|
|
  |
 |
             
|
Interview with a Toei Employee
One day while exploring the dbzoa message boards I came across a topic by one Sun WuKong called "The Monkey King Returns! Gen Fukunaga, I'm calling you out!" Hmmm... okay, this looks interesting. So I looked inside and what'd I see?
First off, I cannot possibly thank you enough for agreeing to this. It's truly an honor for me to be able to interview you. Now then,
1. Before we begin would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself and where you grew up?
A. I was born in 1973, here in the Philippines. At that time, the country had just fallen under the grip of President Marcos' Martial Law regime...an excuse to wipe out his political opponents and ensure his claim to rule for years beyond his normal term limits. My father's family was Filipino, but with a mostly French ancestry, mixed in with a little Spanish-Moro (Muslim). My mother's side of the family was part-Japanese. Her own father, despite being half-Japanese, fought against the Japanese army when they invaded here in World War II. The irony is not lost upon me. My being part-Japanese, however, really didn't have much impact on my love for anime. That would happen on its own.
A. When I was growing up, the local networks were still importing the old anime series from the U.S...shows like "Gigantor", "Speed Racer" and "Marine Boy". Then came the English-dubbed version of "Mazinger-Z". By that time, some local networks decided it would be easier if they just bought these shows directly from Japan and dub it here themselves. So "Mazinger-Z" was continued by local dubbers, and soon followed a deluge of Japanese shows. At that time, the "super robot" boom was just starting, so those were the most popular shows, most particularly "Voltes Five",(created by Tomino, the same guy who would create the first Gundam series) which is now considered a local cultural icon. There were other shows as well, the special-effects shows like Ultraman and the sentai shows, live-action samurai series, animated dramas and fantasies and the like. Then President Marcos put an end to the whole thing. Some say it was because his cronies wanted to air their educational programs and could not compete with the popularity of these shows. Their excuse was that these shows were too violent and promoted violence in turn. Still others believed he feared the message of "Voltes Five"...freedom-loving warriors rising up against a cruel dictatorship. For whatever reason, it was over...until the early 1980's. Strangely enough, with the return of anime to our airwaves, his reign lasted only a couple years more.
I first found out about Dragonball per se when I was in college studying fine arts, during the early 1990's. Most Filipinos with money keep an eye out for Western trends, and at that time anime was making new headway in the US, with videos like the "Fist of the North Star" movie, "Gunbuster" and "Bubblegum Crisis". Anyway, a friend and I were passing through a small comic sale and someone had set up a table with anime videos, bootleg and otherwise. I've heard the name Dragonball before, but I'd never actually seen it. The I saw the movie he was playing...an uncut, un-dubbed clear copy of the movie where they fought against Lord Slug. (The fansubbers referred to him then as "Surako-sama", which was about right.) I was mesmerized...it was everything I ever wanted...the sheer power of the world's mightiest superheroes coupled with the no-nonsense action of anime. And none of the stupid watering-down of the action that made otherwise promising American cartoons boring. It was like waking from a haze and staring into the sunrise for the first time. Later, Dragonball became more and more available, even if it was in a relative trickle...but I just had to know everything about it. I just had to see more, and separate fan rumors from the truth. Then, Dragonball hit the local airwaves.
A. Back during the 1970's, the dubbing process was pretty raw. They couldn't separate voice tracks from the background music yet, so whenever the characters spoke, the music died down. Plus, if you listened carefully, you could still here the original voices under the spoken dialogue. And at the time there was this strange need to give the characters American-sounding names. Also, it seems that at the time, most scripts were translated by ear, instead of from a written transcript. To be fair, though, the stories came thorugh largely unedited and intact, with no action edited out.
The quality of adapting has improved quite a bit over the years. The voice and music tracks are separated now, and the shows are now being dubbed in Filipino, as opposed to English with thick Filipino accents. (Personally, I beieve this is an improvement.) Voice acting is good for the most part, although that seems to pretty much depend on which network is adapting what show. And they're much better at sticking to the original material now, with original character names and such. However, there has been some editing issues, especially over some shows with rather intense fight scenes. And even Mr.Satan's name didn't come through unscathed here...still, all things considered, it's much better than before.
A. It was around 1996, and I had quit my job as a copywriter for an ad agency six months earlier. (I was unhappy and stressed-out to say the least.) Then I saw an ad in the paper that TOEI Philippines was looking for trainees for the position of in-between (IB) animator. Needless to say, I jumped at the chance, and, looking like a total newbie I even brought a copy of Newtype with me. (Here's some advice: don't bother doing stuff like that. It doesn't impress anyone except your fellow newbie test-taker. A portfolio of your own art is probably much better.) I went to the testing session at the studio, took a few drawing tests, and waited. When I passed, I then began training, which comes with a small food allowance. I trained under Mr. Kino, who has been working for TOEI since "Mazinger Z". I was kind of a slow learner, so I was the last of my group to finish, but finish I did. After that was on-the-job training, then probationary status...and lo and behold, around a year later, September 1997, I was now a regular employee. Later, after one of my bosses found out I knew quite a bit about anime in general, he asked me to do a little PR work for him, such as talking to some students for their projects and such. After that, every time there was a student tour, a TV interview or something similar, I'd pitch in.
A. They just called him "Kami" or "Master Kami" without really explaining that he was supposed to be God, so they dodged the bullet on that one. "Mr. Satan" on the other hand, didn't, what with all the sensitive Catholics around here (especially since the Philippines is supposed to be the most Christian country in Asia). So he was renamed "Master Pogi". ("Pogi" means "handsome".) Ugh.
A. "Newtypes" first appeared in the original Gundam series. Due to prolonged deep-space colonization, some humans began to exhibit enhanced psychic abilites. These people were called "Newtypes" and both sides of the conflict wasted no time in trying to find a military application to their abilites. The main characters of the original Gundam show, Amuro Rey and Char Aznable, were both "Newtypes". As for our favorite magazine of the same name, the "Newtype" mag began mostly as a Gundam mag, then broadened its scope to anime in general.
A. Training was all right, all things considered. The greatest threat to one's progress is tedium...the training can get a little mind-numbing at times, so a lot of patience is required. You start with simple tracing at first...more difficult than it sounds, since some character designs can be quite complicated. Then you have to learn how to draw simple motions while keeping your character from going off-model. Then it's on to long actions, layered actions, mutiple characters, running and walking, animal motion references....this is all pretty much tip of the iceberg, way too much to talk about in one sitting. It'll be easier to get into more detail if we take this in chunks.
A. Since it was still just training, the company is not really obligated to pay you yet. However, they decided trainees should at least have a weekly allowance for food and travel expenses; it's not minimum wage, but considering you shouldn't even be getting paid at all, it's actually a blessing.
A. Probationary employees are under the microsope; their performance is carefully monitored to see if they are able to keep up with the deadlines and production quotas. Being newbies, their quotas aren't that high yet, but they aren't paid as much as a regular employee either. If, after an evaluation, you pass probationary status and become a regular employee, you get the full amount basic pay, and company benefits such as medical plans, housing loan plans, social security, the option to borrow money from the company co-op, and others.
A. An in-betweener finishes up what the key animator starts. When animated sequences come to us from the key animator, usually they're rough drawings, sometimes loosely sketched, and covered with various instructions. Our first task is "clean-up"...re-trace the drawings cleanly. Then we have to actually animate them.
A key animator usually draws only the "key" or most important parts of an animated sequence. For example, a sequence shows a certain character walking. He'll draw the character with his left foot forward, then with right foot forward. It is then the IB's job to actually draw the charcater walking, as he steps off from one foot to the other.
Another example would be someone throwing a baseball. The key animator would draw the guy with his arm up about to pitch, then doing the throw, and maybe a few drawing in between depending on the situation. It would then be the IB's job to re-trace the drawings, and fill-in the missing parts of the movement.
A. Prior to the key animator drawing his part, he refers first to the layout drawing provided in the storyboard. From there he determines how long the cut lasts and what he has to draw per scene-cut. (Every time the picture or shot changes, that's a "cut". Everytime the general locale or setting of a segment in the story changes, that's a "scene"...at least that's how I think that goes.) So let's say all that action takes place in just one scene-cut. The backgrounds, say stuff like scenery, the bleachers or a large non-moving crowd, would be hand-painted by a background artist separately. While that's happening, the key animator would then draw the characters or anything else that would move on-screen. The size of the paper he draws on depends on the camera movements: does the camera stand still as Goku walks by? Does it follow him as he walks, or does it shoot him from front view while panning up his body from his boots to his head? (This also determines how big the background area is.) Then there's layering the cels. In order to separate one layer of motion from another, we separate the drawings into layers of "cels", named after the cel sheets the finished drawings were transferred to and painted on. (Though hand-painted cels aren't in use so much anymore...) For example, the cheering crowd in your scene would be on A-cel, the lowest level, and Goku walking by would be on the level above that, B-cel, putting him in the foreground. That way each cel area can be animated separately from each other. Once the key animator does his job, it's the IBs turn to clean it up and fill in any actual motion: up-and-down movement for walking (if the character is up close and you don't actually see his legs or anything), any small actions required for the scene like lip synch (if Goku talks) or any expressions or facial movements, or even the crowd in the back cheering, all depending on what is needed for the scene.
A. Lighting effects are now handled directly by computer. Before, however, things like that were handled by a photographic trick called half-exposure. Basically the part of the scene-cut that was bright and shiny (like the lit fuse) was traced onto a celluloid sheet, and the rest of the cel was painted black. Then the cut was shot as one frame on an animation camera. While they shoot it, they shine a bright light under the cel (color of light depending on a color filter). (I think this is the part they called backlighting.) Next, they take out the backlit cel, turn ther light off, and take a shot of whatever else is supposed to be in the picture, say a close-up of the cannon where the fuse is attached; only thing is, they don't take the shot on another frame, but on the same frame that where the backlit shot was already taken. Somehow, through some means I still don't understand, the two pictures end up being composed together into one shot. That's pretty much how I understand it to be...I never quite understood all the details, and camera works weren't my strong suit.
A. How long a scene lasts, including dialogue, is determined by a separate director, called a timing director. By the time we receive it, it's all been timed and laid out for us in our exposure sheets (the little folders our works comes that includes instructions and stuff like how many drawings are needed to fill-in a certain motion). Believe it or not, there are only three mouth positions in most anime...closed mouth, open mouth, and middle mouth. The sequence in which they appear is determined by the director. Sometimes, the lip-synch is more detailed, such as for movies or for American productions, where the lip-synch actually forms words.
A. Before any animation is made, the already-finished script is adapted into a storyboard. This determines how many scenes and cuts there will be for an entire episode.
A. In a normal shot, one where the bg isn't moving, that bg is just one big static painting. When both bg's and animations are finished being checked (quality control) they are composed/edited together to form one picture.
A. Depends on what's in the picture you're looking at. It can be anywhere from an entire frame (everything you see) to a tiny dot.
A. OnePiece was the creation of a man named Eiichiro Oda. He worked as an assistant to "Rurouni Kenshin" artist Nobuhiro Watsuki. In 1992, he won the Tezuka Award for his own project, "WANTED" which included a teaser or prototype of his eventual big hit, "Onepiece". He credits Akira Toriyama as on of his idols. Now, for OP itself. OnePiece is currently one of the hottest properties in anime and manga. The manga never leaves the Top 10, and the anime is always Top 20 at least, though it's been climbing recently. According to Anime Insider, Japanese department stores dedicate entire floors to OP merchandise. Both anime and manga are still currently running, with the anime at 150= episodes and counting.
The story of OnePiece takes place on a fantastic world, similar to ours but not exactly. Here, the surface is mostly water, and man shares the land and seas with creatures from the mundane to the fantastic. Here, the marine Authorities enforce, and sometimes abuse, the law. Then, there are pirates. The most famous of all pirates was Gold Roger, but even he couldn't avoid the law forever. On the day of his execution, someone from the crowd asked where he hid the greatest treasure of all...the mysterious OnePiece. With a smile on his face, he looked at the crowd and laughed, saying, "You want my treasure? Go out into the world...YOU WILL FIND IT THERE!" And thus began the Great Era of Pirates, where adventurers from all over sought Gold Roger's treasure, for whoever found the OnePiece would become the King of Pirates. The main character is Monkey D. Luffy, who, as a child, idolized the friendly pirate captain Shanks. He promised Shanks that he would grow up to be a great pirate captain and find the OnePiece. Thanks to a rare treasure called the Devil's Fruit (specifically the Rubber-Rubber Fruit) Luffy gained the ability to stretch, but at a cost...he is now cursed, unable to swim lest he sink like a rock. He begins a series of adventures as he gathers up a crew that would help him sail into the unknown to find the OnePiece.
A. Nothing really specific comes to mind...just that there were a lot of challenging scenes in that show, especially when you have to draw the pirate boats...they can get pretty "imaginative". No, unfortunately I didn't get to meet Mr. Oda himself.
A. Depends. Some of the sequences are animated by the stafff in Japan, and then there's our own Ib staff...we must number more then seventy...and we'd all be working on different things at once, like more than one show at a time.
A. OP episodes were relatively easy at first, then later on you get more shots with large waves, odd pirate ships, giant monsters. My personal favorites were action sequences, fight scenes involving the main characters. Some pretty cool melees go on in this show.
A. Not a clue. Still going strong, and will be for some time to come yet. If this thing goes 250 episodes, I wouldn't be surprised.
A. Oh, yeah, lots. I got to work on the last episode of DBGT (just the last one, can you imagine?), the new Dr. Slump, Hana Yori Dango, the animated sequences in Chrono Trigger, Himalaya, the first season of Yu-Gi-Oh, Crayon kingdom, Z-Mazinger (which got aborted), Digimon (all of them), Miiko-chan, Pharmacy, Crayon Kingdom, Ojamajo Doremi (all four series), Kinnikuman Nisei: Second Generations (aka Ultimate Muscle), Nono-chan (My Neighbors the Yamadas), the animated "Discovery" videos for Daft Punk, a Galaxy Express movie, Gambler Legend Tetsuya, Air Master, and more recently Tomorrow's Nadja and Gash Bell. That's all I can remember off the top of my head.
A. Good gravy...that's gonna be near impossible to calculate.
A. Not actually sure; with all the pre- and post-production as well, a single episode could take a couple of weeks in total to finish. But that's why they have batches of people working all at once at different things...an episode could still be on progress when the next one comes up, so we'd be working on more than one episode at a time.
A. Once the animators and checkers are finished doing their thing, the drawings are xeroxed onto plastic cel sheets. These cel sheets are then painted on the back so as to give the drawing its color and form. Let the paint dry after a while and voila...the drawing is ready for filming. Recently however, with the advent of digital coloring, the use of manually-painted cels has been reduced. Most of TOEI's TV and video productions use digital coloring now...but they still use manual cel painting for movies and such to give it that distinct visual texture.
A. Believe it or not, when a cel is used, its tossed away or erased for re-use. But yeah, since they've been scratched anyone in the company is free to help themselves to used cels for a keepsake. I have quite a few myself...mostly unpainted rejects. I missed most of the really good stuff.
A. Luck of the draw. When it comes time to get your work folders, sometimes you go to the person in charge and they hand you one, or you have to wait for your team to receive their workload. (The IB staff is divided into teams to foster in-company competition, which supposedly bolsters production since there's incentives for the teams and individuals who get top production scores. Simply put, the more you draw, the more you get paid.) When I was still training, I remember seeing the character model sheets for DBGT and hoped I could draw at least a few frames of this show. (I had just missed the chance to work on the last episodes of Sailor Moon, since that series ended while I was still in training, so I was itching to work on a name show. I'm vain that way. After all, there was such a thrill for me at the time to be behind the scenes in any way, even just a little.) Anyway, I was lucky enough to draw at least a couple of shots for GT just as I began regular work, nearing the end of the series. They were "held" scenes...meaning the characters were drawn, but they're not moving. One was a long shot of Goku and Vegeta floating in the air, both in their SuperSaiya-Jin 4 modes. The other, which I was particularly proud of, was a held shot of SSJ4 Gogeta, just standing in pose. No action, but a good drawing nonetheless. Oh, yeah, we also did the animated sequences in the videogame "DragonBall GT: Final Bout", but I myself never got to draw any folders for that one. like I said, luck of the draw.
A. To be honest, I haven't been able to play the game (no time), so I wouldn't know about Schala. Also, production for the animated sequences for Chrono Trigger was just like production for any animated project we recieve. The animation itself was carefully detailed, more like for a movie than for a TV show.
A. Not really. Sounds about right, I guess.
A. Haven't heard anything of it, and from what I saw of the production schedules before I left, not in the immediate future. But who knows what will happen farther down the line, eh?
A. Hardly anyone in my branch of the company, save maybe for a few of my bosses, know about it. I, personally, am apprehensive.
A. Afraid not. The mother studio in Japan would know more about that, if ever.
A. If I remember correctly, I believe I was referred to the site by someone named Canadian Gohan. I had already seen a few of the English-dubbed movies of DBZ, and was only mildly disappointed. The great disappointment came from when I saw a video of the actual US version of the TV series. I was airing my grievances on one of the many message boards I was a member of when I saw a link posted by fellow anime fan Canadian Gohan. I read what the site had to offer, and the rest is history.
A. Despite my best efforts, I haven't had much impact on my fellow employess. Understandably, they're more preoccupied with day-to-day stuff. And those that do know, the ones who are comic-and-animation geeks like I am, for some reason see no reason to rally up. They believe, simply, that the "Americans will do as they will". At best, they're passive aggressive, and don't care much for the FUNi version anyway. They're just not all fired up to dedicate effort against it. *Sigh*
A. The Dragonball series is undoubtedly one of the biggest, if not in fact THE biggest, hits TOEI has ever had and, maybe, will continue to have, with re-releases and such.
A. I can only guess what the people in the mother studio in Japan thinks...they seem to be in a whole other world there. As for my own personal opinion, I am not happy with the way FUNi has treated the series at all. I don't know how well FUNi has been doing with their other properties, but their fortune was made mostly off of DragonBall, a fortune that they frankly do not deserve. I don't see the point of rewarding someone to beat me over the head, so why does FUNi constantly get away with turning what is an otherwise good show into mindless crap?
A. See # 34, same answers pretty much apply here. Also, first line in #36.
A. I don't know, but near as I can tell, it's all up to the people buying the show if they want transcripts or if they'd rather wing it.
A. Not sure on that either. From what I know, once it's been bought, they do the ol' Pontius Pilate ("I wash my hands clean..."), meaning that what the person outside of Japan wants to do with it is his business within his area of jurisdiction.
A. Probably a lot less than they would have you believe, if anything at all.
A. I'm not sure he would be all that offended, because visually it's the same show, and any cuts or edits would be viewed as just a matter of conforming to the rules of the country it is showing in. Plus, the language barrier involved would prevent him from understanding what all the uproar is over the dialogue until someone actually points it out to him. It would have to come to him from the point of view of ourselves, the offended, but even then Dragonball is pretty much a closed chapter in his life.
A. I am apprehensive about this, considering it has been made known that FUNi intends to market OP with the same "successful" style they used for DBZ, which means they will edit the hell out of it and try and force it to confrom to ridiculous General Patronage TV standards so they can "market it to a wider audience", i.e. impressionable kids looking to snap up merchandise on the new "hottest" thing. Considering the action, smoking and boozing that goes on a lot in this show (even with it's generally light-hearted tone), there will be nothing left intact once they get through with it. I have already sent them a letter telling them how I feel. They may have chosen to ignore me, but by also openly posting the same letter on the DBZOA message board, I hope I've started a few ripples in the pond. (GSnote- to save you a bit of hunting, you can find where the letter was posted
here.)
A. Had he known and fully understood the situation beforehand... I sincerely believe he would have pulled out of the FUNi deal and looked for someone else.
A. Same answer as #42.
A. Personally, I don't know how to get in touch with Mr. Toriyama's Bird Studio, although I think some enterprising young people in the OA might know. TOEI Japan's e-mail should be easy enough to find over the net. My suggestion: if all you are really serious about it, send them concise, well-written, patiently worded letters. Eventually, with enough of them, this matter will come to their attention, and hopefully this may affect how they do business internationally, for the better.
A. The checkers are in charge of making sure then animation that was drawn and cleaned-up by the IB is correct, clean, and according to the given directions. They make sure lines or details don't just suddenly disappear off your drawing, or that the character always looks like he should at whatever angle you draw him/her. In short, they're animation quality-control.
A. Not really, The shows and cuts are arranged in neat folders so they're easy to separate. What gets confusing is when the deadlines of more than one show are so close together, or when a deadline gets switched at the last minute, forcing you to drop what you're doing and change gears to work on another show.
A. Sometimes a cel is incorrectly painted or the sequence has to be used again but with some changes, so that may lead to a cel being stripped of its paint and colored again. The xeroxed dark lines on the front of the cel are harder to fix though, so a lot of the time if the dark trace lines are incorrect the cel is just put aside and scrapped. Most of the souvenir cels I kept are like this: uncolored rejects.
A. It's all a matter of learning how to break things down into individual pictures, then making sure each individual picture still helps to bring the story or action along smoothly. In the end, it all breaks down to the fact that it's just one static drawing after another; you just need to make enough of them so that it looks like there's movement.
A. Working for TOEI for five years, taught me a lot, socially as well as professionally, quite a bit more than I can say in one sitting. I'm probably a better illustrator now than I was five years ago. As for the future...well, I have my goals. Only time will tell if I'm lucky enough to achieve them.
A. If someday you are indeed lucky enough to work for an animation studio, one must learn how to effectively manage stress and confusion. It can get hectic if you let it overwhelm you, and it WILL eat your time despite your best efforts, so learning how to find your center and "Zen"-out is crucial. But in the end, it is worthwhile, on many levels. There is a very strong sense of pride and accomplishment that comes with seeing a show or movie you have worked on and knowing it is appreciated by people around the world, and very few things can replace that.
"Jose K. Fournier IV
aka Sun WuKong, the Monkey King"
Well, I gotta say- it certainly is interesting to know more about what goes behind the scenes for anime shows. And I definitely have a lot more respect for the people who do all this work, now that I understand just how hard and how many long hours they have to work to create what they do. Although I'm still not 100% sure how animes are made, I definitely have a much better idea and perspective of what really goes on behind the scenes and it was very interesting to learn.
As for Mr. Fournier's thoughts on FUNimation- do you see what I mean? Not even TOEI, the people who turned DBZ into an anime, are happy with the way FUNimation is treating their anime! For years FUNimation has been ignoring pretty much 99.99% of all fan complaints and thinking stuff like, "You guys bitching are just a bunch of anime snob fools, like we care what any of the likes of YOU think! There are millions of other dub fans out there that LOVE US to death, so again- we quite frankly do not give a damn what any of you think and we don't care enough to listen to ANYTHING you guys will ever have to say! Either you're with us and love us for all the amazingly talented work we do, or you can just go **** the hell off!"
Well now things are a little bit different, FUNimation. Mr. Fournier isn't someone you can just dismiss as "yet another anime snob punk who doesn't know what the hell he's talking about and whose opinions mean absolutely nothing to us" like you've done to all the rest of us... he's a person with a DIRECT LINK to the creation of the DBZ anime that you've been misdubbing for the past 7-8 years! Sure, perhaps it's only one episode but nevertheless- this is a guy who was one of the many who helped create and bring us this wonderful series- and he is frankly disgusted at how the work of him and his co-workers is being trampled upon and misdubbed! Like SSJ Ski said, "The point is that here is from the horses mouth that what funi is doing is WRONG." Oh, I'd just LOVE to see you guys attempt to talk yourselves out of this one. And there's no way you can say something like, "Well, I'm sure his opinion is in the minority of what people at Toei think..." because, like Mr. Fournier said, "even TOEI employees don't like FUNi."
If the fact that the countless people who spent so much of their lives making the DB anime series as good as humanly possible are disgusted with what you've done doesn't slap some sense into, I don't what on earth ever could- short of Mr. Toriyama finding out the truth and confronting you.
Speaking of which, I find it EXTREMELY hypocritical that even after Mr. Toriyama paid a personal official visit to America in New York that you STILL insist on ruining his work! I know that at least you Gen, and you Chris Sabat, were two of the FUNimation "emissaries" to greet him. And I'm sure you greeted him with lines like, "Oh, I just LOVE your work! I'm such a big fan! Yes, we treat your show with the upmost respect! Just look at that English dub of Budokai- great stuff, eh Toriyama-sensei?" Yeah FUNimation, I am just SO IMPRESSED that while 4 Toei executives were watching you all like hawks at your studio in Ft. Worth that you did such a great job dubbing a video game! Wow, that really shows me that you DO CARE! Still, I'm surprised that with even them there you STILL managed to find an excuse to cut out "Head Cha La" for the 100th or so time while putting in "Rock The Dragon," (and even worse, an extended-length, remixed version of it) while also again making yourselves smell like roses.
As for you Chris... I am starting to have more respect for you since you had the balls to say what FUNimation really thinks about that wretched excuse for music they put in GT, but I can't believe you were still able to bring yourself to agree to say that line about "the fish jumping" at the end of Movie 7. Nevertheless, unlike Gen, I think I'll still hold on to some hope for you. You- have definitely improved a lot over the years. I'm more than willing and to forgive and, ahem, semi-forget. There's only one person at FUNimation I will -never- forgive, and I think you know who he is.
As for you guys at Toei... heh heh, I certainly am proud to know that the DBZOA is internationally renown to you guys! However, I have to disagree with your idea that what FUNimation is doing doesn't have any effect on you. I mean, yeah, we're 1,000's of miles away from you and most of you probably will never come to America or spend a whole lot of time here... but look at it this way-
Chris Psaros inspired me to do this site. Imagine if the leader of gang of skin heads found him by himself on the streets at night and then they stomped, pounded the guy and beat him with baseball bats. He is then injured brutally and never fully recovers, although he heals a lot over the course of his life. I never find out about this and I later meet the leader who did this to Chris. He is dressed up professionally and, me not knowing about his background, I assume that he is a very nice guy. I even buy him lunch and hire him to run my business, trusting that he's a wonderful individual and that I can trust him to do a fine job. He does a profitable job and I don't hear anything bad about him, only good stuff from him and his friends. But if you knew what was going on, wouldn't you want to tell me and wouldn't it be your moral obligation to do so? Absolutely.
Now look at it from Mr. Eiichiro Oda's perspective. This is a guy who was personally inspired very much by Akira Toriyama and looks up to him a great deal. It could easily be argued that had AT never been a manga artist then OP might not even exist today. If you've enjoyed and considered it an honor to get to work on OP, to a great extent you should be as thankful to Mr. Toriyama as you are to Mr. Oda. Anyway, when FUNimation got their hands on DBZ they did many things to it. For instance, they directed all the episodes without even bothering to watch fansubs to know what the hell they were getting into. And even the one guy there who knows pefect Japanese, Gen Fukunaga, strongly intimated in his 1999 interview with Steve Harmon that he didn't even bother to watch any of his non-illegal, non-fansub straight from Toei complete series tapes that his studio is loaded with. Next, they replaced the music without bothering to test it- Gen (and- to be fair of course since Gen isn't the sole source of authority at FUNimation although I sometimes make it look like he is- Cindy and Daniel Cocanougher) butchered away all the music to charge royalties to CN and sell music cd's, without even knowing what the original music was like. Next- they didn't even bother to pay anyone to translate it correctly! Even in their Dallas interview, where they stated this to the media, Chris Sabat insisted that all fans who didn't appreciate the FUNimation version, that wasn't even translated correctly, (and also in which he and Barry Watson directed a number of "homoerotic" dialogues between Goku and Freeza) were just a bunch of rabid "anime snobs" who were unfairly picking on FUNimation. And then- well, you've seen this site, you have a pretty good idea how much longer the list is. But finally, even after all this, when Mr. Toriyama finally met up with them face to face and they went up to him and LIED to the man and deceived him into believing that they actually cared for his work or had an iota of respect for it. Since you know exactly what was going on, isn't it your moral obligation to let Mr. Toriyama know that the people in America handling the show he poured so much of his life and self into are completely ruining it and aren't really it or him any respect? Absolutely. But even if you think it's best he not be and hasn't been troubled about this... look at it this way-
Because Japan and Toei and many others didn't and don't know about this, you know what? Now Eiichiro Oda's work has been entrusted into the very same hands that ruined Akira Toriyama's! The same people who showed no respect to Mr. Toriyama are now expected to show respect to Mr. Oda and his work? FUNimation has shown that "making the most money" has always been their number one goal with any anime series. And they want OP to be the next DBZ. And unless OP extends to at least 510 episodes, 3 series, and 4 tv specials that outsell DBZ in Japan, by FUNimation's standards- OP won't mean as much to them, and might be treated with less respect than DBZ or even GT were. Doesn't this man who's worked so hard to make a manga he loves, and then succeeded wildly beyond his dreams, not have a right to know that the people he's trusting and working with essentially stabbed the man who inspired him right in the back? Shouldn't he have known what he was really getting into so that FUNimation wouldn't have been able to deceive him with profits charts that they're a good anime company that will show him and his work some measure of respect? Absolutely.
As you can see, it certainly doesn't pay to turn your backs on how other animes are treated abroad. I mean, I can understand for instance where an anime company HAS to make changes like censorship to adapt the show to a country's television audience... but not when they make other countless disrespectful and entirely UNNECESSARY changes, and then laugh at and look down in disgust at anyone whoever complains or stands up to them.
In any case, I can definitely understand why Mr. Fournier was so anxious to be interviewed by me- after spending 5 years of his life working so hard on so many animes (particularly OP) he's not about to just sit back and watch something like this happen to his work without a fight. In any case- to any of you at Toei reading this... I sincerely hope that you take these words to heart. What FUNimation has done is despicable- and manga artists and creators like Mr. Oda have every right to know what's happening and what they could be getting into. Please... let him and others in Toei know what's happening- and above all, especially let Mr. Toriyama know. He deserves to know the truth and- even if you think you're helping him by shielding him from the truth- if ever does find out one day... the only thing that man will regret from finding out was that nobody told him sooner. And let future others, perhaps also very much inspired Mr. Toriyama, know as well. For knowing what you know now, you cannot honestly turn your backs and simply believe that what happens to animes in America... will never have any bearing on you, your life, or any of the work you do.
|