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Answerman - Why Do Edited for TV Dubs Change An Anime's Music?

Because let's all be honest, if you do like something like Pokemon, then that's all well and good, but unless you are an actual child, your opinions on the subject simply do not matter to the licensor/licensee/broadcaster since children are the ones who are going to be advertised to when these shows actually air on TV. The fans complaining about soundtrack changes are almost assuredly outside of that demographic.

Ages ago when Yugioh was still fresh I remember seeing some kind of brief behind the scenes clip where they talked about the music changes and actual did show a bit of a focus group where kids got to choose which soundtrack they liked better. Could have just been editing bias, the kids shown actually did prefer the 4Kids soundtrack. Unfortunately I doubt the video actually exists online anymore.

Mind elaborating on this a little more? I'm interested about your viewpoint on this. Like, why would an anime series not be a good fit for the North American market if the licensor and licensee feel that the background music would sound too esoteric for mass-market audiences?

Ah, yes. Forget dubs vs subs. This is where the real clash is at.

In this experience, I've always found that either changes to music are usually some of the more jarring and noticeable. There is no middle ground, and it's always either love or hate.

Some of the more positive ones:

Dragon Ball Z - I like how the soundtrack gained a really tense and stimulating edge when it was brought to the US.
Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie - Before Infinite, before III's hip hop and rap focus, we had a good old hardcore 1990's grunge and alt metal take.... at least in the States. I liked it at least. A bit of trivia: the sound director was the same person who did Baywatch's (yes, that Baywatch, the hallmark 1990s TV cable show) sound design.
Galerians: Rion - Hardcore Industrial for a hardcore cyberpunk story. Nuff' said, and enough past internet grammar references.
Cyber City Oedo - I only listened to the dub with the original music, but wow, the US Manga Corps soundtrack also helped put a more daunting and hardcore take on the series.

Some of the worst ones:

Rurouni Kenshin: Reflection - Probably the worst offender on this list. It removes the essential leitmotif of spoiler[Tomoe when Kaoru halts Enishi from slaying Kenshin after their battle.] Forget spoiler[the CP charges /a joke for the moral crusaders] and how the anime never animated the later arcs, ADV's worst dubbing sin right here, people.
Mega Man NT Warrior: Who did this? Who was in charge of this? Mega Man NT Warrior actually had a nice classic 1970's anime styled tokusatsu feel brought to modern day with uppity rock n roll and fusion techno as the score, and a lot of cast sung theme songs, including its own anthem for MegaMan.EXE. Brought to the states, everything about that was removed for this... cacophony of noise in attempts to sound cyberpunky and hardcore for the kids. It's just as bad as that episode where they censored corrupted and enemy Net Navis getting their limbs wiped out, not to exclude how ShadowMan.EXE had a big gaping hole in his chest from getting sniped by SearchMan.EXE. Post 9/11 censorship at its best, yeeesshhh. You can show me spoiler[blood and placenta on Law and Order SVU out on UPN at 8pm, but a kid's TV show? Come on....]

This is also why the English dub scripts should be as accurate as possible (allowing a little leeway for language differences). The English version of an anime should be the Japanese show except in English. That's it. No creative spin is necessary, all the creativity has been completed when the show was made.

OjaruFan2 wrote:

Mind elaborating on this a little more? I'm interested about your viewpoint on this. Like, why would an anime series not be a good fit for the North American market if the licensor and licensee feel that the background music would sound too esoteric for mass-market audiences?

The art is owed as faithful a translation as possible on every level, and this includes keeping the original music. That music was chosen for a reason and it's part of the very fabric of the series it's in. There's little, if any, reason to replace it, unless you try to do English versions of Japanese vocal songs. Replacing the music is an insult to the work itself, it's saying that the creativity that went into the anime can easily be subverted for a few extra dollars/yen.

This is also why the English dub scripts should be as accurate as possible (allowing a little leeway for language differences). The English version of an anime should be the Japanese show except in English. That's it. No creative spin is necessary, all the creativity has been completed when the show was made.

I'd rather not see the product at all than have a compromised version that's more marketable. That might be naive from a business perspective, but those are my personal standards. I'm not interested in some licensor's taste in music. The music intended for the show should be the only music they're allowed to use.

I have no comment on LBX since I haven't seen a single minute of that show.

Regarding Digimon, I never saw the Saban version, but I heard they recycled the soundtrack from Masked Rider

Hate to break it to you, but you're asking for the impossible. Translating from Japanese into English isn't like translating from metric into imperial. There's no exact formula, and there can't ever be because the two languages and the cultures behind them are just too different.

What's your example of a good English version of a show? I gotta say your standards seem so strict that few if any shows could pass it.

Silver Kirin wrote:

Regarding Digimon, I never saw the Saban version, but I heard they recycled the soundtrack from Masked Rider

They didn't as far as I know. That sounds like a baseless rumor.

Well, I can't completely hate the practice of changing music because we got Faulconer Production's tracks on DBZ, the kickass grunge in Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie, and the more emotionally engaging tracks in 4Kids' Pokemon movies (not including end-credit pop trash). All of which were infinitely better than their Japanese counterparts.

I partially blame Bruce Faulconer's music for the perception Dragonball has in America, and am personally glad that OST is gone forever.