happens with shows they're free to work with on their own terms (TMNT, Chaotic, VP, etc.), and they turn out A-OK. With anime, though, people have a LOT of history to look back on, and they're very adamant and vocal about not wanting it repeated.

I dunno if that's an accurate assessment, but that's how I feel, at least. Like I said, even before OP came around (I barely even knew it before the dub), I could see the problems boiling up from SX (oh, SX...)
 
How much is some? If they're only keeping like, 10% that's completely unnacceptable. If it's like, 80% maybe that wouldn't be so bad.



That's not sad. Their reputation should follow them around for a while. If you could put out crappy products and not get a bad reputation, then no one would think twice before putting out a crappy product. It took a long time for Funimation to earn back people's trust. They needed to put out quality product after quality product. After putting out so many crappy products it will take a long, long time for 4K!ds to win back people's trust.
 
People still consider Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball GT their Black Sheep of their company. Given crappy voices, lines, and some weird editing it was consider to some, a great shame on FUNimation part. I only forgive them considering that was the first dub that I watched that they dubbed.
 
Actually in the three episodes that have aired so far they've only used two pieces :sad:

Still, it's an improvement. I mean, yeah, I would really prefer them to keep all of the music, but after seven years of this garbage, it's nice to see that they're opening up to the possibility, just a little.
 
Ok I can safely say that nothing has changed from One Piece to now.

Still, I want this thread to keep going.

Now let's use September 13 as the starting point and observe any new kinds of rants. It would be definitely new if someone did a whole rant on Chaotic or Viva Pinata.
 
That's your opinion and I respect that. However, there are people here, including myself, who don't take the issue of keeping the original background music that serious. If its there, great. If not, I really couldn't care any less.



I see where you're coming from, but I do think its sad when people keep bashing 4Kids for the stuff they've done in the past when their more recent dubs are a step in the right direction. Are they by any means perfect by anime fan standards? No, I know that. But I do see them as improvements. Besides that, I don't see the point of holding grudges against a company for doing something as insignificant as a poor dub for an anime. Not only would that be wasting some of my energy, but there are a lot of other companies that do far worse things, outsourcing and putting out unsafe products for the general public for starters, than what 4Kids has done and I don't even hold grudges against stuff like that either. I prefer hoping that they change their business ways. It feels like a more positive thing to do, at least for me.
 
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