#Digimon Dubs

[digitalmonsterconfessions]

I'm tired of being constantly harassed because I actually enjoy the U.S. Adventure and 02 dubs. It's ok if you personally dislike those dubs but it doesn't give you the right to harass other fans for enjoying them at all.

[slutpoppers]

Diaboromon, Digimon the Movie

[ars-daemonum]

Burning \ Greymon

[reliablejoukido]

A classic Joe Kido line for @joukidoweek

[asteraws]

started watching digimon :•)

[caiabresebun]

digimon 🥺

[shihalyfie]

Why do people like Saban dubbing digimon but really hate 4kids for dubbing anime?

To be honest, I don't think that's quite the case. I think most people who tend to have apologia-level worship of the Saban Digimon dubs also have similar sentiments towards 4Kids dubs. It's "my childhood", so it's sacred and you're not allowed to say anything bad about it.

That said, it is true that 4Kids is the one usually thrown under the bus to blame for radical dub changes while Saban is treated as "comparatively loyal (for the time)". This is misleading at best. If it's loyal for the time, it's by a very small margin, and certainly not enough to claim that it's "practically the same" as the Japanese version as many do.

Saban's Digimon dub looks closer to the original because all of the surface elements supposedly look closer:

They kept almost all of the names in Japanese and only gave them "nicknames", unlike other dubs that changed the names radically! (Except they functionally never mentioned those "nicknames" again after the first time, and no matter how many letters each name may share in common with their Japanese versions, that doesn't change the fact they treated most Japanese names like hot potatoes because they sound too Japanese.)

They left the setting in Japan instead of making it a fictional American city! (Except they tried to do that until the number of Tokyo landmarks made it too recognizable, and it's still something they were able to get away with because the Digital World is prominent enough in the narrative for them to not worry about it too much.)

They didn't cut any episodes! (Probably the only one that does hold legitimate water in comparison to 4Kids actually cutting entire episodes at times, but one also has to consider that Digimon is a heavily serialized narrative where dropping an episode would create serious problems for the story, whereas you could get away with a dropped episode from 4Kids' longer properties with filler episodes since more of their shows were based on manga.)

They didn't make any huge changes to the overall plot! (Almost nobody watched Adventure or 02 for the plot alone, and it's only natural that slowly changing every single line to suggest completely different characterizations from their Japanese counterparts would have a massive effect, especially on 02 where it didn't have an extremely linear in-your-face plot that offset that to some degree -- and even then, Adventure wasn't completely immune, because it didn't stop Koushirou and Mimi's Japanese characterization changes from still remaining relatively unknown in the English-speaking fandom.)

"The Digimon (American) English dub didn't change that much" is the biggest lie the fandom will ever feed you, yet it still persists to this day because people will look at these surface factors and call it a day (and even worse, because this myth persists, fewer people will be inclined to check it out in Japanese and confirm whether this is actually true or not). It's never been about how many actual changes there were; it's about how many were noticeable. Few people talk about how there's actually a significant difference in how dub changes were handled the moment Disney took over (late Tamers to Savers), because it's hard to notice unless you actually have seen the Japanese version. Fusion gets treated like a laughingstock dub just because people were actually able to watch it in Japanese first and see how much got changed later; in terms of actual changes, it's not that much worse than Adventure or 02, it's just that it happened during a time it was less socially acceptable to do that.

So because of that, Saban is seen in the lens of a localization company that did its best to be "loyal" in a market where the 4Kids method of drastic changes were more dominant, when in fact they were aggressive about it in different ways (and you can see a very fair share of derogatory, dangerously-racist-leaning comments about Japanese media, writing style, and content from people who were involved in Digimon localization, so it's frankly kind of absurd to imagine they were doing all of this because they cared so much about loyalty to the origin). On the flip side, it is on record that a lot of 4Kids' radical changes were actually requested by the Japanese side itself, because they themselves wanted to push something that would be appealing to the American market, and 4Kids would sometimes go as aggressive as they did specifically because they got the Japanese licensor's blessing to go as hard as they wanted.

(I actually personally prefer 4Kids' original music and theme songs to the Digimon ones -- they come off to me as feeling like they have a lot more genuine spirit put into them -- but that's just my personal subjective opinion, and everyone has their own music tastes. Anyway, that's a digression.)

I personally don't think it's productive to be mad at the dubs themselves. This was all more than 20 years ago, the market was very different, the attitude towards localization was different, Japanese companies had their own varying stakes in the situation, and most importantly, what happened happened and I'm not going to blame kids for watching the only thing that was accessible to them at the time and developing an attachment to it. I don't think there's any point to speculating how Digimon would have been accepted in the US/UK/etc. if it hadn't been changed so radically, because the fact is, we don't live in that alternate timeline, so we won't get anything useful out of fixating on that idea too much.

The only thing I have negative feelings about regarding the American English Digimon dub is, simply, the way the fandom still talks about it. With things like Pokémon or One Piece or Yu-Gi-Oh, where everyone already understands that 4Kids made super drastic changes, if you say you're talking about the Japanese version because what you're discussing wasn't in the dub, people will easily believe you and acknowledge you're talking about something different, but if you try to claim the Adventure or 02 dub was different enough to merit a distinction, you get called nitpicky or accused of being delusional. This is what I really wish would stop. The dub was different! I know localization discourse loves to conflate "different" with "bad", so people don't want to admit that their childhood dub changed a lot, but it did! That's reality! Please don't make this more frustrating to talk about than it needs to be!

[seventeenlovesthree]

They actually made a faithful English re-dub for the first three Digimon movies.

They got all available English voice actors from "back then".

Joshua Seth must have saved his announcement tweet ages ago, while being the giddiest, most nostalgic ball of sunshine about dubbing Tai all over again.

The English dub isn't even my original dub, but I feel incredibly happy to be able to witness this.

It's beautiful.

[bethanythebogwitch]

That time censorship made a new Digimon (and why it should happen again)

Digimon's English releases have honestly gotten away with a lot that many other dubs wouldn't be allowed to. Compare Yu-Gi-Oh's dub inventing the shadow realm to avoid having characters die to Digimon Adventure's dub having a prominent side character die in part of a story arc where the number of the beast is a main plot point and getting away with it completely uncensored. But censorship does still happen to Digimon and one time it created a new Digimon species.

Meet the Sistermons.

Consisting of Sistermon Blanc and Sistermon Noir, these nun-like Digimon with weapons have shown up in a few things, but it was their appearance in the video game Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth (specifically the Hacker's Memory expansion) that triggered censorship. Someone on the localization team decided that a nun wielding guns was not something they wanted in the game. Apparently it was to avoid upsetting religious groups. But Sistermon Noir is part of the plot and you can't just cut her from the game. So the localization team pallet swapped her from a realistic black and white nun outfit to a white and cyan one, edited a few other details, and renamed her Sistermon Ciel. Apparently someone at Bandai really liked this idea because they decided to make Sistermon Ciel an official Digimon, giving her a redesign to not look like a pallet swap.

Sistermon Ciel has been adopted as an official Digimon. She got a reference book entry, has shown up in the card game, got official art of her with the other two Sistermons, and appeared in an episode of the anime Digimon Ghost Game. It doesn't get more official than that.

Here's where I think this should happen again. Back when the anime Digimon Savers was getting dubbed into English as Digimon Data Squad, the localization team ran into a problem. One episode featured BomberNanimon, a bomb with a face and limbs, as the monster of the week. Disney was handling the localization at the time and told the dub team that they absolutely could not have a giant living bomb destroying a fairground on the show. However the team couldn't just cut this episode because it's important to one of the main character's arcs. So, in a bit of rebellion and a tongue-in-cheek reference to the show Bobobo-Bo-Bobobo, which had recently finished airing, the team decided to edit BomberNanimon into a giant orange named Citramon. And Toei (who is in charge of Digimon in anime) signed off on this change. They even came up with the name Citramon after vetoing the proposed Tangerinemon.

What I'm saying here is that it would be absolutely hilarious if Bandai announces a big reveal and it turns out that the reveal is that Citramon is getting official art, a reference book entry, and will be showing up in the card game or next virtual pet. Please make it happen, Bandai.

[rachelsshowerthoughts]

you ever watch an anime or cartoon from the 4kids era of dubbing, and just . . . . try to pick out all the weird censorship choices? Odd colours? "Jelly Donuts"? Signs that have been changed to either blank rectangles or poorly photoshopped pictograms made in MS Paint? Sailor Moon's "cousins"? The random pauses and flashes to cover people slapping each other? All the AGGRESSIVE POINTING people do, because heaven forbid we have guns in children's media - meanwhile there's souls being sent to the Shadow Realm, people being stuck in traumatic death traps, and the very fabric of reality being torn asunder. But at least we never saw a hand-gun in cartoon format! That’s what would have scarred the kiddies for life and turned them into degenerates, cartoon firearms.

My personal favourite is anytime they try to erase cleavage, and all they do is get rid of the boob line. Now, when I look at 4kids era anime, I think these poor women have some kind of defect, where their breasts grew in fused during puberty. Instead of regular boobs, they just have one monster boob with two nipples or something. That's why so many well-endowed women were villains in 4kids era - the bad guys paid better and they needed expensive surgery.

[digitalmonsterconfessions]

I'm tired of the hate Dub fans get to this day. Listen, I get it, I really do. But being completely honest, for me personally, I don't think there's any time - when I found it as a teenager - to now, that I would have wanted to watch the sub, if not for the dub. The "Dumb jokes" is part of the appeal for me. Now don't get me wrong, I have since went back and watched Adventure-Tamers subbed, and it was very interesting to go back and see what the original version was like. But I will always prefer the dub. And I'm sorry, "Do you know what a semi-conductor is?" - "A guy who works part time on a train?" will always make me smile.

[queermycelium]

Cringetober day 17 - Anime Screenshot

I know I haven't posted most of these on here, might correct that by the end. But this one I am way too proud of NOT to show here.

I have always been Normal about Digimon, Wizardmon, and Season 1 Episode 34 The Eight Child Revealed. There is no evidence to the contrary. You cannot prove otherwise.

[lalunearts]

I love being a digimon fan because our shitty english dub for the first two digimon series has be having to scream sometimes when i learn the voice cast Xemnas's voice actor, paul st. Peter, voiced Wormmon and stingmon HE ALSO VOICED APOCALYMON SO LIKE I CAN ONLY KEEP IMAGINING XEMNAS SAYING SHIT LIKE "WHY DO YOU GET THE PIZZA WHILE I GET THE CRUST"

[animenostalgia]

News - Yesterday at their Otakon 2023 panel, Discotek made some announcements!

New bluray releases of previous DVD-only titles: Midnight Eye Goku, Crying Freeman, Chargeman Ken, as well as CyberSix.

A new 4k release for Street Fighter II: The Movie.

80s shoujo anime Lady Georgie will be getting an SD bluray, it's first ever English release!

And for the first time ever, all 3 of the first Digimon films will be getting a proper English release, complete with a new dub featuring actors from the original TV dub! The collection will also feature the original uncut Japanese films, as well as the American edit (sorry, no Angela Anaconda short, though.)

Check out the info on the images for more details, as well as Discotek's threads on Twitter.

[reliablejoukido]

My dad always jokes that the person who chose the soundtrack for Digimon: The Movie just went into their basement and found a ska mixtape and was like “yeah this rules this is what Digimon is all about”

[fostersffff]

I saw someone post this as an imageset some time ago, so I figured I’d share it in its full glory.