By: DQBunny
This article was sent in on: July 22, 2000
Being a journalist, consistency within a story is an absolute factor.
One’s eye is trained to look for
mistakes with consistency and strives to correct them, and it annoys
the heck out of me when I see a
mistake and can not correct it.
I run a SM site along with several other people, comparing the
original version of Sailormoon to
the dub and trying to educate people about the benefits of the subbed
Sailormoon. As part of this site, I
recently created a “Guide to Sailormoon S” to go on one of the pages
for people to print out so it would be
easy for people to read synopses of the Japanese episodes and have not
been exposed to them before. The
goal of the guide is to keep everything straight for them. But, in
doing the guide, I found out I got confused
as well, because I just could not pinpoint everything down to one
simple name.
One of the problems in the DiC dub was consistency, but not on such a
large scale as CWI has
done in the S dub. In “Driving Dangerously,” Mina calls out “Venus
Crystal Power” to transform, a power
she should not have for another season. The next episode she
transforms, she goes back to “Venus Star
Power.” Amara and Michelle have both used the incorrect “Star Power”
and the correct “Planet Power”to
transform. The names of attacks are inconsistent on day to day basis
for Sailors Mars, Jupiter, and Venus.
Uranus and Neptune’s attacks waver slightly as well.
Another problem with consistency is the names of the talismen, pure
hearts, daimon, and Messiah.
I realized that these references to Christian mythology would be
changed, but no one can decide on what to
call them in the dub. It seems there is a different writer for each
episode and he/she decides what they will
call the items and attacks for that particular episode instead of
building on precedence. Many ongoing
series use a series bible which sets in stone what names, items,
places, attack, etc. are called. It would not
take much effort for CWI or Optinum to sit down and create one of these
“bibles” for their writers. Heck, I
would do it for them if it will make the episodes consistent. With the
exception of the last 17 episodes of R
and the name of the ginzuishou (Silver Crystal), DiC at least was
pretty consistent from episode to episode.
Names also seem to be another area where consistency falls. As
wonderful it was to hear Hotaru’s
name in the dub, it looks odd against the likes of Serena, Amy, etc. If
they were going to keep Hotaru’s
original name, it would not be that much of a stretch to keep Haruka,
Michiru, and Setsuna. The names of
the villians are frequently kept in their Japanese form as well, and it
looks like two different cultures are
clashing. Personalities are not consistent with the original series
either, or the personality as presented in
the DiC dub, with the example being Sailor Pluto (Trista.) Trista’s
dub personality in no way fits with the
character that Meioh Setsuna is suppose to be. Even Sailor Pluto’s
appearance in the last 17 episodes of R
is pretty consistent with her Japanese character in my opinion. The
words coming out of Trista’s mouth
does not fit the actions her character does on the screen. I can see
them wanting to change the personality
of the character to fit the dub, but not hack it so much that the
character just seems completely odd.
The main problem about lack of consistency is that it will tend to
drive away viewers. If you
confuse the viewer with every episode they see, then he/she will not
want to watch it again. Cartoon
Network and CWI have targetted the dub for small children, and they are
not stupid. I can see two little
children right now trying to imitate characters in the dub and fighting
over the proper name for Sailor
Mars’ attack because it is not consistent. The main thing that seems
to be consistent is the fact that they are
drilling the “cousins” concept into everyone’s heads.
On a professional level, lack of consistency makes CWI look bad among
such dubbing companies
like Pioneer and Viz. It makes them look very immature standing next
to these companies. If CWI is
looking to dub more anime to show on networks in the United States,
producers may look at the poor job
done on Sailormoon S and laugh in their faces. If CWI can not handle
consistency within 38 episodes
(actually 37 with the omission of episode 119), how can they do so with
other series? There is the excuse
that CWI was pressed for time to get these episodes out, but there is
no reason why the writers and
producers at the company could make the effort to see if these shows
were accurate. There is absolute no
excuse for sloppiness, no matter how much or little time you have to
create your product. I have to produce
an entire story for the newspaper in less than an hour most of the time
and it is expected to be accurate. I
know CWI writers have more than an hour to write an episode of
Sailormoon. If news reporters can be
accurate while on a deadline, couldn’t script writers be as well?
Sure, in the future, there is Sailormoon SuperS to look forward to. I
don’t see any excuse for
consistency problems in this series. CWI has more time to work on
SuperS than they did with S. I am
praying that from day to day, we do not get “Pegasus” to “A unicorn” to
“That white horse with wings and
a golden horn.” Who wants to bet that “lemures” will be called both
“lemures” or “Dream Snatchers?”
With the lack of consideration CWI has put into the episodes, I would
not want them to dub Sailor Stars at
all, but that is an entirely different rant on why that series should
never be dubbed. Still, if CWI wants to
look like it is doing a good job among fans and colleagues, then it
must buckle down and become more
accurate with writing. Sailormoon SuperS may be the only chance they
have to redeem themselves in this
area. Don’t squander it.
Comments on this article can be sent to: DQBunny.
