The Japanese Dub
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGHmuRyOh7M

Months ago I heard the Japanese intro to the 2k3 cartoon along with their own self made ....i forget what they're called.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6QKDvFj9vQ <---These things! Has anyone hear heard a full episode in Japanese? For some reason I want to hear it.

That's a weird preview for Lone Wolf and Cub... WTF has cheese got to do with anything?

Japan. Thats all you need to know. There is a stranger one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BiXyQfqzao

I've watched a few of the Japanese-dubbed episodes. They were on You Tube for a while but have since been removed.

The dub is...okay. I didn't agree with a few of the portrayals, primarily Splinter's. He sounded very frail and too goofy; more of a silly old man than a wise old sensei.

And I couldn't stand Mike. One of his "gimmicks" was that whenever he was going crazy with his nunchukus, he'd make all sorts of high-pitched Bruce Lee-esque "whu-TAW! whu-TAW!" noises. It was obnoxious.


Anyhow, the show flopped over there. It was pretty heavily promoted and had a major marketing push, but still got canned after only 52 episodes. Japanese kids today just don't give a s*** about Ninja Turtles.

XD oh well. You'd think something like giant talking turtles using weapons of their homeland would sell like effing hotcakes to the Japanese. Wow that's actually kind of ironic.

Well they don't even care about Sonic the Hedgehog either. But Europe seems to love him. Go figure.

Oh, god. Don't tell me they went there. *bangs head on wall* Even the Japanese thought of LeoxKarai shipping?

Well I can't lie and say that there weren't undertones....

Well ok you sort of had to desperately wanting some turtle x _ _ _ romance to find it but still.

There was no turtle love at all in this series...well maybe April with Don but that's reading between the lines to find subtext that wasn't really there.



Or Was It...?

On a separate note I've been trying to find any topics dealing with OC's or fan characters. But the search gives no results. Is there a topic about fan characters and I just can't find it? If so could someone please direct me toward it.

At times, those undertones weren't too subtle, but I can't stand Karai anyway. That's why it makes my skin crawl when she and Leonardo are paired together romantically in fanfiction.

TakaraTomy thought the Turtles would be as big in Japan now as they were in the 80s, but unfortunately were wrong.

The original TMNT cartoon ran for 102 episodes on TV Tokyo (in addition to different dubs run on satellite networks and released on home video). To put that in perspective, foreign cartoons are generally forbidden from appearing on standard Japanese broadcasting networks like TV Tokyo. The reason is that they want to give those timeslots to Japanese-produced programs and don't want foreign media "stealing" opportunities from native talent (a sharp contrast to American networks, I know). Canada has similar rules about foreign shows being broadcast on their networks.

The Turtles, though, were just so crazy popular and had such a tremendous marketing push from Takara (who released the Playmates toys and merch in Japan) that they overcame the odds and stuck around for an almost unheard of length of time for a foreign cartoon.

TakaraTomy thought they could repeat the success with the new series and it just didn't happen. Some explanations I've heard is that they waited too long to release it over there. They missed the "ninja fad" by a few years. Right now, the only ninja Japanese kids care about is Naruto (incidentilly, TMNT got a timeslot on TV Tokyo right before Naruto). Everythign else is passe'.

Other explanations I've heard from Japanese fans is that the new TMNT cartoon wasn't enough like the 80s series and a lot of casual viewers were disappointed and quit the series early on.


Meh. Their loss. Ironically, if those Japanese fans that wanted the series to be like the 80s version had stuck around, they'd have gotten Turtles Forever. Oh well. Sucks to be them.

I've never seen any of the Japanese dub of the new show, but I love the opening themes they gave the show over there. I was surprised it didn't do well either. I mean, turtles using weapons to fight evil? Right off the bat...that's a VERY unique, almost anime/manga-esque, story idea anyway. It seems perfect for over there.

Yeah their OP and ED music is pretty boss. Even if the intro's themselves are just footage from the show pasted together.

I bought the single for Turtles4 just because 'Everybody' rocks that much.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztjjESB53bw Yeah this song rocks. Its too bad the show tanked over there. It was like they were trying to make into some really big/cool thing just like the 80's show.

I wonder if Japan gets the comic book...lol I doubt it.

They don't. They never got any of the Western comics over there, even in the 80s. They produced their own manga through Dengeki Comics, but that's it.

The only thing the 2k3 series got over there was some fan comics ("Doujinshi"), most of them porn, as I understand it.

Not even the Turtles are safe from becoming hentai...

Then again, isn't that one of the rules of the internet? If it exists, there will be porn of it?

Anyway, this is sorta off-topic but it made me wonder - ok, the old show did good in Japan from what everyone is saying, yes? Did they get the live-action movies as well then? If so, how well did those do over there?

Yeah, they did. TMNT III also got a manga adaptation (though not the first two) which was also published by Dengeki Comics, if that's any indication of their popularity.

The Imagi flick got a late release over there and went straight to video instead of getting released to theaters. As with the 2k3 series, it didn't really excite anyone (though I'm told that a Japanese fansub of the movie had been batting around well before the official release and was fairly popular among old timey Japanese TMNT fans).

So I gues it really is that the Turtles just aren't as liked there anymore then, or something. That really is strange, cuz Turtles just seems to have the kind of flow that they would LOVE over there, it's very anime-esque already in some ways.

Oh well, thanks for answering my question. Wonder if there were ever any scanlations of some of the manga and doujins (the non-hentai ones at least), they'd be interesting to read.

You might want to click the link in my sig, then. ;)

Meh. The only thing I thought the Japanese dub improved upon (aside from theme songs) was removing the awful fake rock music from the actual episodes.

In "City at War", they replaced that god awful "Running free in NYC" song with some newly commissioned music that was pretty good.

So I praise them for that bit of clarity.