Anime, the Horror of Re-Dubbing, and The Slayers
By now, everyone knows what Anime is. It's everywhere. Our nation has been completely swamped by a wave of one Anime after another. It seems it never will stop, especially since they are so popular. Tenchi Muyo, Dragon Ball Z, Sailor Moon, Card Captor, Ronin Warriors, Pokemon, Digimon, and Esceflowne are just some of the top Animes airing on Cartoon Network, FOX Kids, and Kids WB with huge success. The problem is, they're not how they use to be. Normally, an Anime is left with its original Japanese voice actors, subtitled for viewing of people who don't know Japanese (which is a lot). Because of this multitude of people who don't know it, it's also offered in... *shudders*... "Dubbed." Dubbing is terrible. First, it's not the Japanese voice actors and instead is some hill billy (i'm not kidding), and due to different views of acceptability between Japan and the United States, dialogue is changed to make it less harsh. For example, a gay dragon is changed in the dubbed version of the Anime to being just a cross-dressing dragon. It's still funny, but not as funny. Now, this is just the first thing they do, which isn't really that severe, but this is standard dubbing. Even though some dialogue is altered, they still have it will a lot of the original stuff, and it's still bearable. Now, surprisingly, there is something worse then standard dubbing, and that is re-dubbing! Re-dubbing is when an Anime, already dubbed, is altered even further so it can be aired as a children's show, which, goes without saying, sucks thrice as bad. Now, not only do they have to get even worse voice actors then the hill billies mentioned before, who have even less experience and act as a good as a can, but all violence, swearing, sexual content, and nudity must be edited out. And this is a show that the networks want to be shown to children? Yeah, way to go, executive guys. But, this never bothered me too much since they mainly screwed Animes I didn't care about. So I was just fine. Yesterday, I discovered they crossed the line.
FOX Kids has purchased to the rights to re-dub The Slayers, my favorite Anime. For those of you who may not remember, long ago I had a dinky little Slayers Shrine on my site, but tore it down due to, well, it sucking >_<. But now, FOX Kids has the rights to it, and I know they will slaughter it. How? Remember that example I gave about the gay dragon and how it changed from original to dubbed? Well, kiddies, that was Slayers, and that's how much they changed it just in regular dubbing. On FOX Kids, they probably won't even air that episode. In fact, I'm curious to how many of the episodes will be shown (especially since Lina Inverse, the red-headed fireball slinging, super-cute sorceress, commonly takes baths and humor is heavily directed to her small breast. now that's comedy!) But it's not even them dubbing it that's making me mad, it's the affect it will have on everything Slayers. Suddenly, buying merchindise won't be as easy since the price will sky rocket. Tons of people will sweat it just like all of the other Animes ruined over time. So, get ready for an onslaught of suck, boys and girls, because another Anime is biting the dust with American-ization. I just pray it doesn't become popular.
