Ridiculous Dub Changes

The voice cast change halfway through the Hoenn seasons. Yes, I know there was a reason for it, and I've long since gotten used to it, but...well, the original dub voice cast was perfect as it was, and there was no need to change it. I miss Eric Stuart's fantastically camp James, and Veronica Taylor's non-smoker Ash.

I don't want to start argument over voices, but I have to say that 4Kids voices were far from perfect. Especially the two voices you seem to like. James was terrible, too feminine and gay stereotyped. Not to mention the acting wasn't too good either, which surprised me, since Eric Stuart did such a great job with Brock, yet he couldn't handle James right. Ash was also too girl-sounding, not like ten years old boy. And May wasn't really much better, especially since Ash and May were too similar. With all my respect to her, Veronica Taylor did really bad job to differentiate the two voices. Not that PUSA/TPCI didn't have their own problems, especially Ash's voice was terrible and it wasn't until mid-Unova when it became hearable and bearable (pun intended) for me. And Jimmy Zoppi voicing too many main characters is not good either (but I really love the way he portrays James, after the years James got really bad treatment from 4Kids).

But to the topic, for me, the most ridiculous dub change was the constant paint-over on Ash's Hoenn Badge Case. At lest the other changes, like the rolling sandwich instead of rolling Onigiri, as ridiculous as they were, made some point in Americanizing the show (not that I like this Americanization, but yeah, whatever), but did anyone really understand the point behind removing Pokéball pattern on Badge Case?

As Horn mentioned, the rice balls being replaced or referred to as other food that American kids relate to better. Also replacing the Poke Ball symbol on Ash's badge case is pointless.

I know there's a reason why they did this, but I don't like how both dubbers replaced some of Shinji Miyazaki's music with more generic sounding tracks. I don't mind some of the 4Kids music mainly because of nostalgia, but I can't get over how TPCI removed the Laverre City theme you hear during Ash and Serena's first meeting.

AliceBlaze said:

I know there's a reason why they did this, but I don't like how both dubbers replaced some of Shinji Miyazaki's music with more generic sounding tracks. I don't mind some of the 4Kids music mainly because of nostalgia, but I can't get over how TPCI removed the Laverre City theme you hear during Ash and Serena's first meeting.

Click to expand...

According to 4kids, licencing music/soundtracks is expensive, which is probably why they replaced most of the soundtracks in the dub, I would think, but don't quote me on it, since I can't remember where I saw the article on this.

The rice ball name inconsistencies are my pet peeve. I mean, things like music changes, voice changes and some paint edits made some sense, but I'll never get why 4Kids couldn't decide on one single name for rice balls in OS and why they used like a dozen different names for them.

Karnavaly said:

According to 4kids, licencing music/soundtracks is expensive, which is probably why they replaced most of the soundtracks in the dub, I would think, but don't quote me on it, since I can't remember where I saw the article on this.

Click to expand...

I've heard similar reasoning about Digimon dub, yet no one ever explained why there's lots of foreign language dubs which kept Japanese soundtrack intact. And most of these dubs were actually cheaper (and some like Czech dubs of Tamers and Frontier a way too cheaper) than FoxKids/Jetix/Saban dub. The same with One Piece. So I consider this reasoning ridiculous, sorry.