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“Knights of the Zodiac,
or how Bad Dubs can Ruin it for Everyone”
By: 8-Bit Star
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Once, there was a show called Saint Seiya. It was popular in
it's native Japan, and later also in French and Spanish-speaking countries.
Despite these foreign editions being the first to use the "Knights of the
Zodiac" moniker, these dubs were faithful to the original.
In 2003, Saint Seiya was experiencing a revival on it's anniversary, prompting
the original author to write new chapters and the animation company Toei to
create new episodes based around manga stories the original 1986 anime had not
covered. Around this time, an American animation company called DIC caught wind
of the show. Perhaps thinking it would be the next Sailor Moon (a property DIC
had handled well, in many people's opinion), DIC licensed it.
Their edit, once more assuming the moniker "Knights of the Zodiac," was quick
and painful... simply put, DIC's show was an unwatchable mess. The characters'
personalities were thrown out the window so they could all instead make bad
jokes, vital plot points were simplified or removed, the characters' words
didn't even match the looks on their face half the time! Understandably, blood
was changed to "magical energy." Not so understandibly, the music was completely
altered, up to and including the replacement of the classic "Pegasus Fantasy"
opening theme with Flock of Seagulls' "I Ran"... make that, a COVER of "I Ran,"
sung by some guy who got several lyrics completely off-key.
Ahh, but for once, there was hope! Long time anime-distributor ADV Films owned
the rights to put Saint Seiya on DVD, and that's exactly what they did: They put
SAINT SEIYA on DVD, uncut and unedited. Sure, they put Knights of the Zodiac out
too, but it was like that was second banana: Knights of the Zodiac discs had
four episodes each, Saint Seiya discs had five, and ultimately more Saint Seiya
discs were released than Knights of the Zodiac.
Saint Seiya was a very popular release, as proven by the fact that ADV released
twelve discs of it, something that would not have been done if the show was
failing. Of course, while ADV's Saint Seiya was succeeding wildly, Knights of
the Zodiac was being basically ignored: It had failed on Cartoon Network and no
one wanted DVDs (who would want a bad, editted dub when you can buy the uncut
version, with more episodes per disc to boot?)
But sadly, DIC owned the rights to the show... and their version had failed. So
when the time came to renew their options, DIC instead chose to drop the license
for Saint Seiya. Toei looked at DIC's failure, and was surprised that Saint
Seiya had not become the nationwide craze it had been in France, Italy, Spain
and Mexico.
Now Toei is asking a higher licensing fee for anyone who wants to release Saint
Seiya, DIC is moving on to other things, and ADV's releases aren't going to be
complete... not unless someone at ADV decides to cough up the dough to
re-license the series.
In other words, America may never see a legitimate, uncut release of the entire
Saint Seiya TV series, and certainly we won't see the OVAs or any of the four
movies. All because of a bad dub.
So you see, there's more to the problem of bad dubbing than just something that
offends the purist. Saint Seiya was a show that had a good setup from the
start--uncut releases being done simultaneously with the editted, so the purists
could ignore the bad dub, and yet the fact that the bad dub even EXISTED killed
Saint Seiya's chances in America.
And what I'm sitting here wondering is, how could this travesty erupt from the
same company that made such a good dub of Sailor Moon--a dub people loved so
much they practically DEMANDED it be brought back on the air when it was
cancelled? (Which raises a good question: Is there a "Save Our Knights" campaign
going on anywhere?) And how could they let their license slide when ADV's uncut
releases were clearly selling so well? Why not just swallow their pride, keep
the license and try to re-market the franchise under the Saint Seiya name?
Why why why why WHY?
Well, what's done is done. Now we can only hope that the stars shine brightly on
a future attempt to bring Saint Seiya to America.
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