4Kids--bitten in the ass

[TakinawaTonfa]

Well, its been up for a few days now but, heres the report for the first quarter of this year.

Not much of drop compared to this time last year, but they're still obviously gaining less and less. Considering their reported %60 profit drop for the year of 2005.

[Setsumi-san]

I read about 4sight and I really think we otaku should give it a chance. At least you know they're listening to the older fans.

If anyone from the 4kids company happens to be reading this, you should know that what older fans are most upset about is when you butcher characters' personalities. (i.e. changing Yoh Asakura's goal from never wanting to work another day in his life to wanting to be a rock star) Please hear us out. Personally, I would be willing to pay up to $19.95 for an uncut DVD with four episodes on it.

[Yash]

They're not listening to their older fans if they're not including anime.

Not including shows like One Piece and Pretty Cure I could understand because Toei is notorious for being a bitch about how their shows are licensed, but I doubt anything's preventing them from at least re-distributing Shaman King under a more "adult" label, especially seeing as how the series can be taken more seriously than most of their licenses.

What 4Kids needs to learn is that shows don't need to cater specifically to one market. The script can have jokes in it that are clever and well-thought out (something Shaman King dubbed has), but that doesn't mean that when they can't think of anything they need to fill it with puns. And when a humorous moment comes along, it doesn't need to be translated literally and leave the viewer scratching his head.

Shows like Spongebob and The Simpsons, and even Naruto, have become bigger than any show 4Kids owns that they could hope for, if only because they have mass appeal to a wide variety of demographics. 4Kids can't seem to comprehend that and insists on polarizing shows for specific audiences, and following ignorant mindsets ("Anime lends itself more to children", wtf? They realize that shows like Naruto and DBZ, while "lending themselves to children", were huge because they appealed to older audiences as well, right?), which is why nothing 4Kids ever does will become big. Shaman King and TMNT2K3 had potential, but that was wasted, especially for TMNT when they decided to make everything X-treeeeeeeme.