by Niki the Great
Posted August 06th, 2000

Now, I, for one, figured I would never be writing something like this. I am as sick of and angry about censorship as any anime fan. But this is something I feel I have to write. People: Please quit b***hing about dubbing!

I can understand the anger about Mewtwo Strikes Back. I personally thought it sucked. Everyone's dialogue was bad, and the reasons for Mewtwo going midevil on the world were never really revealed. The movie was too dark and spooky, even with the rewrites, to be a G-rated kid's movie (I was crying by the end!), and a lot of the movie was trite kiddie cliches strung endlessly together. And I was shocked when I watched the feature length commentary on the DVD: These guys were coming out and admitting they'd practically rewritten the movie for an American release!  But I digress: that's not what I'm writing about.

What I'm writing about is the people who endlessly nitpick at a show, trying to find anything wrong they can. An example: If you visit Ken Arromdee's Sailor Moon FAQ (that's http://www.inetnow.net/~arromdee/ ), you will find a list of every single change made to Sailor Moon. And I mean every. I'm not saying the dub is that good, I'm just saying that
you don't have to get up in arms because "The Love Line" in episode 2 (3 in Japanese) was originally called "Midnight Zero"! In any dub, there are going to be changes from the original. It's a given, whether it's kiddie anime or not. What matters is the quality of the finished product. The dub of Sailor Moon was good enough that I got up at 6:00 every morning for a year to watch it. It captured me, and drew me in.  And that's what's important.

And the same goes for Pokemon. You out there, if you're visiting this website, obviously consider yourselves fans. If the show were that awfully lousy, you wouldn't watch it. Thing is, it's not lousy. It's imaginative, original, and fun, everything a good anime should be. If
you really can't stand hearing "James" instead of "Kojiro-san," watch some other show. But I warn you, you don't know what you're missing.