4kids Entertainment was influential to/and defined anime and animation in the 90s and 2000s.

Not like it was the only one though. It just influenced a younger audience than some other companies, that's all.


I don't get your point on traps that was a thing way before then just not quite as obsessive. I think the problem is more current corporate shaped internet culture and counter culture being shit than just stuff airing on TV since fewer people even have TVs these days.

According to Animaniacs producer, Anime like Pokemon that were lucrative and bought at a very cheap price, meant the death sentence for WB cartoons because networks had no incentive to invest at their own productions when they could easily import Anime

4kids brought us the legend known as Megan Hollingshead. Nuff Said.

Not like it was the only one though. It just influenced a younger audience than some other companies, that's all.


I don't get your point on traps that was a thing way before then just not quite as obsessive. I think the problem is more current corporate shaped internet culture and counter culture being shit than just stuff airing on TV since fewer people even have TVs these days.

4kids did no good. Whenever anime gets popular in the west, tourists come in and ruin it for the real fans. This also happened starting around 2016 recently, when people on the internet decided to obsess over "femboys" and "traps" in anime after Felix Argyle made his debut. Then, in 2018, My Hero Academia aired on Toonami and made anime even more popular in the west, and brought in even more tourists. So anime should stay niche in the west, and should not be popular. Anime is more fun when its niche.

@Blackfire2340 The only series they treasured was Pokemon. They dropped the ball on YuGiOh and made a show for teenagers into one for babies, and never bothered to even finish dubbing GX or 5D's, eventually they got sued by Konami, TV Nihon, NAS; because they were found out selling illegitimate bootleg DVDs of 5D's on the side, a practice they always had but were just not busted until that moment. Please understand that 4Kids is a shitty company that tried to withhold income from the Japanese companies that were giving them the license to broadcast their product. They were going under and ended up filing for bankruptcy not once, but twice. TV Tokyo and NAS intended to terminate 4Kids' Yu-Gi-Oh license because they allegedly hid some of their income.

Also how they treated Sonic X was atrocious imo. So in general what they touched, which wasn't named Pokemon, they destroyed the reputation overseas beyond recognition to make low effort abridged dubs. Thank god I did not grow up on the 4Kids dubs of YuGiOh's otherwise I too would probably not respect this franchise.

@Blackfire2340 This is not true. GX and 5Ds were both extremely successful and even overshadow the original in Japan, GX to this day is one of the most popular ones. All of these spinoffs btw were made by the very same team and Kazuki Takahashi worked on these anime himself. Maybe for Americans it felt like that, but the rest of the world did not feel like this. And the point isn't that kids would care, the point is 4Kids was a shady company which gave less of a fuck about the products they were supposed to market and it showed. In fact after their second file for bankruptcy and rebranding as 4K-Media they were given the rights to dub Zexal ect but this time, Konami being tired of their bullshit, the ultimatum was to dub it fully, wow.

Also, it is clear you don't give a damn or respect this franchise, don't worry that is the norm in the West thanks to 4Kids, but 4K did much more than just censor guns, they rewrote the entire story, changed character motivations etc. GX s2 onward was turned into a gag dub, and 5D's final arc was rewrote into a chimera monstrosity for them not to bother to adapt the real final arc. And YuGiOh intended audience was not little kids, the demographic was the same as any other shonen, like Bleach or Naruto. The show deals with genocide and classism ffs, 4Kids babified the entire thing to the point it became retarded.

@Blackfire2340 This is not true. GX and 5Ds were both extremely successful and even overshadow the original in Japan, GX to this day is one of the most popular ones. All of these spinoffs btw were made by the very same team and Kazuki Takahashi worked on these anime himself. Maybe for Americans it felt like that, but the rest of the world did not feel like this. And the point isn't that kids would care, the point is 4Kids was a shady company which gave less of a fuck about the products they were supposed to market and it showed. In fact after their second file for bankruptcy and rebranding as 4K-Media they were given the rights to dub Zexal ect but this time, Konami being tired of their bullshit, the ultimatum was to dub it fully, wow.

Also, it is clear you don't give a damn or respect this franchise, don't worry that is the norm in the West thanks to 4Kids, but 4K did much more than just censor guns, they rewrote the entire story, changed character motivations etc. GX s2 onward was turned into a gag dub, and 5D's final arc was rewrote into a chimera monstrosity for them not to bother to adapt the real final arc. And YuGiOh intended audience was not little kids, the demographic was the same as any other shonen, like Bleach or Naruto. The show deals with genocide and classism ffs, 4Kids babified the entire thing to the point it became retarded.

@ForgotEyeWasHere

it was the pandemic that did this lol.. im not saying shows like AoT, BNHA and OPM didnt bring in more normies, but if it wasn't for the pandemic forcing people to stay inside and watch stuff, anime might not be the borderline mainstream medium it is now

and yes, i fucking HATE it... outside the possibilities and instances of increased censorship, theres nothing more annoying than the same people who would have been roasting you for liking anime 10-20 years ago suddenly thinking its cool cause they watched Demon Slayer and thats not even getting into the Twitter and the like, side of it

@EcchiGodMamster Agreed. Especially at the last sentence. The worst kinds of these tourists are those who bashed us for years for liking anime, and now think that they can speak over us because they watched some mainstream anime.

And there probably would still have been a spike of anime popularity in 2020, even without COVID. Without the pandemic, the Tokyo Olympics still would have occurred, and would have also brought in tons of tourists. Many people in Japan wanted the Olympics cancelled, and I wish they did get cancelled. It is quite hard to tell if it would have been a bigger or a smaller spike.

So while COVID did absolutely cause a bunch of tourists to show up, I believe it started around 2018. COVID just really blew it up.

I'd say Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh were a big enough of hit. Those 2 got extremely popular in the west, especially in the 2000s. Shows like One Piece they definitely dropped the ball on though. Honestly, I'd still say One Piece still isn't as popular in the U.S. as it should be. Shows like Naruto and DBZ will always be bigger here.

@Blackfire2340 This is not true. GX and 5Ds were both extremely successful and even overshadow the original in Japan, GX to this day is one of the most popular ones. All of these spinoffs btw were made by the very same team and Kazuki Takahashi worked on these anime himself. Maybe for Americans it felt like that, but the rest of the world did not feel like this. And the point isn't that kids would care, the point is 4Kids was a shady company which gave less of a fuck about the products they were supposed to market and it showed. In fact after their second file for bankruptcy and rebranding as 4K-Media they were given the rights to dub Zexal ect but this time, Konami being tired of their bullshit, the ultimatum was to dub it fully, wow.

Also, it is clear you don't give a damn or respect this franchise, don't worry that is the norm in the West thanks to 4Kids, but 4K did much more than just censor guns, they rewrote the entire story, changed character motivations etc. GX s2 onward was turned into a gag dub, and 5D's final arc was rewrote into a chimera monstrosity for them not to bother to adapt the real final arc. And YuGiOh intended audience was not little kids, the demographic was the same as any other shonen, like Bleach or Naruto. The show deals with genocide and classism ffs, 4Kids babified the entire thing to the point it became retarded.

@Fromaseed

Well yeah, we are talking about the West. That’s the entire reason you would even have a discussion about 4Kids. Why would Japan care about a censored English version of something? My point is that is why it didn’t blow up here beyond the Yugi Moto Journey. Most Yu-Gi-Oh fans will admit they stopped watching after the switch. Even LittleKuriboh, the creator of the abridged series, made constant jokes on how different the series became.

I mean you clearly love Yu-Gi-Oh, that’s fine. I’m just telling you why the side stories didn’t blow up here in the west. It has nothing to do with 4Kids because that version was clearly successful and brought popularity to the series. One Piece is a far better example of 4Kids failing to bring exposure to the west because of how bad and censored it was. Shows aside; the card game is still very popular here as well.

@EcchiGodMamster Agreed. Especially at the last sentence. The worst kinds of these tourists are those who bashed us for years for liking anime, and now think that they can speak over us because they watched some mainstream anime.

And there probably would still have been a spike of anime popularity in 2020, even without COVID. Without the pandemic, the Tokyo Olympics still would have occurred, and would have also brought in tons of tourists. Many people in Japan wanted the Olympics cancelled, and I wish they did get cancelled. It is quite hard to tell if it would have been a bigger or a smaller spike.

So while COVID did absolutely cause a bunch of tourists to show up, I believe it started around 2018. COVID just really blew it up.

I don’t think that GX and 5Ds were popular in Japan. People in Japan like the original more than the sequel series.

@Blackfire2340

are you serious? lol

I see One Piece shirts and car stickers as well as merch just as much as i see Dragonball or Naruto, not to mention all the people i know watching it

zoomers from my view seem more likely to watch OP than DB even with the difference in show length, DB fans "tend to" be us older watchers, not that zoomers dont watch it

@EcchiGodMamster

Yeah, zoomers. This is the early 2000s, we are talking about millennials lol. Millennial popular anime is typically DBZ, Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon, Naruto, Bleach, Inuyasha, Cowboy Bebop, FMA, Death Note you get the idea. One Piece didn't get as big here until streaming became the norm and everyone had access to the subbed version of One Piece. Back when the 4Kids version was on Toonami in the 2000s, no one was watching that shit lol. And honestly even then I don't think it has reached the popularity of Naruto in the west. Naruto and DBZ were extremely mainstream in the U.S.

@ForgotEyeWasHere Add to that the fact that these tourists are demanding changes in anime and Japanese creations because they are not "in line with current standards." That is, they are simply calling for censorship and self-censorship. Not surprisingly, this is the same sort of people who are localization-apologists. Another distinguishing feature is still that they often adhere to communist and socialist philosophies.
https://twitter.com/linkasobi/status/1697982815827022073
Here's a good tweet about how to spot a tourist.

They almost singlehandedly discredited official localizations and dubs for a long time.

@mo_lave And how? People were complaining about bad localizations since the 60s. Remember Astroboy? 4kids were making dubs, they’re were making adaptations.

They were most certainly influential. They pushed many (like me) into discovering fansubs. Also, they served as a good example of how not to do localization.