If I have to pick the worst dubbing, it would have to be (sadly) Yu-Gi-Oh. Although the Japanese version was a lot more entertaining, the dubbing company had some potential to appeal to "kids" without kissing the FCC and those parent groups that boycott any "violence", "nudity", and "the random stuff".
Now don't get me wrong, dubbing is fine. At least you won't have to read subtitles, especially if you're illiterate (no really, I have friends who hate reading subtitles while watching something foreign). But I guess it's the way you dub. Sailor Moon may have cut out a few episodes (although having DiC's rights to the series expire a few years later makes up for it...somewhat) but YGO has just the craziest dubbing techniques.
This explains why people are pissed at the fact that One Piece had a lot (not like one or two...a LOT) of episodes cut off.
After watching the American and Japanese version and going to the nifty site a.k.a
Yu-Jyo.net I will give you my two cents on what gets cut off or edited. (Oh by the way, the evidence lies in that site with the pictures.
Blood- Fine...I can live with that. Especially when there are those scenes that Bakura or Atemu (a.k.a Yami) are coughing up blood.
Light- No this doesn't get cut off or edited. It's actually edited thanks to 4Kids. Apparently, 4Kids has this strange fetish for adding light gimmicks. Ex. Monsters slashing off other monsters, or during one of Yugi's matches when the chainsaw is replaced with a laser disc. Or if someone dies, light surrounds them (no this is not in the original) and apparently, they're not dead. Well...we know where they're going for this one.
Violence- Well, depends on how extreme the violence is but some of them are pretty much slapstick (Mai slapping Jounouchi).
Dialogue- All right, obviously our mouth movements compared to a Japanese mouth movement is different so obviously it's kinda hard to make the dialogue word for word. One of the reasons why I had stopped watching after the whole Yami no Marik thing is the endless rants of friendship. (Actually, in the Japanese version, it does come and go but not everytime).
Signs- I think the point that the American cartoons are trying to make is that even the easiest words (like Kaiba...and Land) would make no sense to kids and views them as full on illiterate. Fine, take the Chinese signs out but what's the point of taking out bathroom signs, keyboard signs, signs (exit signs) and building signs (hospital)? How are we supposed to tell that's a hospital and not one of Seto's many penthouse suites?
Sorry...just that my renewed faith has come back to look up that YGO site and watch my imported DVD. It's all right if you guys like dub and supposedly, it's aimed for kids but there's just a lot of dumb dubbing going on.
My only hope is that 4Kids loses its rights to the series just as DiC (and now Cloverway) loses theirs to Sailor Moon. But it's my opinion
