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You (Almost) Heard It Here First by Kevin T. Rodriguez

About a week or so ago, a startling revelation was made: 4Kids did not acquire the second half of "Tokyo Mew Mew" for distribution in the United States. This means that, for the time being at least, "Mew Mew Power" will be taking a breather from 4Kids TV. It has also been said that "Yu-Gi-Oh! GX" (which I will NOT be watching since that is a terrible show, and watching an even worse dub would be a waste of time) won't be airing on 4Kids TV, but on Cartoon Network (another channel that will soon be hated when they start airing live action shows). And finally, new episodes of "One Piece" will NOT be airing on 4Kids TV, but on Cartoon Network instead, due to the show doing slightly better on Toonami (I heard the ratings went from squat to squat-and-a-half). Chances are, if you are hearing this news, this will be one of the first places you'll hear it, as Anime News Network has deemed most of this news to be "unfit" for sharing with the public. YGO! GX was the easiest report for the news website. Regardless whether or not anyone cared for GX in the first place, they were quick to point out that the show would be on CN's Miguzi block for those interested (in a bit of a random note, Miguzi was original created as a block to help attract girls to watching CN again. Guess those plans have officially been scrapped).

The "One Piece" news also came pretty quickly. Despite the fact that everyone hates the OP dub, and actively tries to get ANN to protest the show (which some of their forum moderators do), they make the situation worse by letting people know where they can watch the dub some more (I won't be one of those people though). But what about the "Tokyo Mew Mew" news? With all the talk that 4Kids is losing their grip with the Japanese companies, with the talks that "One Pieces" failure ensured that Viz got "Naruto," and the recent report that 4Kids lost merchandise and marketing rights to Pokemon, doesn't this news sound worthy enough of reporting? Well, no such luck. From what I understand, when this news was discovered, a regular YGO! U contributor - Ultraseiya - discovered this news, he reported it to ANN. They deleted his report and ignored him. He reported it again. Then he reported it to Anime Nation (which has been my home page for the past eight or so years now). Now that the news was out, ANN quickly reported it. The question was, why did it take so long? I used to love going to ANN. Reading their column, editorials, news reports, and commentary were the highlight of my day. It was one of the few sites that bothered to tell people what a great movie "Dog of Flanders" was, and how crazy you were for not seeing it yet.

These days though, I have a different view of the site. The site has become very cooperate now. Whenever there is a ripple in the anime community, ANN seems to be the last one to comment on it now. While most sites are running around in circles with all the commentary you could ask for about the anime industry, ANN seems more content to only passively mention big stories. Want to know what "event" the ANN decided to focus on over 4Kids having trouble securing the rights to the rest of TMM? Well, they wrote some commentaries on some convention making it a rule that you can't sell fanart of copyrighted characters at the convention. Big fricking whoop. This new rule shouldn't have had so much attention and commentary given to it. Heck, the "rule" shouldn't have even caused a controversy, as selling fanart of "One Piece" and "Sailormoon" is, in reality, ILLEGAL!! No more then a blip of news was required for this "situation," and ANN treated it like it was a golden calf or something. Which meant we got to read these lovely five page column explaining a situation that, quite frankly, doesn't lend itself to much conversation or debate. There's as much to disagree on here as there is to disagree with on the situation of someone selling fansubs for a living. There just isn't a lot there at the end of the day.

But 4Kids having trouble with TMM? Now THERE'S something to look into! Like why didn't 4Kids get the rights to the whole series right off the bat like they did with YGO! and "Shaman King?" Was there a problem with them getting the whole series, or was it a company choice to not pick up the whole show until it was a proven success? Does 4Kids even WANT the rest of the series! If no, then why not? If yes, why are they having trouble getting the rest of the series? How successful IS "Mew Mew Power" anyway?! THAT answer, above all others, would probably help us know more about what is going on! Of course, not only is ANN NOT asking these questions, they seem to have no interest in doing so either! There's even some questionable acts to be found in the decision to move OP and YGO! GX to Cartoon Network. Does this mean 4Kids TV is finished? Does this mean we won't see 4Kids TV after this summer? Will we still see 4Kids TV but with a different look and change in programming? Why are these shows on CN (Note: They get better ratings on CN). If the ratings are better on CN for these shows, then why is that? Even if more people watch OP on CN, does that necisarly mean that the show is a "hit" by normal TV ratings standards?

See the problem yet? 4Kids is one of the most controversial subjects in anime today. Even popular review site Anime Jump (who is known to not get involved with controversies) has made comments about 4Kids before. Quite frankly, if ANN wants a golden calf, or coal-mine, or both, then 4Kids Entertainment should be their little chew toy. But it's not. ANN is a huge site now. So big, that they are able to charge quite a bit of money from advertisers, and the anime companies like to use them for news. Of course, on the flip side, the anime companies would prefer that ANN keep "quite" about certain things until the right time, and ANN has started to honor those requests, seeing as how the site is now a business of sorts for the owner of the site, Christopher McDonald (who I have no personal problems with). If you ask them why they don't report on a news story in advance, you will get this reply:

Anything ANN can say abotu licenses is said in the news. All I can do on this is repeat the obvious, "No announcement has been made yet."

With new licenses that we learn about early, one of two things happen, 1) we find out through an unofficial source that dosn't care if we publicize it (a leak), in which case we often do post it. or 2) The company tells us in confidense (sometiems requiring a signed NDA) in which case we can't say anything, but we can prepare coverage for it. Lately 2 has been much more common, we kinda use #1 as a threat to the companies, "We're going to find out one way or another, but if you tell us, then we won't steal your thunder." So them telling us is mutually beneficial, but one the unfortunate result is that there will be less occasions of us posting stuff before the official announcements. On the up-side, as I said, we have stuff ready to go when they make the announcements.

So if it isn't on the front page, we won't comment.

This may be from the message boards, but the only way you can get a sane response is FROM the message board! Anyway, the point of the response is that ANN has become more friendly with the companies then doing their job. When they interviewed Al Kahn, CEO of 4Kids, the questions they all answered were tame and lame. Kahn gave them bone headed responses that the casual observers were able to pick out, but the interviewer chugged along as if he/she had stumbled upon something exciting. 4Kids is also the richest of all the anime companies out there. Why do you think that you have to pull on ANN leg to post some worthwhile slightly negative news about 4Kids, yet when a 4Kids show changes to a different channel the ANN is right on top of that (maybe they can't bear the thought of not insuring that kids know where they can catch their favorite show?). ANN did have that excellent interview with the ex-employees of the now dead Studio Ironcat, but on the other hand, Studio Ironcat couldn't really afford to keep ANN quite now could they?

The point to this is that ANN used to be a good place to go to for commentary and news. Not anymore. They have limitations on what they will fight for and not. If you've wondered why they never made a big deal about the uncut DVD's or made so much of an attempt to find out why they got delayed, then the reason is because 4Kids will pay ANN to keep them quite. Either that, or ANN won't go out of their way to cause 4Kids trouble because they don't want to lose their partnership with them. Now that Anime Nation posted the TMM news, ANN can report it because now they can say that they are "just quoting from this other site." Ho hum. This change in development means that at YGO! U we are going to make a serious effort to report and talk about 4Kids shows in general. If there something going on with OP that warrants serious discussion, we will discuss it because we simply can't trust ANN to do it for us anymore. I am not calling out a war with ANN. I'm not that stupid. But I am calling out there inability to properly report the news now, and I will make an effort to step into that place for them. If for no other reason, then because the fans deserve to know what's going on. With that said, I have a feeling they know why the uncut DVD's have been cancelled, they just don't want to share it with us.

NEXT TIME: Are 4Kids shows (in particular YGO! GX) helping revive 4Kids. That's an interesting question, so I guess I'll have to do my best to answer it for them.

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