Friday, August 25, 2006

Broadcasting of anime episodes.


(Pocket Monsters Diamond & Pearl; TV Tokyo will air on its 6 networks nationwide (Japan); Starting on 28 September (Thursday)) Click on image to view the entire thing.

Don't you hate it when you heard that the cartoon you like have newer episodes aired elsewhere?

Here's an example for pokemon of the time difference in countries:
Japan: Airs the latest episode in Japanese
U.S.: Airs the dubed version of the episode about a year after the japanese airing. (not to mention non-stop background music)
Singapore: Airs about half a year after the U.S. release, 1 and a half year after Japanese broadcast.
Other countries in Asia (not sure about China and South Korea): Airs earlier episodes.

To give you a rough idea about what episodes are airing there:
Japan: Battled the last/5th frontier Brain in Kanto; new season would be taking place in Shin'ou. (See img above)
U.S.: In Kanto Region, after battling the 1st frontier brain; Just before meeting Bonsly.
Singapore: Battling Juan, 8th & final Gym leader in Hoenn in Sootpolis city; before grand festival
Other countries: Not sure, but the last time I saw, NTV7 (Malaysia) was airing season 6 episoes (english dubbed) and SCTV (indonesia) airing season 3 (jap dubbed into indonesian language)

The irony is that the episodes aired in most of Asia are much latter than those in Japan (which is also in Asia) whereas those in Europe/North America fall somewhere in between in terms of when the episode are aired. Can't they just use the japanese version and add subtitles instead of dubbing them. (and also preserve original openings and endings)

I'm not against dubbing but most of the dubbed episodes i have watched (including pokemon season 9 onwards) have awful voices and the timing don't match. Somtimes, the background music (theme songs, background sounds (eg. cars, birds) are removed, reoving the feeling of it. But sometimes when the original background music is played, the music softens or removed when a persorn speaks but doesn't in the origninal version, making it awakward and annoying, in addition to the awful voices and bad timing.

(Wow, i didn't realised I have typed this long. :P )