The Big Picture: Found in Translation

[-Dragmire-]

Never saw the show before. I've heard of it but evidently it was never leased to air on YTV in Canada. They were to busy airing Pokemon and Reboot I guess. (I love those two shows).

Someone needs to abridge this abridged series. Would most likely wind up being even more awesome.

I may be wrong in this but I believe it aired on YTV between 6 and 8am just after dragonball. My three channels I watched at that time were YTV, Fox(they had some special name for their morning cartoon lineup, I think it was Fox Kids at the time) and Teletoon(when it first came out and was awesome) so my memory of what shows came on what channel are a little blurry.

 

[The Great JT]

Lord knows losing the original script for Inuyasha would have only improved it.

But anyway, Samurai Pizza Cats as the first abridged series? I could buy that.

 

[MB202]

I never watched the Samurai Pizza Cats, but I DO know that it basically had nothing to do with the original version, mostly because the rough translation they initially received sucked and that it would take too long to get a better translated script. So instead they just made up jokes as they went along. On one hand, this lead to some pretty amusing jokes, and perhaps the rise of the Abridged series. On the other hand... 4Kids... Ugh.

 

[Bluecho]

Saban: "We were abridging series long before Little Kuriboh came around!"

Remember when Inuyasha was good? Neither do I.

Okay to be fair, I obviously wasn't the target audience for that show. But I'm sticking to what VGCats creator Scott Ramsoomair had to say on the subject: "It's DBZ for girls!"

 

[MB202]

Wait, Saban? As in the guys who dubbed Digimon Saban?! HOLY CRAP, suddenly it all make sense now!

As good as Digimon Adventure and Tamers were in the dub, they still had problems, and I always considered Saban to be 4Kids, version 1.0.

 

[RJ Dalton]

If any of you escapists like the concept of spoof-parody dubs... watch YuGiOh Abridged. But if you want licensed parody dubs with actual professional voice actors, check out Ghost Stories

I wouldn't call them "professional" voice actors. Professionals usually have something that at least resembles talent in the field of acting (provided you exclude certain individuals like Keanu Reeves and Nicholas Cage).

 

[TophatEmperor]

I used to love Anime as a Child...i was a Major Anime nerd.

But now for some reason most anime just seems too bloody insane and outlandish that i can't watch it

Now i am convinced that the Japanese are actually Aliens...Media Aliens that is

(i know that the Japanese are not actual Aliens)

 

[KeyMaster45]

Ah the 90's, the years of my early childhood. Bob may say that 90's sucked, but when I think back to 90's (specifically the programming I grew up on) only one theme song is overlayed to the montage.


It is a glorious montage of Nickelodeon programming, the original Cartoon Cartoon lineup, bits of late 80's shows, and most of all the freaking Power Rangers. In fact I'd dare say children's television in the 90's can be summed up by sheer level of awesome that is the original Power Rangers theme song. Children's tv in the 90's was there to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and guess what they ran out of at the end of the 80's?

 

[Draconalis]

You may have liked it, but I didn't.

Inuyasha is a fucking terrible series...

 

[MonkeyPunch]

You know there have been quite a few similar incidents in TV.

The Magic Roundabout was once such show. The Brits got a hold of the footage for this show, but were never given a translated manuscript and so they just decided to make things up on the fly and try and just make sense of what is going on on-screen and interpret a story in to it, which is why the English version and the French version of any given episode have nothing to do with one anther in the story department.
It's also the reason The Magic Roundabout was such a hit with caners as the story is quite "trippy" because of how it was put together.

There are other shows where this happened too... I forget now, but might add some more examples later.

 

[MB202]

You know, I find it funny that Bob's last comment "Settle down, I liked Inuyasha" got an even BIGGER reaction then the supposed fans of Inuyasha otherwise...

 

[Redd the Sock]

Inuyasha had a script. It was the same script used again and again and again like most Rumiko Takahashi stuff.

 

[Draconalis]

quoting only because of the avatar

Lafiel!

My wife used to cosplay as Lafiel!

 

[mlooshka]

I've never seen any of this show - never even heard of it before The Big Picture. Will definitely have to see if I can hunt down some clips.

The story of the translation reminds me of the Magic Roundabout, a French children's program that was bought by the BBC. Ostensibly the Beeb did not receive any actual scripts when they bought the program, and so rather than pay extra to get the scripts and do a translation, they just decided to go ahead and write their own. The result is pure genius. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7LKEi9hDK0

 

[GrungyMunchy]

That reminded me a lot of the French translation of Dragon Ball, that is a lot different than the original and in turn made the versions in latin languages also different since they mostly translated from the French version, instead of the original version. That actually made the Portuguese version (the one I watched as a kid) a lot funnier, with references to other Portuguese TV shows and giving Portuguese accents to characters with different origins.

 

[Sandytimeman]

this reminds me of the story behind bobo-bobobobo-bobo (or w/e) when I was part of the 91.8 the fan site, we interview the voice of Nicolas D Wolfwood. He was one of the writers for bobobo and they wern't given any notes at all. They just had to figure out what was going on in the show via watching it with no translation.

 

[Wriggle Wyrm]

That was a very informative episode Bob,
I never knew Inuyasha had a script.

Of course they had a script. One script they kept on using over and over again until the pages fell out and they had to end the series without any sort of resolution but still...

Seriously though, the DVD release sounds awesome. I tried to find this series before but only found a couple of shady and expensive vhs cassettes.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

I love it when Bob does these!

Screw the deep issues, the open-to-opinion societal and moral problems. Sometimes it's just great to learn about an American dubbed show about Ninja cat's who deliver pizza...

Also, can someone explain this "Inuyasha" thing to me??? I never saw much of it, but what I DID see, I somewhat liked. It just seems like there are 2 competing schools of though and neither of them make any sense to me...

 

[acosn]

InuYasha!
Kagome!
InuYasha!
Kikyo!
InuYasha!
Kagome!
InuYasha!
Kikyo!
Shippo!
Miroku!
Sango!
Miroku!
Harold! Shrek! Fiona! Fiona! Mom! Harold! DONKEY!
SIT BOY!
*THUD*

Cut and paste for about twenty minutes and you've got an InuYasha episode.

That's totally untrue! You forgot about
Naraku!
Sesshomaru!
DEMONS!
WIND TUNNEL!!!
WIND SCAR!
Demonic aura!
I sense a demonic aura!
WIND SCAR!
Jewel shards!
BACKLASH WAAAAAVE!!!
Hiraikotsu!

Add some generic enemies, plot elements and character archetypes you've seen a million times before, and voila!

My humblest apologies, it's been awhile since I saw the show.

It had all the symptoms that come with virtually every anime that is attached to a manga that has long reaching print runs. While they may be successful in Japan, the much shorter anime, where they have a clear idea of where it starts, goes, and ends (IE: Bebop, Black Lagoon, K-on, Sora no Woto) that do not necessarily enjoy that same level of success in Japan, are typically regarded as being better.

Unsurprisingly, with an anime that airs every single week for months on end the production values tend to take a nose dive after a while.

 

[Hitchmeister]

I'm sad. No one else is old enough to remember the glory days of USA's Night Flight and Dynaman. "We have WATCHES!"