Dub Openings (Essay inside, possible spoilers)

[ViciousKatanaGuy]

NewBee said:

Shoot me now, but I actually LIKE the dub Yu-Gi-Oh theme (partly because I've never seen the original). The scenes, at least. The music? Not so much.

I found the original dub openings on a website. The English dub opening is okay but I prefer some of the Japanese ones over the English opening.

[YohWhatsUp]

lol love desciption of Uk Sonic X theme tume.But it'sa true it's bad bad bad and also annoying and pointless it's like 'Here's what the show called over and over in case at any time you forget'

[Konekone]

Vasuki said:

I wish I ment the Dragonball Z opening with the "Dragon, Dragonball, Dragonball ZEEEE!!!!!" line, but I refer to the original Dragonball series. It is by far one billion times worse. One of the lines is, "A boy and a girl, in a struggle for truth", and yes, this theme song goes on, for the entire series... -_-

I do wish we got more dubbed theme songs though. How I long to hear a english version of some of the Digimon themes...

I meant that one too.

The "Dragon, Dragonball, Dragonball ZEEEE!" opening for DBZ was only tolerable...

[Ryu]

I guess the dub yuugiouu tune is survivable but when you hear the real opening tunes you will change your mind. In dub pokemon they change the tune every season but in dub yuugiouu they're in doma and still haven't changed it. Lazy. Then again, they would probably make it worse:
Hey kids lets duel,
Because it makes you cool,
You ain't no fool,
Play cards on a stool!

[ViciousKatanaGuy]

They remixed the English YGO theme for Doma.

[Lobsterdeth]

The Battle City theme was kewler.

[Konekone]

Not really... They still just followed the same scheme of anime openings: Bad music, and loadsa clips from the episode and a few from the openings.

[Lord Cyber]

Seeing as how this started as a technical thread, I'm curious:

How much time does an episode of anything get in the UK?

Traditionally (the rules they are a changin') in a 30 minute block, a show gets 26 minutes. 4 minutes are dropped for commercials, liners, and the required station identification.

In the US, one minute is alotted for the opening, and one minute is alotted for the ending.

It sounds like in the UK, the intros are 30 seconds? Are the endings still one minute? Are additional parts of the show removed for commercials? (This might be hard to tell. I use the word "traditionally" above because each broadcaster in the US now gets to decide how much of a "26" they want to show and they tell the seller what to cut or modify, ie: the Toonami block would drop the intros in favor of shorter ones so they could cram more liners into the viewing block...)

I have to say, I agree with high quality openings...they should be to animations what trailers are to movies.

Although I haven't seen any of these UK intros you speak of, I'm as much disturbed by broadcasters "squishing" ending credits into a tiny section of the TV just so they can advertise next to them for a show that airs in...oh...30 seconds...

LC

[Ryu]

The endings of most UK shows are just a shorter, wordless version of the opening tune. Or they don't even give it an ending. Like Dub Shaman King.

[Quatre Winner]

Dubs suck. Period.

I've seen Japanese intros for Sonic X, Shaman King, Yu-Gi-Oh, Digimon (all four seasons), and even one from Pokemon, and I must say that the dub intros for all of them are severely in need of a makeover. Note: I'm American.

Since Sonic X and Shaman King have already been torn to pieces, I'll skip to Yu-Gi-Oh.

The song isn't very bad. The full version is quite nice, I think, at capturing the intensity the show is *supposed* to have. The video is just crap. I downloaded a Japanese episode from Battle City and the opening song, "Wild Drive", was awesome, and the video made me with the thing was subtitled because it made me like the show even more than I already did. The English video just chopped up the sub opening and turned it into something completely different. I also have the "Memory World" opening, and nothing that the dubs come up with can compare. Gotta love "Overlap"!

Digimon Adventure's dub video was the second-best of the series, I think, next to Frontier. It kept most of the scenes from the sub opening. The song just sucked. I didn't hear Butter-fly until a few years later, and when I did I was like "Why the Set didn't those people keep this?!" It completely destroyed the mood of the show.

Adventure 02 wasn't any better. In fact, there were fewer scenes from the original opening. Give me "Target" over that crap any day.

I downloaded the first two episodes of Tamers even before it was brought to the US, and I liked "The Biggest Dreamer" as well as the video. I was sorely disappointed when I saw the dub for the first time. It made me almost quit watching Tamers. Fortunately, there were enough scenes from the original opening to keep me happy (though I missed the clips of the Tamers and their partners doing random stuff while the mega forms appeared as a sillouhet (sp?) behind them).

Frontier is by far the best, opening wise. The song changed!! It's a miracle! Instead of a crap techno thing, it's actually a song! Granted, it's a far cry from "Fire!!!" but at least it actually captured some of the spirit of the show. The video itself is a weird mix of the opening and closing videos of the Japanese version (mostly the closing) plus the scenes of the kids Spirit Evolving. I wish they'd kept "With the Will" as the evolution theme, but that's going off on another rant...

Now for Pokemon. Yes, Pokemon. I found the fifth opening "Ready Go" somewhere (no idea where). I'd downloaded it expecting a laugh, but much to my surprise, I liked it! The song was catchy, the video was cool, and it didn't center solely on Ash/Satoshi. I saw some cool shots of the Legendary Birds, Entei, and Mew and Mewtwo, plus others that I don't recgnize. Awesome. The dub openings are just piles of unmentionable waste rotting on the ground compared to it.

On the other hand, the dub openings for shows like Yu Yu Hakusho and Rurouni Kenshin are quite good, so I can't say all dubs are bad. The majority of them are, though.

Gotta love rants. I'll just be going to watch those openings, and if anyone wants them, send me an email and I'll try and mail them. I'll just have to find my Digimon Adventure 02 opening... Man, I have too many discs.

[Ryu]

...And THAT ladies and gentlemen, is why dub openings suck. Thank you and goodnight. But seriously, he's right. Especially about overlap. Truly awesome opening video and song.