Why Sonic X needs an uncut dub (and how it could work)

[Tornado]

8 minutes ago, juiceDpunk983 said:

What's the Sonic X fans done to get that response? I ask cos I'm not in the fandom besides this website, so I'm not in the loop with stuff, I don't bother with social media besides YouTube

I suspect that's general commentary on the fanbase at large.

[The Great Egg Emperor]

36 minutes ago, GentlemanX said:

@Tornadoalready went over any details dubbing three Digimon movies (125 minutes) vs. 78 episodes of Sonic X (roughly 1911 minutes) added to everything I've already discussed in this topic, so I'm just going to follow up by adding the Discotek team's responses to this post on twitter.

In other words, it's just not happening.

Well fuck.

[juiceDpunk983]

5 minutes ago, Tornado said:

I suspect that's general commentary on the fanbase at large.

Ah ok, I guess that would make sense since I know the fanbase is split because of the different takes on the franchise.

Bit like how I prefer the games from Sonic 1 up to Unleashed, and that X is how I see what the tone of the series should be. I still play the games and enjoy them, just some more than others. I never interacted online with the fans until I joined this site.

The only other reason I can think of for that response is if the fanbase didn't like the recent Japanese release. I love it but the only thing up with it, is it's region locked but since I can work around it, I'm A-OK.

Have the fans not liked the Blu Ray or something?

[CrownSlayer’s Shadow]

Where’d the $500K estimate come from?

Serious question. I don’t know how that shit works. That just for the re-dubbing alone?

[juiceDpunk983]

16 minutes ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

That just for the re-dubbing alone?

Maybe, probably for the music too. I haven't a clue. Probably just a joke estimate anyhow, doesn't matter it won't happen anyway by the looks of it. More chance of a new Series of Sonic X.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

36 minutes ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

Where’d the $500K estimate come from?

Serious question. I don’t know how that shit works. That just for the re-dubbing alone?

Probably between the cost of licensing, regathering all of the VAs, doing a new accurate script translation, paying for them to do every episode, as all of them would be getting a monetary cut per episode, music licensing/creation, manufacturing, marketing and distribution.

Again, as Tornado said. If it was the OVA, which is comparatively shorter, would have just one set cost for voice work, and be easy enough to distribute, there’d be a chance. But not with a full blown show.

I don’t really get the argument of the “the fanbase is shitty and would tear it apart” stuff, though. I mean don’t get me wrong, Sonic fanbase is critical, and not particularly pleasant about a lot of things, but Discotek shouldn’t be pretending like they’d be making the series because it’s some passion project to a fanbase. They’d be doing it because there’s monetary value in selling it to a committed fanbase.

The only difference here is X is neither beloved enough to make it a sure fire success, and the cost/profit ratio wouldn’t be remotely close enough to justify the effort, I sincerely doubt Discotek is really going to cry tears if Sonic fans nitpicked a redub of the show as long as they still made money off of it.

[Zaysho]

10 hours ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

Where’d the $500K estimate come from?

Serious question. I don’t know how that shit works. That just for the re-dubbing alone?

I want to preface I'm just spitballing, but I can imagine it's probably a fair estimate for a reasonably long show and how difficult it probably is getting any anime out or the marketing considerations. Consider the amount of production that goes into that alone, for nearly 2000 minutes of content, the amount of people who need to be paid to get that moving, from writers, line producers, actors, audio engineers, the equipment, space, disc manufacturing, probably some licensing snags, marketing, etc..

And all that for an extremely niche release of a show that only appeals to a fraction of its target audience to begin with. Even if they price those hypothetical sets at over $100USD (I'm effectively combining the prices of both the edited dub and JP-only sub releases Discotek already did), I doubt they'd make back the investment. Yeah, there's a risk with those Digimon movies too, but it's comparatively smaller because it's three movies, and the most important distinction between the two is Sonic X is readily, and legally, available in its original form in the west, the Digimon movies aren't. The lower risk and making a product that most people probably don't have is just more valuable. No, there's no "uncut Sonic X dub" but the people who wanted "uncut Sonic X" at all already bought the BDs they wanted without the frills or extra cost. I'm aware there's issues with regional licensing I'm not really considering either but that's probably out of Discotek's hands.

[castell-neath]

If a large studio like Paramount can't afford the costs, or cannot see potential any return / profit from remastering Star Trek: DS9 and Star Trek: Voyager in to HD, (and lets be honest,that is a huge franchise!) then I cannot see a Sonic X recut any time soon. If ever. 

[PaddyFancy]

Thought I made add something to the discussion. I'm not an expert in business by any means but if others here who do know a little more about it, if it doesn't make financial sense for Discotek to do a complete redub of Sonic X then they really shouldn't, and here's why from my humble perspective.

I'm a big Gerry Anderson fan as some here might know. Over the last 10 years, a British entertainment company called Network Distributing went to work at bringing a lot of Anderson shows to Bluray in full HD. Shows like Stingray, Captain Scarlet, Joe 90, UFO, Space: 1999, Terrahawks and Space Precinct (although that's only on DVD) to name quite a few. Besides that I bought lots of DVDs of other programmes that you probably wouldn't expect to get a physical home media release like QI or any Michael Portillo's Great Rail Journeys shows. They worked a very long time bringing a lot of cult, obscure shows to a pre-recorded format to enjoy at home

All of those do seem pretty niche to varying extents but one of the most niche things they ever did goes back to a Gerry Anderson show when they essentially remade the Stingray "Super Space Theatre" compilation films, originally from 1981 and for a long time until 2000 was the only way you could watch a few select episodes when they were stitched together to make a 90 minute movie. Someone like me who had to watch those, I feel a great sense of nostalgia even though for many other people its not more than not an ideal way to watch those episodes, they were an abortion.

Nevertheless, Network thought there was a market there and they worked to remake those movies which were called The Incredible Voyage of Stingray, and Invaders From The Deep (the latter was riffed in the very first episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000).

Then back in the spring, Network Distributing went bust.

I was gutted, but I kinda wasn't surprised seeing as did put out quite a lot of niche things. So with that still fresh in my memory, it'd be good if Discotek knew that what they do is a sure thing to make their money back and then some. I don't want them to put out something that cost a lot of money to produce, for it to flop and then go out of business as well.

[Tornado]

58 minutes ago, castell-neath said:

If a large studio like Paramount can't afford the costs, or cannot see potential any return / profit from remastering Star Trek: DS9 and Star Trek: Voyager in to HD, (and lets be honest,that is a huge franchise!) then I cannot see a Sonic X recut any time soon. If ever. 

That's a bit of a different issue. The TNG sets required labor intensive, extensive editing work because TNG in its televised form was only on video, whereas the special effects shots and the primary shots were all on separate film stock. To remaster those for HD required them to basically go through each episode and recombine the two layers of film and then check to make sure that the original SFX work didn't need to be redone when viewed in HD (like they did for so many of the shots of TOS) and then redo it if it did. Paramount easily spent millions of dollars on those box sets and while they were still profitable they didn't do as well as Paramount was expecting.

 

 

DS9 and Voyager both would have needed the same work done for an HD release, and neither was ever as popular as TNG.

[The Great Egg Emperor]

You know, it's honestly a shame that the license holders for Sonic X don't want to give us an uncut dub of the show because money. I'd help them fund it myself if I had to, but I doubt that would work either

TeamFourStar once said "Please support the official release." Well how am I supposed to support the official release when they don't give fans what they want?

Sigh... Looks like I'll just have to ask Crunchyroll instead for an uncut dub of Sonic X. They already have the streaming rights to many of Discotek's shows after all, and unlike Discotek, they actually have experience with dubbing longer series.

[Tornado]

Sony isn't going to pay for it either.

[The Great Egg Emperor]

3 minutes ago, Tornado said:

Sony isn't going to pay for it either.

You do realize Sony has far more money than Discotek could ever have?

And Sonic games have even been released on their platforms before, so nothing's really stopping them.

[Zaysho]

Everyone who wanted uncut Sonic X already bought it via the sub release. Sonic X wasn't selling like DBZ or One Piece when it was new, it won't even sell like whatever flavor of the week shonen is out this season.

And lol Crunchyroll. Yeah, sure, the company that doesn't want to negotiate with union voice actors like they did to Kyle McCarley for Mob Psycho or lie about their contracts to bar voice actors from reprising their roles in licensed games they don't control. Good luck with that.

[The Great Egg Emperor]

1 minute ago, Zaysho said:

Everyone who wanted uncut Sonic X already bought it via the sub release. Sonic X wasn't selling like DBZ or One Piece when it was new, it won't even sell like whatever flavor of the week shonen is out this season.

And lol Crunchyroll. Yeah, sure, the company that doesn't want to negotiate with union voice actors like they did to Kyle McCarley for Mob Psycho or lie about their contracts to bar voice actors from reprising their roles in licensed games they don't control. Good luck with that.

Ok.....

Scratch Crunchyroll then.

[Tornado]

1 hour ago, The Great Egg Emperor said:

You do realize Sony has far more money than Discotek could ever have?

Yes, just because Sony has a lot of money definitely means that they are going to throw it in a trash can and set it on fire. You're right! To redub Sonic X is probably even why they bought Crunchyroll, Funimation and RightStuf!

 

 

This thread has run its course and seemingly only exists for you to bump it to play mad libs with licencing studios you thought of every few months and ignore every post made in response to you since you started the thread., but I'll try one last time:

1. TMS doesn't want there to be any dub except for the dub that already exists. Sega almost certainly would have a significant issue with an uncut redub. Discotek had to fight for years to even get the subtitled release in the US.
2. Sonic X isn't important enough of a show to get a redub. Sonic X isn't a good enough show to justify a redub. Sonic X isn't a show with enough impact on the franchise where Sega would want it back in the public light for a redub two soft reboots of the franchise later. Many of the changes that were made to Sonic X when it was dubbed were done by TMS when they licenced it out and not by the Western studios dubbing it. To a large extent, Sonic X as released in the west was as TMS intended. 
3. Nobody is going to pay to dub a mediocre, long anime with a dozen regular cast members largely made as part of a marketing campaign for a mediocre videogame from 20 years ago. It makes no difference how deep their pockets are. They're definitely not going to do it if it already has a perfectly serviceable dub that is already on sale and already reflects the desires of the studio who made it and the company who owns the overall IP. Sonic X isn't One Piece, a cornerstone surefire hit for an entire anime production company, which was forced on 4Kids as part of a package licencing deal and they basically had to butcher it for the programming blocks they had business dealings with in order to do something with it. Sonic X came and went and the franchise had moved on from it only a couple years after it came out. Even if Sonic X was as long as the Digimon movies... hell, even if Sonic X was only as long as the Sonic OVA, the market isn't there.

4. Sonic X's 4Kids dub wasn't the reason Sonic X wasn't very good.

[The Great Egg Emperor]

1 minute ago, Tornado said:

Yes, just because Sony has a lot of money definitely means that they are going to throw it in a trash can and set it on fire. You're right! To redub Sonic X is probably even why they bought Crunchyroll, Funimation and RightStuf!

 

 

This thread has run its course and seemingly only exists for you to bump it to play mad libs with licencing studios you thought of every few months and ignore every post made in response to you since you started the thread., but I'll try one last time:

1. TMS doesn't want there to be any dub except for the dub that already exists. Sega almost certainly would have a significant issue with an uncut redub. Discotek had to fight for years to even get the subtitled release in the US.
2. Sonic X isn't important enough of a show to get a redub. Sonic X isn't a good enough show to justify a redub. Sonic X isn't a show with enough impact on the franchise where Sega would want it back in the public light for a redub two soft reboots of the franchise later. Many of the changes that were made to Sonic X when it was dubbed were done by TMS when they licenced it out and not by the Western studios dubbing it. To a large extent, Sonic X as released in the west was as TMS intended. 
3. Nobody is going to pay to dub a mediocre, long anime with a dozen regular cast members largely made as part of a marketing campaign for a mediocre videogame from 20 years ago. It makes no difference how deep their pockets are. They're definitely not going to do it if it already has a perfectly serviceable dub that is already on sale and already reflects the desires of the studio who made it and the company who owns the overall IP. Sonic X isn't One Piece, a cornerstone surefire hit for an entire anime production company, which was forced on 4Kids as part of a package licencing deal and they basically had to butcher it for the programming blocks they had business dealings with in order to do something with it. Sonic X came and went and the franchise had moved on from it only a couple years after it came out.
4. Sonic X's 4Kids dub wasn't the reason Sonic X wasn't very good.

Alright, fine. I give up.

It's honestly a shame that there are plenty of dubs that respect their source material (like Ghibli dubs and Gurren Lagann's dub), yet all Sonic X gets is a watered down edit with annoying puns and completely unneccesary censorship that is a shadow of its Japanese counterpart.

But I guess that's just the way it is.

[Zaysho]

Dragon Ball is probably one of the most popular anime properties in the world, and the English dubs for the original three TV series and movies vary in quality on an episodic basis, from following the basic plotlines to randomly inserting/changing entire conversations at the drop of a hat. Funimation never saw fit to redub the show in a definitive manner when they were releasing the complete series starting back in 2007 because the old Toonami dub was nostalgic enough for many people (ironically didn't stop them from tampering with it with inserting new lines or odd outtakes replacing correct line reads anyway) and it didn't matter because the people who didn't like the dub to begin with would default to the Japanese version with the correctly translated subtitles, which was readily available on the same video releases and has been for over 23 years. And it was guaranteed to sell regardless of effort (evident by how well their "remastered" orange brick sets sold), dub quality was actually secondary. Kai didn't even fill that gap for one reason or the other.

The dub quality being secondary is true for Sonic X as well, and Sonic X was not changed into a wildly different show by comparison anyway. It's a kids show that was slightly Americanized and toned down for kids' blocks so Sonic doesn't yell "Shit!" the one time and we don't have Eggman commenting on Rouge's breasts, all of which is preserved for people who want to see the proper version in the JP sub edition that is now available. A new dub hits a very, very small cross-section of people for a show that the general target audience of Sonic fans barely likes and the people who do like it already have their preferred versions now.

At this point, a redub of X is about as valuable as greenlighting a new season of Underground for the sole purpose of giving YouTubers dunking material for the next five years.

[juiceDpunk983]

14 hours ago, Tornado said:

Sonic X wasn't very good

---

I'd rather watch Sonic X than Dragon Ball and alot of shows, so the show ain't bad in my eyes.

Dragon Ball is overrated, yeah yeah come at me DBZ fans with ya kamikarma whatever it's called, my opinion I don't care haha, that said I don't mind it and still watch it odd times.

14 hours ago, The Great Egg Emperor said:

I guess that's just the way it is.

We got the Japanese version available to us now anyway, mission complete time to go home. We don't need a redub and this is coming from a Sonic X mega fan.

[Tornado]

22 hours ago, The Great Egg Emperor said:

yet all Sonic X gets is a watered down edit with annoying puns

lol did you even watch the show in Japanese?

7 hours ago, juiceDpunk983 said:

---

I'd rather watch Sonic X than Dragon Ball and alot of shows, so the show ain't bad in my eyes.

Dragon Ball is overrated, yeah yeah come at me DBZ fans with ya kamikarma whatever it's called, my opinion I don't care haha, that said I don't mind it and still watch it odd times.

What does this have to do with anything.

 

 

 

14 hours ago, Zaysho said:

Kai didn't even fill that gap for one reason or the other.

No driving school episode + Faulconer 4 life.

[juiceDpunk983]

1 hour ago, Tornado said:

What does this have to do with anything.

You said the show wasn't good, so I said I liked it more than DBZ, a cartoon that's considered great. Therefore the show must be decent at least and I can't be the only one who thinks that way. Maybe I'm wording stuff wrong.

[The Great Egg Emperor]

1 hour ago, Tornado said:

lol did you even watch the show in Japanese?

Yes.

I don't remember there being any puns, though. 

[Sean]

The entire Japanese theme song is nothing but terrible puns lmao

[The Great Egg Emperor]

Ok , but the show itself never had puns.

[StreetSonic2022]

Going to say it: a Sonic X uncut redub will not happen. And I agree 1000% from Tornado's post. If TMS ever decided to have Sonic X redub, they will had to do all other shows including another Sega franchise they did back in the day to get another redub: Virtua Fighter!

The only difference is that unlike Sonic X which all episodes was shown though censored, Virtua Fighter was cancelled after its first season in the US due to low viewership. While Japan and other countries (Italy, Spain, certain parts of the Middle East and South America) had the second season aired, making the English dub incomplete. Recently, Tubi has the incomplete series of English dub for Season 1 while also have the completed series in Spanish.

So yeah, that series is the same situation with Sonic X if asking for a redub. 

1) TMS stated its "complete" although it was cancelled for English viewers.

2) No market value, especially in the US because for the fighting genre community in the West, its all about either Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and/or Tekken. Virtua Fighter is a niche, despite its tributes and accomplishments: first 3D arcade fighter that was later added in the Smithsonian and VF2 wowed gamers with the graphics thanks to Sega teaming up with Lockheed Martin for Model 2 boards.

3) The anime was based on Virtua Fighter 2. All of that stuff moved on, story and design-wise.

4) No one will buy it, especially for a second season of 10 episodes.