On this day, 10 years ago, on July 7th, 2014, "Doraemon: Gadget Cat from the Future" made its official US premiere on @disneyxd with the first episode (containing the segments "All the Way From the Future World" & "The Mecha-Maker")!
It was an English dub adaptation of the third "Doraemon" anime series, running since April of 2005 and still going strong! (with 700+ episodes as of July 2024)
The dub had an incredibly high profile set of voice actors, starring Mona Marshall, Johnny Yong Bosch, Cassandra Lee Morris, Brian Beacock, and Kaiji Tang as the leads (Doraemon, Nobita/"Noby", Shizuka/"Sue", Suneo/"Sneech", and Takeshi "Gian"/"Big G"), with Mari Devon, Tony Oliver, Max Mittelman, Keith Silverstein, Spike Spencer, Minae Noji, Kirk Thornton, Cristina Vee playing the reoccuring set of secondary cast of the show's characters.
The show centered around the life of a misfortunate boy named Nobita "Noby" Nobi who suffers from bad grades, bullying from his peers, scolding from his parents (his ferocious mom mainly), and is generally an awkward, lazy, kinda weird, and slow kid.
A robotic cat from the 22nd century named Doraemon is sent back in time to aid Noby in his life, pulling out futuristic magical gadgets from his pocket that can turn everyday human life into something much more every day.
Hijinks ensue when Noby ends up misusing Doraemon's gadgets, often continuously using them for his selfish (or selfless sometimes) benefits until things get incredibly out of control either through inconveniences, bullies, or just... really really poor choices.
Occasionally every now and then, the show has little half hour adventures, such as Noby & the gang helping a group of little people ("A Little Adventure"), Doraemon & Noby seeing aliens ("Invasion of the Goat Aliens", "Doraemon and the Space Shooters"), Doraemon & Noby going after a time capsule ("Doraemon's Time Capsule"), escaping from a villian from the future ("A Visitor from the Future"), but generally overall, the show is incredibly episodic and formulaic with the premise listed above.
The dub made numerous edits to the source material such as having the show's setting take place in a random no-name town in America instead of Japan, changing Japanese yen to American currency, removing content, motifying the character Shizuka's personality due to American viewers misunderstanding or getting confused over her original traits, etc.
The cast of characters were also given Americanized names, though these are confirmed to be just nicknames, with it being implied that they still have their original names in media such as Stand By Me Doraemon 2 (the English dub) & in the English manga.
It ran for a total of 52 episodes (with two 11 minute segments each with the exception of a few half hour specials that were dubbed, especially by season two) across two seasons from July 7th, 2014 to September 1st, 2015, being seemingly cancelled or sidelined by Disney quietly, with no official answer on the status of the dub.
According to Sneech Honekawa voice actor Brian Beacock via his TikTok on a stream from around 2020, Disney lost interest and didn't want to continue pushing the series.
The show continued to air in reruns after the conclusion of the second season on Disney XD until on June 20th, 2018, it got preempted by a rerun of Phineas & Ferb and has never aired again nor been seen again on American television (photo above courtesy of Collin LW)
And sadly, as of 2024, there seem to be no plans to officially re-release the dub via formats, as its not on DVD and Blu-ray nor is it available on watch on major streaming services with anime like Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, or Crunchyroll.
Though thankfully, thanks to the efforts of an unknown to my head right now fan, the entire English dub's episodes in 1080p logoless quality (ripped from "Watch Disney XD" before being removed) is currently available to watch online on Archive.org (& MEGA), being helped made widespread by Doraemon US superfan & voice actor Collin LW!
Despite receiving some particularly heavy negative reception from several fans of the original Japanese dub over the years since its existence came to be, the dub has generally received positive feedback from those who saw it, especially from its devoted cult following. Particularly for the voice cast's performances, heartfelt moments, the cute cartoony artstyle, the fun cast of characters, the original soundtrack by Joseph Bauer, and the sense of witty hilarious humor that's been favorably compared to the likes of the 4Kids dubs of the "Pokemon" anime from the 1990s and 2000s.
(What are your own personal thoughts on the dub? I'd love to hear in the replies and reblogs on your personal views and experiences on the series!)
Again, happy tenth anniversary "Doraemon: Gadget Cat from the Future"!
Thanks to everyone who worked to make this dub possible and exposing so much people to this wonderful, timeless, underrated goofy, silly, heartfelt little show!
Still hope we get more of the dub via either a dub of one of the mainline movies (cough cough Doraemon: Nobita's Earth Symphony cough cough) or maybe another dose of the 2005 series somehow on Netflix after their Stand By Me Doraemon 2 release in 2021 ^^
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