The Viewtiful Joe anime is without a doubt the single greatest anime ever made, based on what was already the greatest game franchise ever made. It keeps the spirit of the games while changing the plot into a more streamlined narrative and follows up on some of the themes the games explore with how media and super hero stories can project passion and inspire others. It's a perfect anime, or at least the English version is.
The English version of the anime from Geneon has the talent of some of the best voice actors around and punches up the dialogue to make an already fairly self-aware and funny anime even funnier. This can probably be attributed to the dub being directed by Bob Bucholz, one of the most prominent English writers of the first two seasons of Digimon, as well as Duel Masters and Bobobo-Bo-Bo-Bobo, all shows that wouldn't be nearly as good without the English script.
While the English dub of the first half of the Viewtiful Joe anime doesn't change a lot, there were changes that had to be made because, like Digimon, it was on a Saturday morning broadcast, subjecting it to Broadcast, Standards and Practices, meaning things had to be adjusted to be allowed to air.
That isn't a big problem for Viewtiful Joe. It's hardly Tokyo Ghoul or even One Piece as far as objectionable content goes. In fact I'd say the uncut version of the first (Studio Gallop) Yu-Gi-Oh anime had to be censored more than Viewtiful Joe's anime will ever have to be and the Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters anime was already significantly toned down from the manga. That said, the English dub still had a lot of accumulated cuts and changes to content and the dialogue beyond simply making the script better. Guns, suggestive themes and a few scenes were cut. None of it makes the English version any less perfect, just different. Now that some savior of the planet earth has made the first half of the anime available to watch in Japanese after being lost for decades, and because no one else has done this that I can find, I'll be going through each episode of the greatest anime ever made to see what got changed in the transition to English dubbed Saturday mornings.
The screenshots from the English dub will have to be taken from a source that unfortunately has a watermark for a virus-ridden piracy hellhole that I'm happy is gone. I do have every English-released DVD and they're my most precious and irreplacable treasures, but it's a lot easier having both versions open on separate tabs and it's not like there's any license holder.
Before that though, I'll need to get a few universal, blanket changes out of the way because if I were to point out every instance of them in every episode I would be a broken record:
In the English dub, Joe uses street lingo, particularly "dude." It's not far off from the fast-talking way Joe talks in Japanese, to be honest. There he often says things in English, particularly "baby" to accentuate certain sentences, which, the way I see it, might as well be the Japanese equivalent to using street lingo. I don't think saying "baby" like that in English has the same effect. Joe in English still uses his phrase "Henshin a go-go, baby!" of course.
The English dub rearranges the soundtrack. Unlike most English dubs on broadcast television not named Pokemon, Viewtiful Joe's English dub uses the same soundtrack as the Japanese version, including a shortened version of the Japanese opening and ending songs. It just doesn't always use the same tracks in the same moments the Japanese version does. It's still the greatest soundtrack in anime history, but they just went in a different direction on how it's implemented.
Sprocket's revealing outfit and shots of her zipping it up are edited if she's drawn too close. In distance shots or at certain obscuring angles they don't bother, but anytime Sprocket's figure is front and center, her suit is edited closed.
Gran Bruce's demeanor is very different in English. In the Japanese version he's pretty close to his depiction in the original game. He sounds dim-witted, talks like a simpleton and ends all his sentences with the verbal tick "da na." In English he speaks with an Australian accent and relatively normally, putting him on about the same level of intelligence as his two chums Hulk and Charles. I think it's an improvement in the long run because it makes his bouts of stupidity stand out. With how dumb the Japanese version talks, you just wait for him to bungle something, but in English he talks so normally that the inevitable mistakes stand out more and until then it makes Bruce seem more like a threat. I guess it's also interesting to note that Terrence Stone's Charles the Third goes for more of a wheezy voice while the Japanese (and especially the Spanish dub) have gurgling voices like he does in the first game. It could just be Stone naturally doing the Mayuri voice though.
Joe's middle finger is edited out of his handsign. This is something that carried over to Joe's appearance in the Sonic comic crossover. Joe's handsign in the game and Japanese anime has his middle, thumb and pinkie finger out. The middle finger and pinkie are meant to be a V and the middle finger with the thumb is meant to form a J, making a "VJ" handsign. To avoid getting into possible trouble with holding up the middle finger, it's edited, making it a "hang loose" sign instead. Similarly to Sprocket this is mainly the case when it's front and center. There are a scant few instances in the English dub where it's not focused on and can be seen unedited.
I'll point out the few one-off name changes, but the only universal one is Six Machine and Six Majin being renamed to Machine 6 and Robo 6. The leader of Jadow is also referred to as "King-sama" in Japanese whereas in English he's called Almighty Leader. Considering he's a largely unseen godlike figure, referring to him as almighty is more apt.
While I won't go into any dialogue changes unless it's interesting or important, one thing I'll be noting is what I call "expo dub". If you know Digimon writing you know that Bucholz and Jeff Nimoy were always inserting dialogue into places where lips were offscreen and Viewtiful Joe is no different. Usually it's to enhance the script, but in this anime it seems to be inserted into sections for the express purpose of clarifying what is happening or giving some added context where the original is silent. You'll see what I mean when I point this expo dubbing out.
With all that out of the way, join me as we go through and take a look at what got changed in the Viewtiful Joe anime's transition to American broadcasting.
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