True
Story:
A poster is hung in the waiting room of Nelvana’s employee-training center.
It reads:
Attention
all future Nelvana minions…er… employees!
Do you have a knack for ruining popular anime series?
Want to learn the proper way of Americanizing Japanese-created cartoons?
Wish to know the fine art of Dubbing: Nelvana-style?
Follow these ten easy guidelines, and you, too, can create masterpieces
like ‘CARDCAPTORS’!
#1.
No plot continuations or proper episode chronological order.
The
more confusing the storyline, the better; episodes must be shown in a
jumbled-up order for no other reason than to annoy those pesky little
American-anime fans—with any luck, they’ll go back to watching AMERICAN
cartoons, and give up on Anime.
#2.
Characters must maintain the exact same personalities throughout the
entire series.
NO CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT ALLOWED! We
spent ten whole minutes creating completely new, *better* characteristics for
the American version of these characters, and do not believe in wasting our
time changing them as the series goes along—completely pointless in our opinion.
Besides, we wouldn’t be able to mix up the episode order if their
personalities were supposed to improve over time.
#3.
No relationships of any kind from friendship to crushes are allowed.
This
would actually make the show somewhat interesting, as well as possibly
infuriate many parents. The last
thing we need is to have the children’s parents writing complaint letters or
even suing us for placing something as inappropriate on TV as a young, innocent
little girl having a *crush* on her older-brother’s best friend!
#4.
NO ROMANCE.
Period (no exceptions).
Aside
from adding to the plot and the possibility of infuriating parents even further,
and FLUFF or mush in a show would repel male viewers, and we want the show to
be appropriate for BOTH genders.
#5.
Characters must be as closely associated to the personalities of today’s
youth, and use as many “hip” phrases as can be dubbed into the show.
Who
wants to hear pointless Japanese phrases, when the ever-so-popular “Whatever”
(trademark of Madison Taylor) fits in much nicer.
Adding in the lingo of today’s youth is sure to capture the little
bast-, I mean, young’ins attentions. After
all, we can be “with it”, can’t we?
#6.
No mentioning of, references to, or details referring to any culture
other than American—including writing, customs/traditions, and foods.
This
would not only prove educational by featuring other cultures (namely
Japanese/Chinese/English), but many of the customs are entirely too
inappropriate for today’s American youth.
For example: who ever heard of giving the one you love a *teddy bear*,
or kissing a friend on the hand? It’s utter nonsense, and would be a waste of
our precious money to bother dubbing it. As
for the Japanese/Chinese symbols—delete ‘em.
And those on the school blackboards?
*Invisible chalk is your frieeeeeeend!*
#7.
Female heroes are not allowed any major spotlight in a show without a
male accomplice.
We
don’t want to appear sexist, now do we? I mean, the girl was originally a
*wimp*, and yet, still the heroine. At
least, even if we pushed the boy into the spotlight, we made her appear much
braver in the process, so it all evens out.
#8.
Any inappropriate scenes, such as flattery, blushing, hugging, or any
show of emotion whatsoever must be removed; if possible, cut out enough scenes
to combine two or more episodes together.
Oh,
the money we’d save by removing unnecessary scenes that have nothing to do with
action, no matter how cute, sweet, or “whatever” they might be!
Who cares if skipping over certain explanations only confuses the viewer
even more; that was rule number 1, wasn’t it?
And besides, we wouldn’t want our monotonous or valley-girl characters
to seem *normal* now would we?
#9.
Any and all Japanese names must either be translated to American
equivalents, or given American pronunciations.
This
is AMERICA, people! Nobody names
their kid “Syaoran”…”Tomoyo”…or any of that nonsense.
*We* can barely pronounce them, let alone little children who watch the
show. Besides, those names are too
interesting and don’t fit with their new-and-improved American personalities.
#10.
Cousins must turn into best friends, and best friends must suddenly
become cousins.
…actually,
there’s no real reason why we do this. It’s
a trademark Nelvana custom to switch roles between best friends and cousins.
Hey, it worked for “Sailor Moon”, didn’t it?
What
we have learned today? Well…:
…Nelvana
is evil. Dubbing is evil.
The “C” word is evil. Pikachu
is evil (whoops—getting off track!). CardCaptors
is evil. Card Captor Sakura is one
of the cutest, best animes ever created, and has done NOTHING to deserve the
torture (otherwise known as “American Dubbing”) it’s been put through.
Not even “Eli” (yes, Eriole’s dubbed version, not the
semi-evil-but-majorly-kawaii Eriole) is evil enough to deserve that!
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~J.C.~