jdavis said:
At least it's not SD Gundam, that was painful (even for my kids) I'm sure dub or sub it's a heap.
I missed Saint Seiya on Cartoon Network and by what been said I'll just keep on missing it.
I missed SD Gundam, and if it was that bad, I'll do the same. My son's just gotten hooked on Power Rangers, anyhow.
The problem isn't that it was dubbed...although it was poorly voice-acted. I consider some dubs to be just fine, and I actually prefer the US cast for Big O and Nadeisco, for example. Angelic Layer and Princess Nine have excellent casts (although they are mostly the same, I think).
The problem was many of the classic old translation problems that drive me nuts...the ones that I thought we had gotten past....especially in light of Dragonball Z's success.
For example:
- Colorizing the blood: Who is this meant to fool, exactly? If I see Cassius' ear missing, and his head covered in green-colored blood instead of red, what I am supposed to make of that? If they think that was going to fool the kids, they're sorely mistaken.
- Terrible editing: I can understand removing some of the graphic violence. Cassius' ear gets cut off during the fight. But the wholesale modification of scenes is done so poorly as to make the show unintelligble at points. Two fight scenes in the first fifteen minutes, and both had points where they made no sense. Let's be clear: this is a show about arena combat, and people beating the living HELL out of each other. The editing makes this translation a pointless exercise: it would be like bringing CSI to another locality, with the restriction that you couldn't see a crime-scene or dead body in it. And I don't think a straight comparison to a show like Tenchi Muyo is a good example, as there's a serious difference between editing out a visual frontal nudity gag or a joke involving Washu and Tenchi's bodily fluids and removing whole sequences of fighting from a show that's really about NOTHING ELSE.
- Wholesale story modification: this might not be so ridiculous, if Seiya had a complicated plot. But when you get right down to it, the plot is pretty straightforward. When a show assumes that it's audience can't grasp some simple concepts, including one that the entire show hinges upon, it's in trouble. When 60 or so episodes hinge upon the fact that most people, including the 'Gold Saints', don't know that Ares has taken over the master of Sanctuary. The main storyline of the show makes no sense, otherwise....unless you make all the Gold Saints into bad guys, and edit out major scenes of them later.
- Chatter, chatter, Talk Talk: Contrary to popular belief, Americans can handle moments where no one talks. The popularity of Samurai Jack should have driven that point home. But, in classic bad translation fashion, we have non-stop yattering. Someone has to be saying something, no matter how inane, at ALL times.
Now, let's be clear: St. Seiya is not an amazing series. It's fun, and I enjoyed the hell out of it, back in the day. I still have my 'Endless Warriors' APA that I was a member of, back in the late 80s, and have fond memories of waiting for the latest tapes from Japan. For a show that runs about 120 episodes, it holds together fairly well...although, like DBZ, it benefits from speed-vieiwing at points. If you take the phrase "Use the Genki-Dama, Goku!" and exchange in the words "Gold Cloth" and "Seiya", you get the idea. There are a few 'Freeza' moments in the mid-section of the series, if you know what I mean.
I guess the main reason I'm irritated is that we have so many well-done examples of anime in English, I had expected a better treatment, especially since it's airing on Cartoon Network. Samurai Troopers got a little mangled, but made it through relatively intact. 'Knights of the Zodiac', however, is the suck.
