August 1, 2005

It’s been one year since the historic reformat of Animax-Asia, alienating so many Japanese dub lovers all over the Philippines and the rest of Asia. Believe it or not, ever since I have started this crappy rant, nothing very significant from Animax-Asia has ever changed. The same stellar new anime premiers and lineups every month, same excellent programming scheme, but still the same good and crappy dubs with the same lineup of voice actors.

The Cardcaptor Sakura anime was licensed to be released in North America by the now defunct licensing company, Geneon. All 70 episodes were released and subbed. The power of the Clow is back with a new adventure for the Cardcaptor! After sealing the last of the Clow Cards, Sakura Kinomoto is ready to face her newest challenge—junior high. But just when she settles into a normal routine, a strange dream changes everything. The cards are blank, rendered powerless, and a cloaked figure grants her a new key of magic. What lies behind this mysterious power?

One of the biggest changes was the separation of a unique Philippines-only cable feed from Animax-Asia. Animax-Asia headquarters are situated in Singapore, and being broadcast over some countries in Asia by cable companies. At one point, the network split a feed exclusively for Philippines viewers only. Apparently, a big voice of complaint from the Filipino fans of the Saiyuki series, having seen English dubs of the Saiyuki Reload and Gunlock series which they didn’t like, forced the network to do so. Wow, I guess you can see that in this country people power is one way to get some change. The fans complain, the network answered. The Saiyuki sequels were rebroadcast in their original Japanese language with English subtitles. In addition, the 6-7PM timeslot which used to be an English dub slot was changed to a subtitled slot to accomodate Saiyuki Reload and Gunlock, as well as other new subtitled anime like Witch Hunter Robin and Samurai 7.

That’s kinda good news right? Well, there may be more subtitled timeslots but there is a drought of subtitled anime. So many reruns aired into the few subtitled timeslots. Furthermore, some good anime such as Cowboy Bebop and Gankutsuou (yes Gankutsuou!), which I expected to be broadcast in subtitles, were broadcast in English dub instead.

They need to get their act together now. Anime is getting more and more popular over here. Many popular titles have graced the local scene lately, and I have even spotted anime merchandise in mainstream shops, something that I have not seen before. Most important of all, Animax-Asia will have competition! A Philippine broadcasting company has just released Hero, the very first locally based, predominantly anime cable channel in the country! This is a milestone here, because, well, how many countries have an exclusively anime channel?

While Hero will just have Filipino language dubs (yup, no subs too), it is still competition for Animax-Asia here. Matlab 2018a crack kurulum. Our country is one of their biggest markets of course, judging from the way they even accommodated a separate feed for us, and having another channel eat a bit of their audience pie will be bad news for them (Hero has certainly caught my attention too). Couple that with their already battered reputation because of their English dubs… it’s a shame really. Mapilab mail merge toolkit crack. They really have a lineup to die for (some of them are listed at ANN Encyclopedia). If only they could clearly define what animes in their lineup deserved to be shown in subtitles or in English dubs… they would have a better score for me.

By the way, I like their Animax Musix slots. That program shows jpop videos! Their lineup for jpop always seems to be lagging only mere months, and the really mainstream popular stuff are there. The only caveat is that they never finish each video to the end, but nevertheless it’s a nice exposure to jpop.

As usual, their animes are great but some are not projected rightfully because of the English dubs. Cardcaptor Sakura was finally continued in its second and third seasons, but it is still the same dub as I mentioned before. It’s kinda weird that the original Mobile Suit Gundam was shown in dub while the sequels Z and ZZ were shown subbed. The once subbed Texhnolyze was reverted into dubs now. Also, two Digimon animes were shown, and guess what… they used our local English dub! They used the English dub that our own local dubbers made, resulting it into a kinda Engrish-accented dub (while we have high English literacy, some do not speak English fluently [include me in that]). I heard that they will show [Tsukihime->type-moon] in subs, and that’s something for me to eagerly await.

UPDATE: Oof, Tsukihime has some cuts. I’m not impressed (yet again).

Anyway, that’s the story so far. Animax-Asia is still hanging on. Hopefully, some radical change should make me watch the channel regularly again, but I don’t think it will happen very soon.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
[Animax-Asia… Dubbed in English – Episode 1: The end of Animax-Asia? Too sudden!?->]
[Animax-Asia… Dubbed in English – Episode 2: Cardcaptured.->]
[Animax-Asia… Dubbed in English – Episode 3: Trying to Adjust->]
[Animax-Asia… Dubbed in English – Episode 4: Towards the 1st Anniversary->]
[Animax-Asia… Dubbed in English – Episode 5: I gave up on Animax-Asia->]
[Animax-Asia… Dubbed in English – Episode 6: One year since->]
[Animax-Asia… Dubbed in English – Episode 7: Dubbed in Filipino?!?->]
[Animax-Asia… Dubbed in English – Episode 7.5: Initial D Filipino Stage->]
[Animax-Asia… Dubbed in English – Episode 8: More Pain->]
[Animax-Asia… Dubbed in English – Episode 9: Now in blue->]
[Animax-Asia… Dubbed in English – Episode 10: Fake Revival->]
[Animax-Asia… Dubbed in English – Episode 11: Something New->]
[Animax-Asia… Dubbed in English – Episode 12: Red with anger->]

Skye asks:

Why does Animax Asia broadcast anime with English dubs, and who dubs them? I recently watched Toward the Terra, and upon further research (wikipedia), I learned it was dubbed by Animax Asia, which broadcasts dubs in Southeast Asia. I was wondering why they don't dub the shows into the language of the countries it's aired in, or, if that might be too bothersome or expensive, but then why dub it at all and not sub it? And who produces these English dubs? The actors in Toward the Terra sounded like native English speakers.

Animax Asia is a 24-hour anime TV network owned by Sony Pictures Television, and one of the last remaining parts of Sony's once near-worldwide Animax empire. The service broadcasts in English -- and it does so because while the countries it covers do not predominantly have English as most people's native language, English fluency across them is very strong. As a result, it's something of a universal language among those countries, and broadcasting in English makes providing content to them collectively quite easy. These include Singapore, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Myanmar, The Philippines, Maldives, Hong Kong, Macau and Malaysia.

Animax Asia shows both dubbed and subtitled versions (including a few simulcasts). Most of its dubbed programming is simply re-used English versions from the standard American dub studios -- Funimation, Sentai, Bang Zoom, Studiopolis, etc. However, on occasion the network will acquire broadcast rights to something -- often long kid-oriented shows -- that went unlicensed in the US. In those cases the network was forced to produce their own dub. This has only happened a handful of times over the 12 years Animax has been around.

These dubs are entirely uncredited, and when I asked Animax directly what studios dubbed them, they shrugged and mentioned that there are vendors they use within the Asian countries they service (most likely in Singapore and Hong Kong). These dubs are produced extremely cheaply, and as a result most of them really don't sound very good to American ears. Many of them cast American, British or Australian ex-pats or students that happen to be in the area. Most are not trained actors. Since some of these people tend to leave or go back home, there are occasional re-castings.

How cheap are these dub studios? We do know about one Singaporean dub studio -- Odex Pte. Ltd. -- which at the time was also a local anime publisher as well. There's a long and sordid story about the time they tried to sue local fans that were torrenting, which resulted in a huge backlash against the company that made the local papers. They eventually folded their publishing division and last I heard, they were simply a licensing agent for Aniplex and other local interests.

Cardcaptor Sakura Characters

At any rate, when the anime bubble in the US was bursting and publishers like Bandai Entertainment and Geneon were looking to cut their dubbing costs, they gave Odex a try. Odex's prices were ridiculously low: where a standard American dub might cost $6,000 per episode at the very lowest to $10,000 at the very highest, Odex was charging somewhere around US$2,500 per episode -- and throwing in free DVD authoring, to boot! Unfortunately, the publishers got what they paid for -- the quality was so poor that after a few shows, both companies retreated from using Odex entirely.

But in Asia, where advertisers in small and emerging economies are all that keep Animax afloat, every penny counts, and so an expensive American dub is simply out of the question. A few shows, such as Nodame Cantabile, are owned worldwide by Sony Pictures, and these are still dubbed in Los Angeles (by studios such as Dubbing Brothers and Spliced Bread Productions). But most are dubbed quietly and cheaply for the local audience within Asia.

Because these dubs are done so quickly and cheaply, they aren't subject to much oversight by Japanese licensors, who often barely seem to know that they exist. Unlike American produced dubs, they don't ask for copies, or for any involvement in their production. As a result, these dubs are very rarely seen outside of Asia. The sole exception so far has been NIS America's release of Cardcaptor Sakura, which included the Animax Asiadub as a bonus (since it was mostly uncut). Other American publishers have tried to secure these dubs and failed.

Unfortunately that's about all I can tell you about them. I also wish these were more freely available -- even if they're not the best, I do enjoy hearing obscure dubs.

Full disclosure: I worked with NIS America on that Cardcaptor Sakura release.

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