A Great Article About the Worst Travesty in Anime

[Adarian]

Sorry if this was already posted before here, but here's a good article written recently that pretty much sums up what you guys have been saying about CCS's terrible dub and how Nelvana completely ruined a golden opportunity to make the best work of arguably the world's best manga team, CLAMP, famous in America.

As summed up by the article, Nelvana''s intentions were clear:

So why would someone take a perfectly good anime with decent character depth and some very adorable relationships and turn it into a childish card hunt? The answer is money. Nelvana (the company responsible for “Cardcaptors”) wanted something to compete with Pokemon. I’m sure they envisioned Cardcaptors happy meals and lunch boxes.

After all, with a set of 52 cards that turned into creatures, they could tap into the “Gotta catch’em all!” mentality of Pokemon. And hey! Nelvana could trade pokeballs for divination boards and make Syaoran (Li) the next Ash. A few things stood in their way, but by deleting scenes and splicing episodes together, they erased most of what they didn’t like.

Although, I regret that Cardcaptors obviously was a terrible failure on US television because it means that CCS will probably never become big in America, I think it's justice that it did fail when you think about the intentions that Nelvana had with it. The virtuous morals, memorable scenes of  emotion, the warm relationships that really made the whole series magical, and most of all, the characters of extraordinary depth were all completely and explicitly abandoned in one of the worst travesties in dubbing history. I mean it's a bad sign when the original Japanese language version's DVD's sales blow the dubbed version's out of the water in America, one of the most inflexible countries in the world when it comes to foreign languages. Anyway, gomen for the rant, but I just hate the way the best anime series and also foreign films are given terrible dubs (Escaflowne, CCS, Taegukgi) and consequently end up getting cancelled while American dubbing companies spend alot to dub series that will just end up giving anime a bad name in America like Dragonball Z for example. But I also have noticed the overall quality of the dubbing on the newer anime series is going up, so maybe America is finally learning how to dub the right way now.

[moezychan]

I couldn't view the link, why I don't know, but I read your post, and it is a very well written and thought out post. I gave you a cookie for it.

[Moon]

When I read the post, I agree with the quote and everything you said along with it. So I also gave you a cookie too.

[Cardcaptor Takato]

While money played a big factor in the dubbing of CC, I also think the time CC was released played a factor, too.  CC was released during a time where cartoons, especially Saturday morning action cartoons, were still seen as something that's watched mostly by boys.  Nelvana believed that CCS would get better ratings if they aimed the series at boys more than girls, so they had to cut out all the "girly" parts of the show to focus more on the action.  But I believe with shows like Winx Club, Mew Mew Power, and Doremi airing on Saturday mornings now, America is finally starting to catch on to the fact that girls like action cartoons, too.  If CC were dubbed today, the show probably would have gotten a slightly better dub with more of the shoujo stuff left in, but we probably would have ended up with 4Kids dubbing CC and then we would have never gotten an official subbed release, which to me is what's most important.

Anyway, I think CC was something like a sacrifice to get where we are today with the view that girls like action cartoons, too.  Because CC was so screwed up, more people started becoming interested in CCS than before.  Even with the availablity of fansubs, CCS wasn't really as popular as it is today before CC came along when you stop and think about it.  I mean, before CC was dubbed, I didn't even know what CCS was.  But because CC was screwed up, I think it made people more curious about the Japanese version and I think it created an awareness to the general public that there's more interest in girls' action cartoons than what they think.  So in a way, Nelvana's plan to make CCS more popular among boys did sort of work, but probably not in the way they imagined it would.  After all, I'm a guy and I like CCS, but I found out about it through CC.  Which makes me wonder just how many guys out there like CCS in comparision to the girls....

[moezychan]

Because CC was so screwed up, more people started becoming interested in CCS than before.�  Even with the availablity of fansubs, CCS wasn't really as popular as it is today before CC came along when you stop and think about it.�  I mean, before CC was dubbed, I didn't even know what CCS was.

I agree with this statement because I never would have ended up watching anime if they didn't dub it the way it is. I honestly liked the dub, and it didn't bother me that scenes were cut until the next to the last episode when they cut out Syaoran's love confession. I read transcripts on the internet up to this part and finding out that he would tell her, gave me the idea that it would be the same as the American version. I had no problem otherwise. And besides, it's the fact that they dubbed it in the way they did that got me interested in anime.

Very good analysis Cardcaptor Takato. You also get a cookie for a very well indepth post.

[Lexi]

Thank you both for the analytical posts, Cardcaptor Takato and Adarian. *A cookie for each *

Although I didn't watch CC first and then discover CCS (thanks to my parents not having cable at that time and my best friend being the great manipulative friend she is ), I can understand that CC played a vital role in bringing many of us CCS fans together   �  I admit that despite CC being a poor excuse of a dub of a wonderful anime, it showed fans that such an anime existed and eventually through the internet, that its original is CCS. Thus, CC indirectly helped fans find out about the beautiful world of CCS

*stretches* Now we, the fans, can hate Nelvana and love CCS all we want

[moezychan]

I admit that despite CC being a poor excuse of a dub of a wonderful anime, it showed fans that such an anime existed and eventually through the internet, that its original is CCS. Thus, CC indirectly helped fans find out about the beautiful world of CCS

And that's how I found out about CCS, and here's one better. It's how I found this forum! If it weren't for the dubbing, I would've never gone on the internet about it, and I wouldn't even know what anime even was! The horror! And I wouldn't have met all these wonderful people! I love this place, and everybody in it! Daiski minna-san!

[Robin Sena]

Somehow, like in my dicussions about this.

It ends up 2 ways.

1) They discovered CCS

2) Went on to hate CCS for life

[Adarian]

Thanks for the cookies and great posts, guys.

 And I guess I should be grateful after all for Cardcaptors, because I know that  I would have never met alot of great fans like you, moezy-chan, and alot of others, but I just have this grudge against it. I mean I oddly enough might have been in the CCS bandwagon several years ago if not for Cardcaptors. I had initially foudn out about CCS in late 1999 when I just getting into anime and had a friend who told me about several of the best animes currently in Japan. Just starting to get into anime back then, he recommended that I get Cardcaptor Sakura, but seeing as though it was only in Japanese with subtitles, I was lazy back then, and really only wanted an English dub, so I kind of forgot about it. The next year, Cardcaptors came on Kids WB, and I thought it was same thing as CCS, so I watched it, and I really wasn't impressed at all. It seemed almost like a Pokemon clone after each episode showed the same repetitive card of the day theme. So after the first season was over, I lost interest and stopped watching it, and considered the Cardcaptors hype all a big disappointment. But I went on watching other anime, mostly mindless Toonami anime like Ronin Warriors and Gundam Wing at the time, but of course, they were getting old, and after a few years, I pretty much lost all interest in anime. I think I went about 3 years without watching a single minute of anime. It wasn't until late last year that I somehow came across an article about Cardcaptor Sakura, which explained how the American dub Cardcaptors did it no justice. I thought it was interesting, and remembered that I did like anime alot at one time, so I thought I should give it another shot. With the original releases of the original uncut CCS DVDs now available in America, I decided to order the first volume, and it was that moment on, I realized what I had really been missing. CCS got me back into anime, and the 1750 minutes I spent the series was some of the most enjoyable minutes I've had in a while, but I still wish I had watched it when I was younger. If only I had watched CCS before CC!!! ...... lol.

[moezychan]

Thanks for the cookies and great posts, guys.

 And I guess I should be grateful after all for Cardcaptors, because I know that�  I would have never met alot of great fans like you, moezy-chan, and alot of others, but I just have this grudge against it.

That was very nice of you to say Adarian-kun! Here's a cookie for that!

[Adarian]

Arigatou gozaimasu, moezy-chan!

I still need a few more posts to give other people cookies, I think, but I will definately will return the favor as soon as I can.

[Jeannette]

Actually, I saw a few episodes of CC when it was first released (I think I was about 11or so) and, being 11, I thought it was okay. At the time, however, I was completely obsessed with Sailor Moon (go SM!) and the few episodes I saw were from smack-dab in the middle of the series, so I didn't get interested. A few years later, the crappiness of the SM dub (I will fight anybody who says that CC was the absolute worst dub ever... the SM dubb was just as bad... they made Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune cousins... shiver... and they're supposed to be lovers... and they kept in all the scenes that hinted that they were lovers... while calling them cousins... gag....) had forced me to start watching SM subs. At that point, I once again saw a few episodes of CC, and I wanted to throw up. And that, unfortunately, kept me from Clamp for a very long time. Only when I started reading Chobits a few years ago did I look into other Clamp series, and I found Tsubasa. Tsubasa, however, forced me back to Card Captors, but this time to the original, and I fell in love. So I definitely can see people having a major bone to pick over CC. There'd probably be far more of us fangirls if CCS had been decently dubbed.