What if DiC was "good"?

JuanGarcia1982 · May 4, 2023

I was there when SM first released in the US and I remember the crazy level hatedom that DiC’s dub got in the late 90s. I honestly didn’t get it and it was only years later after I had started watching the sub version and obtained critical distance from Toonami that I began to understand. Make no mistake, I loved DiC, it was fun! … But one fan’s subjective preferences are not enough to justify everyone else remembering it as fondly as he did. DiC’s dub had a look of good going for it… and a lot of bad. So I’m here to ask… what if DiC had been “good”?

The first seed for it was planted by this very website. I’ve been lurking on and off for years and years ago, someone, I forget who, talked about how bad DiC was and how it needlessly changed everything. “Their changes weren’t even good!” As proof they brought up how in season 2, Ann and Alan mentioned that Queen Beryl had told them about Earth… but when Serena mentioned Queen Beryl to Darien in an attempt to jog his memory, Ann didn’t react.

In the original, she didn’t react because she wouldn’t have known anything but in the dub… When Ann walks away, the DiC critic wrote, the dub could have had her think to herself, “How does she know about Beryl…?”

Such an addition would have helped to bridge the two seasons and would have helped the build up to the finale. Heck, to play up how the Doom Tree gives off Garden of Eden vibes, when the it remembers how “evil forces” corrupted her children, it could have said, “Ours was a paradise… until a snake came, all twisted and ugly and full of bitterness.” This of course was when Beryl corrupted them and references the name Price Darien/Endymion gave her.

DiC didn’t do that.

The DiC dub left a strong impression on me. It’s my happy place and my nostalgia trip. Its good stuff (Cihi and Hawkes forever!) and having no access to the original made it the definitive version in my mind. Remember, the 90s meant not only a world before streaming, but one where lots of people didn’t even have internet! (Raises hand). SM was thus whatever DiC told me it was. I knew that the original existed but only as this far away thing that I had no chance of ever learning about.

… Or so I thought. When the original version DVD was released in the early 2000s I bought it with trepidation. I dunno, I was worried that it would make me hate DiC. I got the DVD out of the case, watched it, put it back in the DVD case, and never watched it again. I never had to and you know why…

Mind blown man. Mind blown! Now, I didn’t turn against DiC. No, it was still as good as it ever was but the original… it was just on a higher level. There’s a scene from the first Rocky movie that sums up my relationship with DiC. Rocky looks at Mickey the trainer and asks why he’s always so mean. He wants to know!

Micky: You want to know? Then I’ll tell you. You could’ve been a great fighter and you threw it away to become a leg breaker for a two bit loan shark!

Rocky: …It’s a living…

Micky: That’s not living, that’s a waste of life…

With Jennifer Cihi’s music and Terri Hawkes voice acting, DiC could have been a great dub but it failed to live up to its full potential and it’s this “could have been” that makes the failure that much sadder.

The fact that DiC changed everything is not what hurt it, no. Case in point is Carl Macek. He was an anime importer/ dubber back in the 80s and 90s and most (in)famous for how he dubbed anime series Macross. See, it lacked enough episodes to make it into American syndication so what did he do? He went Doc Frankenstein and used stock footage from two completely unrelated series to make it long enough for syndication and created his cobbled together lunacy Robotech.

Here’s the thing… it worked! You can say that what he did was bad but if so, he was very good at being bad. He watched all three series and took notes so that he would know what references and what connections he could make but damn it really worked. Weird thing, he could have been the dubber in charge of the original SM dub. What could have been…

In the first Rocky movie, Mickey reconciles with Rocky and offers to train him. And it’s with that training that our guy becomes the boxing champion of the world. What if then you could have been DiC’s Mickey? If in 1995 DiC gave you a blank check to make a localized adaptation, what would you do? Let’s have some ground rules though.

1) DiC has to be attached. You can keep them far away if you want, maybe they just have the name there as a legal courtesy. Kinda like how Saban Moon was never actually made by Saban.

2) Terri Hawkes and crew are still Sailor Moon and the Scouts

3) Jennifer Cihi and crew still provide a brand new soundtrack.

Beyond that, go for broke. I already made an example of what season one might have been redone. Change dialogue and swap around footage to show Serena and Mama Tsukino not only closer but that it was Mama Tsukino’s gentle wisdom and moral guidance that made our girl a hero.

JuanGarcia1982 said:

Ideally, DiC would have gone the Dragon Ball route. Change what you have to so that it can legally be shown on American television but not one bit more. But as the old saying goes, if you can’t get out of it, get into it. DiC saw their SM as an adaptation and not a dub so why not go all the way and make it the best adaptation there ever was? What if then you were the one who was sent back in time with orders to set right what once went wrong? What if you had the chance to make DiC “good”?

Tsundereshipper · May 4, 2023

Hot take: The DIC/Optimum dub was good, at the very least it had more personality and life to it in it’s VAs and Script Writing than Viz’s dub does.

Really the only thing that’s objectively bad about it that you can say is it’s homophobic censorship but I highly doubt any other company would’ve been able to air Sailor Moon towards it’s targeted audience at the time with all that left intact, it was the 90’s after all.

I don’t even view it’s censorship in other areas not pertaining to homosexuality (such as cut episodes and the like) to be that big of a deal, America simply has different cultural standards from Japan on what’s developmentally appropriate for very young kids to view and that’s okay - the way your typical American kid is raised wouldn’t make them mature enough to be able to handle the sometimes risqué and violent content Sailor Moon had the way a Japanese kid of that same age could.

If anything they didn’t censor enough, Darien’s age and grade really should’ve been readjusted back to how it was in the manga, the two episodes in SuperS where the Trio targets literal children should’ve been skipped, (they were weakass episodes anyways with little value) that infamous Pervert Pegasus blushing over a naked Rini’s bare chest scene should’ve absolutely been edited out, and the Sailor Says at the end of the Nephlite and Molly arc should’ve had the exact opposite message regarding Stranger Danger.

Some of the censorship actually improved on the source material, I’m sure no one in the audience wanted to see Chibi-Usa full on smooching her dad, regardless if it was an illusion or not, honestly they should’ve nixed Rini’s creepy Electra Complex altogether as it wasn’t even important to the plot the way it is in the Manga/Crystal. The changes to the Black Moon’s backstory so that it’d come off looking less blatantly pro-racism as well as the censorship of the dangerous pro-anorexia message in episode 3 were also greatly appreciated.

At the end of the day the old dub never set out to be a completely 100% faithful and accurate localization, it’s intentions from the start was to dub the 90’s anime in a way so that it’d be an American adaptation, and I think in that sense they succeeded.

The only offensive thing about it was it’s censorship of LGBTQ themes, it was a perfectly acceptable dub/adaptation in all other areas.

Besides they did eventually release the original uncut Japanese version too alongside the dub on DVD, only rating it higher up to a PG-13 compared to how it was rated in Japan, so it’s not like purists who wanted the more “serious” version of Sailor Moon were left totally in the dark, they could always just buy the subbed DVDs if they wanted the full story with nothing censored.

Little kids in the general public though would only be exposed to the adaptation of Sailor Moon shown on TV that’s made suitable for the average American child developmental level, and I think that’s a fine enough compromise for me.

sapphire91 · May 4, 2023

When you take something created by a different culture you RESPECT it. You dub a foreign show - you do it so it both flows well in your language but also doesn't go to a borderline plagiarism by imposing your culture, views etc - if you want to do that, do create your own property created in your culture and don't repurpose something that doesn't belong to you. I guess Americans are too used to be the one creating and despite dubbing for some niche market the overall concept of dubbing is still quite vague to most of them. A modern dub by universal standards is translated faithfully but also flaws pretty good to the other language (something Naoko needs to learn herself with the Netflix Eternal dub), the voices should be appropriate and try to match the pitch and emotion of the original as close as possible (something both DIC and VIZ failed at miserably) and shouldn't alter the script to serve inexistent political/social notions in the original script no matter the cultural sensitivities of the targeted country ( Unless you are China, which as far as I know is not a democratic country with the same level of freedom of speech) and when it comes to this final point again both dubs failed tremendously by censoring just in the opposite aspect/ political views. It is offensive to pretend you have the right to do transformative changes to somebody else's work of art, disguising it as dubbing.... DIC had excuse to do all the changes - due to the time and constraints of tv channels and guidelines, also it was done at the right time to make Sailor Moon a name in the US, but VIZ had absolutely no excuse to still change and censor the 90s show at all, considering they were tasked and promised to do a faithful dub. Faithful and unoffensive are too different things. Fans deserve better and more authentic experience.

MsImagination · May 4, 2023

I think with Dic lot of things sailor moon.We need understand it was a product at it's time.Its not 100% percent faithful product and I am glad we have more faithful dub.Still is part of sailor moon and with out it sailor moon would have not been as popular.

ChampionOfNuggets · May 4, 2023

JuanGarcia1982 said:

Well....yeah. The implication was that the Negaforce and not Beryl corrupted Alan and Ann's race

Lmao. What? Funimation changed far far more than what necessary to show the series on American television. I would argue DiC was actually more faithful with Sailor Moon than Funimation was with Dragon Ball. Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball GT completely changed their background scores. Sailor Moon's American score was at least just synthesized variations of the theme song which itself was based on Moonlight Densetsu, and at least one cue from the DiC score was just straight up lifted from the Japanese score.
The American music for DBZ and GT were far removed from anything found in the Japanese version.

Also characters were completely changed. Goku went from a country bumpkin who liked to fight to a Superman knock off "ally to good! Nightmare to you!" Freeza went from a sadist with a facade of an aristocrat (seen more accurately in Kai and Super's dub) to a joker esque ambiguously gendered Saturday morning cartoon alien baddie. People can say what they want about DiC making Rei more of a bitch none of the characters were that drastically altered from their Japanese versions.

To say nothing of all the rewrites done by Funimation often completely missing the point or adding nonsense that was never there to begin with.

Both the DiC dub of Sailor Moon and the Funimation dub of DBZ and DBGT were heavily altered but DiC's dub was arguably far less changed*

And then Funimation's dub of the original Dragon Ball which is somewhere around Cloverway and Optimum SuperS dub in terms of faithfulness

*That isn't to say one can't like or prefer the American dubs of Sailor Moon or Dragon Ball to the Japanese version but as to which dub got changed more...

Mosaic · May 4, 2023

Sailor Moon also referenced death and let characters die... something the English dub for Dragon Ball Z didn't do for awhile. This is extremely minor but Sailor Moon also (usually) didn't censor characters smoking cigarettes.

sapphire91 · May 4, 2023

Mosaic said:

Was there anyone smoking in Sailor Moon?

ChampionOfNuggets · May 4, 2023

sapphire91 said:

The foreman in the park episode. I think DiC might of cut a scene of him actually smoking it but you can see him flick it away after finishing and the cigarette on the ground even in the DiC version.

But even that aside there was definitely quite a number of stuff that the DiC dub got away with that the edited Funimation dubs of Dragon Ball didn't, even after Funimation ended their partnership with Saban.

Slowpokeking · May 4, 2023

DIC wasn't bad, it just didn't present the original material faithfully.

Mosaic · May 4, 2023

ChampionOfNuggets said:

Yeah, I'm guessing they left it in as a cautionary tale to children. "If you smoke cigarettes, insane squirrels will attack you."

There's also a scene in SuperS where a nameless Lemures blows smoke in Ami's face that was completely uncensored.

Clow · May 4, 2023

I wonder how “Peanuts” creator Charles M. Schultz would have felt if Italians censored/edited the Charlie Brown cartoons based on allegations by Italian newspapers that Lucy is a fascist.

ChampionOfNuggets · May 4, 2023

Clow said:

Ironic now that Italy has an actual fascist as their prime minister

JayD22460 · May 4, 2023

This post is making me want to go watch the DiC dub again. I absolutely understand how it’s your “happy place” as that kind of resonates for me. So many formative memories from my very young childhood are related to the old DiC Sailor Moon episodes.

CodenameSailorV · May 4, 2023

iirc even in my earliest posts here, I was trashing the dic and cwi dub. But now, 6 years later, it is my preferred way to watch the old show strangely enough. I never watched sailor moon when it was on Toonami, but for some reason that old dub just brings me insane feelings of comfort despite my original watch being the ADV sub and the Viz dub. I remember a period of time when a hurricane hit back home and the only way I had to watch the show was the DiC dub of R for like a week, I hated how bad it was but something about it charmed me to the point where even though the only dub I had watched mostly was Viz, my brain still associates DiC/ CWI with the old sailor moon years later even though I still call the characters by their Japanese names (except Greg... so that tells me which part of the show I was at when I watched the DiC episodes, I have no idea what his Japanese name even is). Overall it really is a preference thing. If DiC had dubbed the entire old series I would probably watch it that way for a rewatch but alas CWI gave us Granny Usagi for 2 seasons and then bailed on stars so sticking to the sub or Viz dub makes the most sense for a serious rewatch. But if I just want the TV on at night then I like to throw on DiC just to have on. Also worth mentioning that I can recite the entire english opening from memory but the Japanese one which I have seen infinitely more times I still get stuck on some parts lol.

JuanGarcia1982 · May 5, 2023

Hi everyone! Glad to see you all here. Now before I continue, I want to say that like DiC. I am currently in the middle of a SM marathon, re-watching a DiC episode, and then watching the Spanish version. (With a name like mine… ;-) … See, comparing DiC to a completely uncut version, it makes me realize, DiC not only had good voice actors…but good scripts! I watched episode 4 (Dic Order 3) today and… DiC was funnier! And SM was a little nobler, rescuing Haruna because it was the right thing to do rather than bashing baddies as a way to lose weight.

And I did put good in quotes. I don’t think DiC was bad just that there were those that talked bad about it and that as good as it was, it could have been better.

For example, the final battle against Queen Beryl was DiC at its best and its worst.

Good:
Cihi wails her some Carry On which was tailor made for that scene and fits it better that the show them song used in the original.

“Here I’m standing in the night, the crescent wand my only light.” (Describes her pose)

“Alone against my darkest fear,” zooms in on Beryl, “But I sense my friends are near” zooms in the princess

“I’ll draw from each the power I need, evil queen we will defeat!” She defies Beryl saying that her friends are counting on her.

She flashes back and remembers all the good times with her friends but as they keep offering to help, no, they are not memories, they are there because as Venus says, “We haven’t known each other long enough to end yet”. (The original was flashbacks of them talking about boyfriends and romance….)

Bad:
They deleted a very important back and forth, werein Beryl says that this world is not worth saving and SM, for all she knows is the last survivor, everyone dead defiantly says that she still believes.

They also deleted her final sacrifice that shows how much she loved the world, and shows how much she was asked to gave up. Show wasn’t messing around and made her waking up alive that much more beautiful. The Sailors didn’t somehow lose their memories when they returned home, they were restored to life

Corza Moon’s fan dub of the Day of Destiny combines both an uncut scene of the big fight with Cihi’s music. That’s what I mean. In fact, that the Sailors were killed in Corza Moon’s fandub makes it Jen Cihi’s song New Day that much more poignant. “Feels so good to be alive”? Indeed... Here's a link!

Due to what American TV considers acceptable for kids cartoons (or that it traditionally considered most all cartoons as kids stuff) some alterations were inevitable. Localization is something else… as a fan of Voltron and Power Rangers and the English Pokemon dub… all I can say is if you can’t get out of it, get into it. A dub with minimal changes would have been best but if the higher ups at DiC order localization, might as well do the best you can. Most of the time the DiC writers did a good enough job.

Example, episode 4, Shingo smiles for no reason as he stands outside the door talking with his mother. Usagi screams because she hasn’t lost weight. DiC… Sammy smiles as he stands outside the door… and he explains its because he’s rigged the scales to prank Serena! LOL! Again, if the guy who signs your paycheck order you to localize it, you might as well do a good job of it.

...And... as I rewatch DiC, I can honestly they say they did good there.

Clow · May 5, 2023

Do you own the Tower Entertainment DVDs from Mexico?

I have always wanted to buy season 1 in Spanish.

ChampionOfNuggets · May 5, 2023

JuanGarcia1982 said:

Oh yes the weight loss episode is significantly better in the DiC dub than the Japanese original.

Since they were cutting out so much from Japanese episode 45 and 46 some other superfluous stuff had to be cut out as well to get it all in 20 minutes. And they clearly wanted to get the battle within the length of Carry On and have the animation sync up with the lyrics.

Personally, I found the exchange to be flowery nonsense. If Beryl was an outcast or pariah of humanity it might of worked because she had seen the uglier side of humanity. But no that's not what happened. It would make even less sense in the context of the DiC dub where she's from another dimension

It's like the girl power speech in Jadeite's final episode. It sounds nice but it makes no sense for Jadeite to speak ill of women given he's from a matriarchal society where his ruler is a woman and their "God" is gendered as female. So I'm glad DiC did away with it in an episode that was otherwise pretty faithful to the Japanese script.

.

Mosaic · May 5, 2023

ChampionOfNuggets said:

Not to steer off topic but I always thought this demonstrated just how pathetic Jadeite was. Although he's loyal to Queen Beryl, it's very possible he hates that she is his leader. Not only is he constantly getting ridiculed and threatened by a woman but he is constantly getting his butt headed to him by the Sailor Soldiers - who are also young women. Unlike the other generals, he never attempts to disobey or protest Beryl. He's a sad little man and his sexist rant solidifies that.

JuanGarcia1982 · May 7, 2023

Clow said:

Well, I have no idea where I could buy it... I just go to google, type "Sailor Moon espanol latino Capitulo xyz" and watch. I then go through the results and find the episode uploaded to Facebook or a private website. Not the best quality, but the best choice I have with my options.

JuanGarcia1982 · May 7, 2023

Jedite as the "sad little man? In that his plans are foiled by the Sailors, he is no different from the other Shittenou. I never saw him as pathetic because of that.

If he's in last place its because he has none of the flair of the others. Nephrite's disguise as a Maxfield Stanton/Sanjoin Masato and his redemption caught my attention. The fact that Zoicite and Malachite/Kunzite truly loved each other thus showing that they had at least some goodness made me cry when they each died. (And Zoicite's sheer viciousness as a man or a woman! Dang!) Jedite's... just there.

I shed tears for everyone else but not for Jedite. He "died" and I was all, meh.

What if DiC was "good"?

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