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Japanese vs. American openings
http://www.psypokes.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=27130		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  romon1 [ Mon Aug 16, 2010 2:26 pm ]
Post subject:  Japanese vs. American openings
While I don't really watch the anime, I did take a while to watch the opening sequences to all of the seasons. Doing so, I realized that I liked the Japanese openings more. Like a lot more. I find all the American ones bland (except the 1st one).

Am I the only who finds the Japanese Pokemon openings better?
Author:  Galar [ Thu Aug 19, 2010 8:52 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Japanese vs. American openings
No, you're not.

I find the original anime openings (not just Pokemon, but any other anime) to be better than their american/whatever counterparts. The original songs are better and, most of the time, the original japanese version has an entirely animated sequence exclusive to the opening, while the american/whatever ones cut those to put some random scene from a random episode in between the opening, which is lame.

Digimon is also a good example of how the american version ruined an important part of the cartoon, which was the soundtrack; they removed amazing songs like "Butterfly" (the opening for the first Digimon season) and "Brave Heart" (the original digivolution song for same season) and created some dumb, repetitive "digimon, digital monsters" rap for the opening and a bland instrumental computer "song"/the boring opening itself for the digivolution instead.

It isn't that bad with Pokemon, though. While the american songs aren't as good as the japanese songs, some of them are actually quite nice. But they really could keep the original songs, which are usually so much better and fitting. For instance, in Lucario and the Mystery of Mew, the amazing "Battle Frontier" song was replaced by the bad american opening for the Advanced Battle season in the dub. Not cool. :(

There are some cases where the american opening song is superior though, at least, in my opinion. For example, "OK!", the japanese opening for the third season isn't as good as its american counterpart, even though I prefer the original japanese animation sequence, which has no episode scenes.
Author:  romon1 [ Thu Aug 19, 2010 1:39 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Japanese vs. American openings
I do see a few anime falling to the problem of changing the title sequence, but I rarely watch those (in fact, I think Digimon and Pokemon were the only ones). Actually, I never heard the original Digimon soundtrack before. But now that I have, I feel ripped off.

Actually, I didn't hate all of the openings except the first. I actually hate all of them after the fourth (which I only kind of liked).

But anyway, the openings are obviously different because most American kids won't know what anybody's saying, so the dubbers changed it. That's respectable, and I can understand that. But they could at least try. It almost seems like they ditched the idea of putting effort into the Pokemon dub.
Author:  Galar [ Thu Aug 19, 2010 2:31 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Japanese vs. American openings
I'm not quite sure they do this to every anime, but the Digimon german dub actually translated the original songs in japanese to german, instead of creating new ones, which was pretty cool. And here in Brazil we didn't even bother changing any of the songs, we actually kept the original japanese soundtrack for every single sequence, except for the opening for the first season (which we used the american opening, dubbed in portuguese, lolwat).

It seems to me though that the american songs's lyrics all relate too much to their respective anime, for instance, actually mentioning the name of the series many times, whilst the japanese ones are not. Perhaps that's a commercial approach, perhaps that's an attempt to make it easier for kids to make associations. I don't really know, this is just me speculating.
Author:  romon1 [ Thu Aug 19, 2010 3:25 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Japanese vs. American openings
Galar wrote:
we actually kept the original japanese soundtrack for every single sequence, except for the opening for the first season (which we used the american opening, dubbed in portuguese, lolwat).


Actually, I kind of want to hear that. It sounds funny.

Galar wrote:
It seems to me though that the american songs's lyrics all relate too much to their respective anime, for instance, actually mentioning the name of the series many times, whilst the japanese ones are not. Perhaps that's a commercial approach, perhaps that's an attempt to make it easier for kids to make associations. I don't really know, this is just me speculating.


Being 5-6 when Pokemon and Digimon were first airing in Canada, I would say that it was a marketing strategy. I watched the first season of Digimon again recently. I found that the only thing that really stuck in my mind was the theme song (I remembered the personality traits and plotlines, but only because I had the board game).

Kids who liked the show would sing the theme song over and over (not like we remembered anything else), and get other people into the show. Which in turn would convince them to buy the games (or Digivice toys for Digimon). This marketing strategy worked. Almost all the fads at my elementary school were from anime. I got sucked into every one, including a very brief Cardcaptors fad (another anime whose opening completely changed).
Author:  Galar [ Sat Aug 21, 2010 8:56 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Japanese vs. American openings
Ah, so there is this marketing strategy after all... Annoying as hell, but effective.

This is our Digimon opening, by the way... The only reason I prefer it over the american one is because the dub team actually managed to turn it into a "song": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6EqPoGZ5Zo
Author:  TheCharizardMaster [ Thu Aug 26, 2010 11:09 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Japanese vs. American openings
The first five seasons of Pokemon had amazing openings and the next four were decent. All of the Diamond and Pearl openings were terrible.
I personally think 4kids did a great job creating songs for Pokemon.

I don't like the Japanese openings because I'm not Japanese.
Author:  MUNCHLAX :) [ Fri Aug 27, 2010 1:19 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Japanese vs. American openings
my favorite oppening in pokemon was in DP but anyway of course theres a market strategy they wouldn't hire writers to write a whole new song just for the sake of the american europeon ausatralian of whatever public beause thats not the way the big american companies think but what they do think is "hang on a minute these theme song is in japenese" and they change it. and thats how the world works
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