Why Sonic X needs an uncut dub (and how it could work)

[Muglés]

4 hours ago, GentlemanX said:

Sonic X is a kids property, and the existing dub remains popular with the target demo for TMS, to the point where the existing Japanese version is currently not allowed to be released over here.

This is pretty much it. Regardless of how some of us may feel, all 78 episodes of Sonic X have been dubbed, is successful, and continues to serve the purpose it was originally created for even twenty years later. There is no reason from a business standpoint for anyone higher up to invest in a confusing new dub that would cost more money than it's worth.

[Polkadi~☆]

6 hours ago, GentlemanX said:

TMS doesn't even really want the Japanese version of Sonic X released in the US, let alone a redub. Sonic X is a kids property, and the existing dub remains popular with the target demo for TMS, to the point where the existing Japanese version is currently not allowed to be released over here. Why would TMS allow let alone fund a redub themselves when they aren't even willing to let the original version be released by a company that wants to do it for them?

I think it's important to note that TMS has still released the original uncut version themselves, on their official Japanese Youtube channel, and the entire series on Netflix in Japan and Korea.

They can release the original version, and have done so... in relevant markets. Why not for English speakers? Because we're not the market for that original version. The English dub is for English speakers, and anything else does not suit the market regardless of niche demand. This also appears to be the case with other titles, to a lesser extent; more adult titles will have both options, but the options are reduced with the lower the age of their target audiences.

[Rabbitearsblog]

Pretty much what everyone else stated.  Even though I would like to see the original Japanese dub of Sonic X, I can't see any need to redub the series right now.  For one thing, Sonic X was made during the Sonic Adventure era and therefore, took a lot of inspiration from Sonic Adventure.  Since the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise is a lot different in tone now, ever since Sonic Colors, bringing back Sonic X right now would contrast heavily with the current tone and story lines of the franchise and I don't see SEGA wanting to bring back Sonic X if it clashes with what tone they have set for the franchise now.  There's also the fact that Sonic the Hedgehog is a kid friendly franchise and if they tried to redub the series to make it closer to the original Japanese dub, which had more violent and suggestive content, then it would clash heavily with the franchise's family friendly image and SEGA wouldn't want that to happen to the franchise.

And even if this series does get redubbed, you will still have people complain about the new dub and how it's nothing like the original dub, which is a problem that plagues both the Sailor Moon and Neon Genesis Evangelion redubs as there are still fans of the original dubs disliking the redubs to those series.

[Muglés]

1 hour ago, Rabbitearsblog said:

And even if this series does get redubbed, you will still have people complain about the new dub and how it's nothing like the original dub, which is a problem that plagues both the Sailor Moon and Neon Genesis Evangelion redubs as there are still fans of the original dubs disliking the redubs to those series.

This also happened with Dragon Ball Z. Funimation tried to be much more faithful to the original Japanese version with Kai, and general audiences that didn't know any better who were familiar with DBZ's dub didn't like the changes Kai made to be more faithful to the Japanese version and still preferred the original Z dub. Slowly but surely, Funimation regressed back to the tone of Z for subsequent Dragon Ball content because that's what general audiences want. There's no use in trying to please the hardcore fans of DBZ's Japanese version because at the end of the day, even if a perfect dub was made they'd fans of the Japanese version first, which they can get just by switching to the Japanese audio track, and the dub would always be secondary.

 

tldr; if this can't work for DBZ, it certainly can't work for Sonic.

[Blacklightning]

10 hours ago, GentlemanX said:

Why did you start a new topic when your last one is less than two months old and still visible on the first page of the sub-board?

Hi there! Believe it or not, you can actually use the Report function to bring this to our attention, so we can do things like lock or merge duplicate threads in the event of complete redundancy. You haven't done anything wrong - just thought I'd put it out there for future reference.

Incidentally, the dupe threads have been merged. Carry on. o3o/

[Rabbitearsblog]

19 hours ago, Muglés said:

This also happened with Dragon Ball Z. Funimation tried to be much more faithful to the original Japanese version with Kai, and general audiences that didn't know any better who were familiar with DBZ's dub didn't like the changes Kai made to be more faithful to the Japanese version and still preferred the original Z dub. Slowly but surely, Funimation regressed back to the tone of Z for subsequent Dragon Ball content because that's what general audiences want. There's no use in trying to please the hardcore fans of DBZ's Japanese version because at the end of the day, even if a perfect dub was made they'd fans of the Japanese version first, which they can get just by switching to the Japanese audio track, and the dub would always be secondary.

 

tldr; if this can't work for DBZ, it certainly can't work for Sonic.

Oh yeah!  I forgot all about Dragonball Kai.  I guess I was so used to Dragonball Z, that I didn't bother with Kai.

[Muglés]

4 hours ago, Rabbitearsblog said:

Oh yeah!  I forgot all about Dragonball Kai.  I guess I was so used to Dragonball Z, that I didn't bother with Kai.

Which is exactly why having more than one version out on the market is a bad thing, especially if there's a sizeable audience that is okay with or enjoys the original version which is the case for Sonic X.

[Ben Raven]

This thread is months old, but I wanted to add my two cents on it. While I agree that Sonic X getting a new dub that is faithful to the Japanese would be great, I realize that it is incredibly unlikely given current circumstances. I think we're lucky we were even able to convince Discotek to release the subtitled version on Blu-ray at all (which is still a win in my book). But I thought about something that I haven't seen too many people consider. What if an uncut English dub already exists?

The 4kids actor for Brock said a couple years ago that 4kids would dub the episodes as they were, and then send them to the network so they could give feedback on what to edit. That means that a pre-edited version of each dub was made and existed at one point, right? This is further evidenced by 4kids releasing actual uncut episodes of Yu-Gi-Oh, made an English cover of the Japanese One Piece opening (which I don't think they ever intended to use cause they never did that before), the number of inconsistencies with the dubs and edits (like Tails reading Vector's name on a handkerchief despite the name being erased), not to mention the multiple accounts over the years of people claiming to have seen English versions of scenes that supposedly only exist in the original. Perhaps some uncut episodes were aired by accident?

If these exist, what we essentially have is a high-quality version of Noah Lawson's fan-cut, only with the original actors. My main issue with the dub was always the music and edits more so than the voices, so I think it'd be great if these were still out there.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

Uh. I really doubt that. I mean, maybe a pre-edit version of the series could exist, but it wouldn't make sense given how many international versions are based off the 4kids version, and I certainly don't believe they ever aired an uncut episode by accident. That would have been documented even back in the day. In all likelihood people are probably remembering other times they might've seen or heard about stuff from other versions of the show and thought they had seen them in the original, or even mixed them up with scenes from the real Sonic games being adapted at one point or another.

The best bet to getting an uncut English edition of Sonic X is to put the work in to gather multiple different versions of the 4kids edit and phase-cancel out the music, then redub (or AI-dub depending on how complicated a given line is) the Japanese version with whatever needs to be changed. It's an achievement that Lawson got his edit done, but I find it positively unwatchable given how bad some of the fandubbers are and how every character sounds like they're in a wind tunnel (and how frequently you can hear the JP dub either underneath the characters or in any voice clip that isn't an actual word, such as screaming).

This would all take an inordinate amount of work for something that still isn't stellar (4kids's voice direction was just bad a lot of the time, honestly), but we can't put any bets on a secret good version of the show existing where we can't find it, and we DEFINITELY can't trust any of the official parties to release an uncut version for us, new or old.

[RyanDrummondFan2468]

On 12/4/2022 at 3:12 AM, Shaddy Zaphod said:

Uh. I really doubt that. I mean, maybe a pre-edit version of the series could exist, but it wouldn't make sense given how many international versions are based off the 4kids version, and I certainly don't believe they ever aired an uncut episode by accident. That would have been documented even back in the day. In all likelihood people are probably remembering other times they might've seen or heard about stuff from other versions of the show and thought they had seen them in the original, or even mixed them up with scenes from the real Sonic games being adapted at one point or another.

The best bet to getting an uncut English edition of Sonic X is to put the work in to gather multiple different versions of the 4kids edit and phase-cancel out the music, then redub (or AI-dub depending on how complicated a given line is) the Japanese version with whatever needs to be changed. It's an achievement that Lawson got his edit done, but I find it positively unwatchable given how bad some of the fandubbers are and how every character sounds like they're in a wind tunnel (and how frequently you can hear the JP dub either underneath the characters or in any voice clip that isn't an actual word, such as screaming).

This would all take an inordinate amount of work for something that still isn't stellar (4kids's voice direction was just bad a lot of the time, honestly), but we can't put any bets on a secret good version of the show existing where we can't find it, and we DEFINITELY can't trust any of the official parties to release an uncut version for us, new or old.

4Kids wouldn't hand international companies an incomplete version both for the sake of consistency between regions and the fact that it would take more effort and money for other regions to create their own music then it would be for them to use the already completed 4Kids masters for the episodes.

Edited December 12, 2022 by RyanDrummondFan2468