Rant - What I hate about fansubs... Unneeded Swearing!

As I dive deeper into looking into getting the latest and greatest form Japan, I am quickly reminded of why I hate fansubs. While I've already stated I'm more of dub person, I not sure if I've ever made a stand point on my feelings towards fan-based anything, be it dub or sub. I'll save my rant about fandubs for a later date, but for now I want to get into something I came across recently.

I spent a good chunk of yesterday looking for a sub for Pokemon Best Wishes. Josh from A3K was kind enough to point me in the right direction and he found me one, which I downloaded. Now I should say that on the rating section of the page I was one the download had a massive amount of one star ratings. I took this as just pokemon hating trolls leaving there mark and ignored it. I went to bed and left the computer to do its business. When I woke up and began to watch the episode. I was taken aback by the things I came across in the sub. I quickly understood that those comments weren't trolls but people leaving legitimate complaints about the video they had downloaded. Now sadly, I've long since deleted this video from my computer mainly cause I was a little bit sickened by some of the things that were coming up in the subs, so I don't have the screen captures to prove what I'm talking about. Sorry, didn't think I'd be making an article about it T_T.

The first things I noticed as when something was up, is when Ash wakes up in his room and Pikachu greets him by jumping on his shoulder and saying, "PIKA PIKA!" Like normal, which is what I expected. What I didn't expect was when Pikachu said, "PIKA PIKA!" The subtitles said, "Good morning!" I didn't think "PIKA PIKA!" was Pikachu for Good Morning. I had started to think that maybe during the gap between me watching Pokemon Legends and Best Wishes, Pikachu's language would have been translated and made into anime equivalent to Klingon. (Funny how spell check knows how to spell Klingon, but not Pikachu)

I was a little weird out at this but thought it was Ash and the subtitling might of been off, so I pushed on. Ash's mom comes into the room and tell Ash that an "old Geezer" was waiting for him out front. At first I thought she might of been referring to a newer character I wasn't familiar with, so imagine my surprise when Ash goes outside to sees Prof. Oak sitting in a car with a Hawaiian T-Shirt. Since when has Ash's mom become such a jerk to the good old Prof. Oak. It didn't make any sense.

Then this is when it got weird. Ash asks Prof. Oak the legitimate question of what's up with the shirt and he replies, "I'm hoping to get some pussy at the brothel." I had to pause the screen to make sure my head wasn't playing tricks with me. I swear to god, that's what this fansub said. I thought, ok hopefully this is just one stupid line that the fansubber wanted to make fun of. But then we get into Team Rocket.

This is where I turned off the video and declared this download to be a pile of crap. Cause once Team Rocket stared talking, the profanity wouldn't stop. Everything from Govanni saying, "We're going to stick our thumbs up the arses (yeah British slang... I didn't get that either) of everyone in this shit hole town." to Meowth saying, "We'll get that motherfucking Pikachu." I couldn't stand it any longer and I don't understand why this was made in the way that it was. Its childish, stupid, and insanely disrespectful to the source material. The only purpose this serves is to piss people like myself off. I'm just looking to watch some pokemon and these guys present a subtitling job that would make Foamy the Squirrel blush. Its not funny, these characters are being disrespected with potty humor and honestly shitty writing. It felt like it was a subtitling job done by my old roommates who made those god awful videos on YouTube. Is swearing funny, yeah it can be. The key to making swearing funny though is to either have a completely over the top delivery. The way its presented here, you have the child like voices of Ash and his mother, talking about something harmless and its being matched up with fucks on the bottom of the screen. Its not funny, the only thing I felt was that something was wrong with the video. I didn't crack a smile when Moewth subtitles said, "Motherfucker" cause I know that's not what he's actually saying.

And before anyone thinks of saying, "Well he normally swears like this. Your just an idiot cause you only watch the dubbed version and America isn't going to tell you what meowth is actually saying cause this isn't a kids show. ITS FOR ADULTS!"

First... No it isn't. Pokemon is for kids and its used as a marketing ploy to get kids into buying the new Pokemon Black and White games. I know how this works cause its the same damn thing they have done since the kick off of the show in the early 90's. Also in my first attempt at downloading this episode, I ended up getting this live performance that was beginning held some where in front of a live audience.

Trust me, the only adults there are the parents sitting next to their kids having a good time cause their kids are having a good time.

Second, The major thing that was censored by 4Kids in the first season where really stupid things, and none of it (asides from two episodes, which I'll touch on in a second) were because of material considered, "Too Adult for American children." You've got Porygon Attacks, which was the episode that made all those kids have seizures, which is the only one I think is a good choice to not bring over, cause let's face it a lot of kids got hurt because of that episode. Then you've got an episode with Jinx that was taken out cause they thought Jinx was a black woman stereotype (slams head against wall, whenever I think about that one).

But the only two that were taken out for "Adult material" were insanely stupid and over blown. First is an episode in the Safari zone which was taken out because one of the Ranchers in the Safari had a gun and shot at the heroes in that same way Elmer Fudd shot at Buggs Bunny. It was comical and none of the character felt like they were in any real danger, but the big wigs at 4Kids thought having an adult point a gun at kids was a bit much and throw out the episode, which again was the equivalency of a Loony Toons episode. The last Episode thrown out had to deal with Meowth having a fantasy about Govanni in a speedo and the group at 4Kids thought it was a little bit creepy. You be the judge.

Yeah, just a little bit creepy.

But to get to my point, this show is not for adults. Its for children. It was made for children and it always will be for children. The only reason episodes have been removed here in the states is because the people at 4Kids are evil and don't have a sense of humor.

Didn't mention this episode cause the image speaks for itself.

To sum up, I don't get why fansubbers have this need to ad more language into there shows. For some shows I don't mind, cause it all has to deal with who's saying what and the tone of the overall series. But when you add swearing to shows like Pokemon, honestly, its fucking ridiculous.