The GHZ Forum

I'm intrigued that there are still Doug fans out there. I always enjoyed the ABC saturday morning lineup, especially Pepper Ann, whose comedy stemmed quite a bit from satire. Milo was the awesome.

As for Sonic X, I had been pumped when it was announced, and sincerily enjoyed the first episode...but yes, the humans were quite a downfall, I felt. And the action sequences were less action and more half-assed suspense; that is, Sonic would stand in the direct path of an attack, while the onlookers gasped in horror for about five minutes until the attack finally landed. I soon stopped watching the show almost altogether, even the SA-SA2 adaption.

But...if people sincerily believe the third season to be good, then perhaps there a glimmer of hope in the Saturday Morning Cartoon world.

Third season sees more action than the previous two seasons combined.

I sincerely believe that it's good. I also sincerely believe that 4Kids will manage to screw up the dub-work well enough to prove me a liar.

Senbei wrote:I'm intrigued that there are still Doug fans out there. I always enjoyed the ABC saturday morning lineup, especially Pepper Ann, whose comedy stemmed quite a bit from satire. Milo was the awesome.

Bah. Doug sucked after it moved from Nickelodeon. The high school thing kind of killed it for me.

Baba O'Reily wrote:

Senbei wrote:I'm intrigued that there are still Doug fans out there. I always enjoyed the ABC saturday morning lineup, especially Pepper Ann, whose comedy stemmed quite a bit from satire. Milo was the awesome.

Bah. Doug sucked after it moved from Nickelodeon. The high school thing kind of killed it for me.

Ditto

Sonic walking over water is what killed the third season of Sonic X for me. Sonic is supposed to walk over water only as Super Sonic, because if he can walk over water just by using special shoes, what the point of him not being able to swim?.

The first series of Sonic X was 52 episodes long, the second series was 26 episodes long. Is there a third series that I'm not aware of?

Baba O'Reily wrote:Bah. Doug sucked after it moved from Nickelodeon. The high school thing kind of killed it for me.

I can certainly see where you're coming from with that. Doug was one of the few cartoons that Nick has produced that I've actually enjoyed, The Fairly Odd Parents being another. And, of course, Invader Zim. But that goes without saying.

Ah, it's been so long since I had a conversation about 'toons.

Owen Axel wrote:Third season sees more action than the previous two seasons combined.

*smile*

Yeah, I didn't appreciate the various changes that were made to the show when it changed hands from Nickelodeon to ABC/Disney. Roger went from being trailer trash to a rich kid, Patti got that bulldyke haircut, the Honker Burger was torn down, and in the ultimate sacrilege, they changed the theme song.

You mean you didn't like that jazzy scatcat theme?
A-doodly-dop-a-doo-wop, a-doodly-dop-a-doo-wop.
Give me a microphone -- I could probably perform the entire song by memory. Including Roger's little rock solo. Is that sad?

And you've got to appreciate the life lessons Disney's Doug teaches us. Ever seen the episode where Doug teaches his dad about sex?

I hope thats not visually.

Or hands on.

Explicitly.
Let your imagination do the talking.

I'm really not sure what to think about Doug. It's simultaneously brilliant and awful, if such a thing is at all possible.

So did he finally get laid in the last episode or anything?

Maybe after the movie came out. I think he finally hooked up with Patti in it. Or maybe not, which would explain why he was driven to rape.

I still say Pepper Ann owned.

I don't think he did. As a matter of fact, I don't think anything in that show was resolved in the end.

No, I remember Patti finally asking him out on a date at some concert on the last episode because he was still scared to make the first move.

Senbei wrote:I still say Pepper Ann owned.

I will second this. Also, how was that movie, anyway? Was it tolerable, or did it suck? Because it looked pretty sucky.

No, I remember Patti finally asking him out on a date at some concert on the last episode because he was still scared to make the first move.

Really? I always just assumed there wasn't a real ending, like the creators never thought of one and the show went off the air.

If nothing else, Doug is great for 90's culture references.

THERE'S A BOMB IN THE LASAGNA

I do remember how Doug's last episode went. I believe Patti's dad and Doug's English teacher got married, Judy left for college, Patti asked Doug out for a date, and Doug ran out of pages in his journal(Porkchop gives him a new one). Doug's last words were "So long everybody! It's been fun."

J.E.Smith wrote:I do remember how Doug's last episode went. I believe Patti's dad and Doug's English teacher got married, Judy left for college, Patti asked Doug out for a date, and Doug ran out of pages in his journal(Porkchop gives him a new one). Doug's last words were "So long everybody! It's been fun."

That's sounding very familiar. I'd forgotten about all the character subplots. Of course, that was part of the show's charm.

Ritz wrote:Also, how was that movie, anyway? Was it tolerable, or did it suck? Because it looked pretty sucky.

It's been years since I saw it, and I can only remember the basics. Furthermore, I was kid, so my outlook on its suckiness is probably different now -- I'm certainly not going to bother to rent it. But, Skeeter does finally discover the Lucky Duck Monster. That has to count for something.

Ah, so Sonic X is still going on. Interesting. I remember watching the first few episodes in Japanese and thought the show had a lot of promise. Sadly, after the first 13 or so episodes, everything went downhill fast. I mean the first 13 episodes were both action packed and pretty funny, and every character got a chance to be in the spotlight (you'd usually see episodes where one or a couple characters in particular would be focused on more than the usual amount, usually in the episodes that introduced the characters). I did have a few gripes, of course, like how Sonic defeated Eggman's robots way too easily, and how Tails was almost always stuck inside his mecha (we didn't even get to see him fly until episode 10, "Fierce Fight: Sonic Baseball Team," and even then it was just a very brief sequence. That episode in particular I thought was one of the best and funniest in the whole series, though). After that, however, things generally started focusing a little too much on the human characters, Chris in particular, and nearly everyone else except Sonic and Eggman were pushed off to the side. Granted, I wouldn't have minded having the human extras in the series, as long as they were just that, background extras mainly there to help along the plot when necessary, while maybe the occasional episode that focuses on one or more of them (episode 4, "Get the Chaos Emerald," was a good example of the latter). I really did have high hopes for this series, and at first it seems they were nearly met, but after the solid start they were quickly dashed (hmm, reminds me of back in 1998 when I was strongly anticipating the American Godzilla movie).

And of course, nothing was helped by the awful English language version of this show. I was hoping that the voices from the games would reprise their roles, but alas, it was not to be. I was also hoping that the dubbing script would be totally faithful to the Japanese script, but instead they altered what looked like fairly decent dialogue into something so cringe worthy that it's literally unbearable for me. That and I really hate most of the new character voices. Sonic is passable, but is still well below Ryan Drummond and Jaleel White. Eggman is okay as well, but I still think Deem Bristow's portrayal was way better. Amy is more or less identical to her game voice, which, call me crazy, I think is perfectly fine for her character. Creme is pretty bad, but her game voice is just as bad, so I can't knock this anymore than I knock it in Sonic Heroes. The rest, however, I thought were terrible. Tails is very obviously a girl (seriously, just how hard is it to find a decent child actor these days?), I find Knuckles's voice totally unfitting, and I just don't like Rouge much at all here, I much prefer Lani Minella.

And then, of course, is the editing. I watched this in Japanese, and except for some instances where a character said shit or damn or called someone a bastard, I didn't think there was anything that needed to be edited out. Instead, the dialogue is wussified, some scenes are cut at random to make way for commercials (the show is only 24 minutes, how much advertising do you need to get in?), and the gunshot sound effects are changed to laser sound effects. Seriously, do they really think that kids are going to suddenly go out and shoot someone because they here a gunshot sound effect instead of a laser sound effect. For that matter, the weapons are clearly NOT laser weapons, so I don't know who they think they are fooling.

And then of course they totally rip out the original soundtrack and replace it with same generic stuff (or same style stuff) that they use in their other anime dubs. The new music is vastly inferior to the original stuff, as are the new vocal tracks. And of course the credits montages are completely axed as well as opposed to leaving them in and just substituting English credits for the Japanese credits.

So, yeah, I should stop venting, but seriously, the anime started off well, and then went downhill. And then it came to America and was ruined by 4Kids, with edited music and awful dubbing. Sure, Sega's dub jobs for the Adventure games and Heroes may not be great either, but at least they are still entertaining to listen too, and when they have bad dialogue, at least it's the kind of bad that I can laugh at instead of the kind that I cringe at. Listening to the 4Kids dub job, on the other hand, is like listening to all those old poorly done dub jobs for the Godzilla movies, with awful, nonsensical dialogue and the wrong voices dubbing the wrong characters (dubbing over Japanese voices with AUSTRALIAN accents!?).

Well, that's enough. I think I'll go watch one of those old Godzilla movies now to cool off (in Japanese, of course).

tl;dr

Nicely put, Ecco.

Wow. I had no idea 4Kids screwed the show up so badly. (discriminatory comment about Fox.)

Still, Mike Pollock's Eggman chortle made up for everything, no?

No.