"Any card—so long as it exists—has a power that is needed."

frosty-boy:

yugiohfacts:

Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL - The Other English Dub

(AV Sync is off; treat it as a podcast if you will)

“Among the guests of the live stream was Kristi Reed, a veteran of the anime and video game industries for over 10 years and who directed and wrote Durarara!! and Persona 4: The Animation. Reed provided some insight into the much whispered-about Los Angeles dub of Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal, clips of which have only been shown at Armageddon Expo 2012 in Melbourne and Auckland.

Prior to the conclusion of the Yu-Gi-Oh! lawsuit last year, the Japanese licensors of Yu-Gi-Oh! were confident of their chances at triumphing in court and taking back the rights to the franchise. Ignoring the court’s warnings not to exercise the rights to a product that it hadn’t yet secured, ADK proceeded to produce its own version of Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal. ADK tapped Reed to direct the series with an L.A.-based cast, including Johnny Yong Bosch (Yuma), Vic Mignogna (Shark), Richard Cansino (Bronk), Cassandra Morris, Sam Riegel, and Liam O’Brien. After nine months, the result was a full-fledged product that was ready for the airwaves.

“We cast it, we recorded up to 26 episodes of it, we stripped out the music, completely recomposed to picture with two amazing composers, re-sound designed it, reanimated some sequences, and it was one of the most big-budgeted things I’ve ever worked on as far as anime goes,” Reed explained. Oh, and Yuma actually says “Kattobing” in this version, haha.

Dissatisfied with 4Kids’ work and not wanting to do business with it any more, ADK bent over backwards to make sure the L.A. team did well and were happy working on Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal. Reed described how ADK sent the L.A. team hard drives full of all of the animation layers and After Effect files, giving the American producers full rein to easily edit the video as they needed. Did they want to fix the mouth flaps to better fit the English dialogue? No problem! Did they need to edit an image so the network censors didn’t get on their case? Simple!

Within the American anime production industry, obtaining such resources from the Japanese studios is completely unheard of. The studios are very protective of their properties (and who wouldn’t be?) and licensees regularly need to adapt within the confines of the animation as it is presented.

Of course, we know how the lawsuit ultimately turned out. The Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal anime by 4Kids and Konami with the New York-based cast remains the de facto version of the show, while the version with the L.A.-based cast gathers dust inside a box.”

I NEED MORE OF THIS IN MY LIFE

I’m still trying to get over the fact that ZeXal’s apparently going to be 300 episodes long…

But this would’ve been really cool to see if 4Kids hadn’t won that trial.  Not so fond of the “rescoring” thing, but based on how she described it, it would’ve probably been better done.

Still, ADK prooobably shouldn’t have ignored those warnings.  Would’ve probably saved them a crapload of money.

Also, Yuma sounding like Lelouch would’ve been… interesting…

(via pyrooar)