By Dogasu
Posted 09-20-2003

A short time ago, it was announced that Kids' WB! would be airing a new episode of Pokémon:  Master Quest every day this week.  So, instead of getting one new episode this week ("Mother of All Battles"), we got six, bringing us about halfway into the Silver Conference.  Lots of fans were happy at this announcement--Kids' WB! was making their way through the end of the Johto League faster, meaning that they would get to Pokémon Advanced that much sooner.  In addition, this year's premiere week, unlike last year's (which consisted of random filler episodes shown out of order), had a good batch of episodes.  A week full of non-filler episodes is a rare treat indeed, so many fans applauded Kids' WB!'s decision.

Except for me.

I'm completely against Kids' WB! trying to rush the season to get to the later episodes, for reasons I'll outline later.  But I wasn't too upset about it.  I understand that every year, Kids' WB! has a week where they premiere new episodes of Pokémon every day that week.  Alright, fine.  Because of it we'll be getting about a month of reruns that we wouldn't have gotten otherwise, but whatever, it's no big deal.  After all, it's only for a week, right? 

Well, that's where the fans start to get annoying.  When they find out that it's a one-week deal, they get upset.  "They were doing so good, why are they stopping now?!"  "I thought Kids' WB! was shaping up!"  "Kids' WB! is t eh suck!"  People just started whining about how Kids' WB! is so stupid for not rushing through the Jouto episodes and how they're killing the show, stating that we're already "so behind" the Japanese version that Kids' WB! should put all its effort into catching up with the Japanese show. 

First of all, these fans are acting like we're so unacceptably behind the Japanese episodes, and that it's Kids' WB!'s job to hurry up and catch up with them.  As of today, we're 49 episodes behind the Japanese version.  Forty-nine...that's less than a year's worth, you guys.  Do any of you realize how extremely lucky you are!?  It is extremely rare to see any anime dubbed and edited for TV in less than a year, yet 4Kids has been doing this year after year.  The most recent anime shown on the major networks are at least two years old, but even that's rare--most of it is older than that.  4Kids is blazing through this series, yet everyone's acting like they're dragging their feet with it.

The fact that 4Kids has kept this pace up is really remarkable when you consider what all they have on their plate this year.  In addition to the 52 episodes of Pokémon they're dubbing for the 2003-2004 season, they're also doing 52 episodes of Yu-Gi-Oh!, 52 episodes of Sonic X, 26 episodes of Shaman King, and are producing an unknown number of episodes of Ultimate Muscle, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Cubix, Kirby, and the Cramp Twins.  And they'll probably be doing the first Advanced Generation movie as well.  Now don't think 4Kids has hired a bunch of new people to handle the increased load either--from what I can tell, every last one of these shows is being worked on by the same small group of people who used to only have to worry about working on Pokémon.  Just look up any of the voice actors' names on the IMDB--you'll see that most of them do voice work for every show that 4Kids produces.  These people are really stretching themselves thin, producing a huge quantity of shows considering how much manpower they have. 

But fans choose to ignore that.  They just want more, more, more, acting as if 4Kids can just pull new episodes out its ass.  They're ignoring the fact that, if they show a bunch of new episodes now, they'll have to show a bunch of reruns later.  Remember what happened during the 1999-2000 season?  Kids' WB! went through about a year's worth of episodes in a few months, which meant they had to show nothing but reruns all throughout the spring/summer while they waited for 4Kids to dub more episodes.  We got endless theme weeks, episodes shown out of order, and we saw a lot of fans get annoyed and stop watching.  Trust me, we don't want that to happen again.  I may not think too highly of Kids' WB! at times, but I really respect the fact that they seem to have learned from their mistakes and have finally figured out how to premiere new episodes.  Last year, they (mostly) stuck to a once-a-week schedule for premiering new episodes, and it really worked out great.  No long periods of reruns, episodes shown in order (at least on the weekends), and a fixed timeslot.  Fans knew that, every Saturday morning at 10am, they could catch a new episode of Pokémon.  Once a week is the perfect way to premiere new episodes of a show like Pokémon--after all, the Japanese fans only get one new episode a week.  Why should we have it any better?

So the fans need to just calm down.  Kids' WB! will air the new episodes when they air them, so there's really no point in bitching about it.  Just watch the show and realize how good you've got it.  Stop acting like Kids' WB! owes you a favor and stop filling up message boards with endless whining.  The rest of us are tired of hearing about it.