Now, I am not going to say that 4Kids did a perfect job dubbing Yugioh. The only "perfect" dub I have ever seen is the dub of GaoGaiGar, which takes you half a minute to realize "Hey, I'm not supposed to understand Japanese!! Hey, they're talking in ENGLISH!" We don't live in a perfect world. The GaoGaiGar dub only lasted about twenty out of fifty episodes (And by the end of this essay, you'll know why.)
But it really cheeses me off when people call the dub by 4Kids of Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters "bad."
I grew up on Power Rangers and reruns of Voltron. No one has any right to call the Yu-Gi-Oh! dub "bad." At worst, it's an "average" dub. Invid and I would call it a "much better than average dub." Regardless of who did it, 4Kids or otherwise.
You know why the dub of GX sucks so much? It's because of the idiot thankless masses who made the dubbers hate their job by focusing only on the negative and not ONCE appreciating what they do RIGHT.
So today, I plan on showing my appreciation for the 4Kids dub by pointing out all the things they DIDN'T do, that they COULD have, that older dubbers WOULD have.
1. They bothered to keep a significant portion of the original names, and didn't name anyone anything like "Kaz Kazington." The GX dub did this, possibly out of sheer spite. In a BAD dub, the SERIES wouldn't have kept its own name: They would have called it "Duel Cards" or "Shadow Puzzle" at BEST. Yugi would have been named something like "Danny," Kaiba would have been "Kenny" (to explain the K), and Joey would have been named "Mack." And the Winged Dragon of Ra would have been named "Phoenixtron."
"HA! YOU can't use Phoenixtron, because YOU don't have its ACTIVATION CODES!"
2. Nobody's sex got switched. I have been, time and again, SHOCKED and ecstatic at 4Kids' track record over this. Even One Piece's drag queens stayed their own sexes. Yubel even stayed a transsexual!! In a BAD dub, Bakura would have been named "Anita" and Alister would have been "Regina." They might even have bothered to draw boobs on them. I have a LOT of love for 4Kids when it comes to this. (WHY would a bad dub have made Bakura female? "We need more female characters!" No other reason, unless you like "Well he was VOICED by a woman so why not?")
3. There was pretty minimal fiddling with the plot. Now, I'm sure some fans reading this are going to launch into a long list of all the little things they considered fiddling with the plot, like "Welcome to AMERICA" and the apparent lack of Yugi getting shares of Industrial Illusions (it's not like the Japanese version or even the MANGA ever care about it afterwords, but whatever.) I'm not talking about changes like that. In a BAD dub, Kaiba would be chasing after the other characters because he was in love with Téa (who would be named "Alice.") Bakura-- I mean Anita, would be actively crushing on Yugi, Alister-- I mean Regina, would be mad at Kaiba because he was in love with Téa, and not "her." Pegasus, who, by the way, would have spoken with a very oversexed French accent and laughed like Pepe Le Pew, would have engaged in Duelist Kingdom just to be a jerk. Oh yeah, and Yugi would give up the Face Off duel because Kaiba asks nicely.
"Alice is going to Danny's grandfather's shop!!" [VEEN!]
4. They let Cecelia be dead. In Duelist Kingdom they even let Kaiba's parents be dead. I agree 4Kids did poorly on this later. But I'm more inclined to blame soccer moms writing angry letters than the company, even if it was stupid. At best, in a BAD dub, Cecelia would be in a coma and Pegasus would be trying to revive her by putting other people in comas. She would wake up really late in the series, but we'd never see her. (Also her name would be Patricia.)
"I just got a phone call from the hospital! Patricia finally woke up!"
5. In a BAD dub, Mai would be wearing a turtleneck. In a bad dub, Atem wouldn't have been wearing a horribly drawn shirt, he would have been glowing.
"Aren't you hot in that, Mary Jane?"
6. They kept the lip synch pretty close. Now yeah, part of the reason is because they have better tech for that now, often abused to dub out women's breasts, but it's still something I have to appreciate.
"YUGI I CHALLENGE YOU TO A DUEL HA HA!"
7. In a bad dub, they wouldn't even have let Obelisk (who would be named Titanos the Mighty) punch Marik, much less Joey punch Atem (the latter was a pretty graphic punch, so it's understandable. It was also a friend punching another friend, which the 4Kids people seem to have trouble with. [/sarcasm])
"The AIR PRESSURE of Titanos's fist sent him FLYING!"
8. They bothered getting nice music for it. I DIE every time I hear a rap intro for a kids' show these days. Maybe you don't like all-instrumentals, but at least they didn't take the opportunity to go on about "JO-ey, he's Yugi's friend/ Stands by him to da very END."
"And we're/ and we're/ and we're/ GETTING DOWN WITH THE HEART OF THE CARDS!!!"
9. Nobody had voices like Erica Scheimer's "little boy" voice. I'm sorry, but you wanna complain about Serenity sounding "too old?" Watch He-Man for a few hours straight, you'll just be happy she has a voice that sounds like a normal human being. (Not to knock the talent of the Filmation staff. They worked with what they had.) And what are you on about "they don't sound like teenagers like they did in the Japanese?" Where are you people getting thirteen year olds that sound like four year olds and teenage boys that sound like middle aged women with lung cancer? I WANT TO KNOW.
(I happen to be in love with Serenity's voice, by the way. Not Lisa Ortiz, though she strikes me as pretty cool. Just her voice.)
10. Yes, they dubbed a show aimed at teenagers as though for little kids. But guess what? Shows aimed at teenagers don't MAKE it over here unless they're live action. This is exactly why the Uncut!Dub didn't last very long-- it was a financial sinkhole. I'm not sure why. You'd think teenagers would have enough money to have more power in the market than eight and ten year olds. But those few shows that ARE aimed at teens still have to be SAFE for their younger siblings, because there ARE NO TIME SLOTS in the States for teenage viewers, only for little kids and adults. The Yugioh dub actually was aimed at teens-- it was just being tamed down because little kids were going to watch it anyway. If they hadn't dubbed it the way they did, there would have been no Dan Green screaming "YUGI! IT'S NOT FAIR!!" because the show wouldn't have lasted that long.
And that would be a crying shame.
