Forum - View topic

Answerman - Who Dominated Dubs Before Funimation?

Is it just me or does anyone else think the praises here are more for the shows than the dubs? "Nerima Daikon Brothers? Never heard of it. Ghost Stories? It's Foster so you know it's crap. Excel Saga?"..."I'm sure there's something about it not worth mentioning. Evangelion? Isn't that Funimation?"

Anyway, I'd go with "confusion and a bunch of lies" dominated the dub scene prior to Funimation. And with that, some of my favorite dubs are mid 2000 ADV efforts like Pani Poni Dash and Best Student Council, as well as the previous ones mentioned. See Monica Rial… before she's still Monica Rial? And there's this show called Princess Tutu...

Prior to 2000, it's more a matter of "I don't care." I don't mind the shows, I just don't care to watch them again. Or like with Bebop, at all.
"Animaze is animazing! Look at their output"
Look at what they started with? And didn't they spend longer producing their dubs... or was it just the scripting? I know the whole localization process took longer back then but I'm not sure which parts took the longest.
Probably the parts that were cheapest so... scripting, right?

Ocean/Blue Water was really synonymous for a good while, especially in the 00s, with even Japanese companies going straight to them for promotional work. As this list I edited together from Blue Water's site shows, the studio(s) produced promos for unlicensed shows like Tri-Zenon, Fighting Beauty Wulong, & Ring ni Kakero, and even made full-on dubs (to some extent) for titles like One Piece & Ring ni Kakero.

Clips for the One Piece dub has since surfaced, but the only thing known about the RnK dub was that it was directed by Ocean-regular Karl Willems, & Michael Coleman played one of the characters. As a big fan of RnK, I'd love to one day hear that dub, regardless of how little was actually made for it.

I’m also assuming that some New York studios could have been chief rivals to Funimation back in the 4Kids days, though I’m not sure what studios exactly worked there (aside from NYAV Post, though they only became prominent recently and prefer Californian talent anyways).

I can understand leaving them out of a list of dominant dubbing studios, but for my money, New Generation Pictures had one of the best ratios of hits to misses. It helped that they were most active in the days of slower singles releases and boom-time budgets, but they were able to handle anything thrown their way with the right mix of faithfulness to the original and judicious rewrites. Whether it was prestigious dramas like Paranoia Agent, Koi Kaze, Texhnolyze, and Haibane Renmei, action shows like Gun x Sword, ROD the TV, Hellsing, and L/R, raunchy stuff like Dears, Girls Bravo, Ikki-Tousen, and Melody of Oblivion, or laid-back/slice-of-life content like Angel Tales, Kamichu!, and infamous sales bomb Rumiko Takahashi Anthology, they almost always delivered.

Unfortunately, the demise of main client Geneon, the closeof the singles era, and the greater expenses of working in LA meant the end of NGP as a major player in anime dubbing, though IIRC they still survive in some form. I was glad for the chance to meet Jonathan Klein at a con or two back in 2006, and to learn more about his company and dubbing in general. I sometims dredge up this 2007 post of his to counter the purists' "anime dubs need moar A-List talent!" talking points.

Not gonna lie, I miss anime dubs from Ocean Group. A lot of voices from those dubs are just great, but you don't really hear them anymore, at least not in anime.

However, ADV Studios lives on today as Sentai Studios, while Ocean and Bang Zoom keep on truckin', with the latter still producing a ton of anime work.