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

kaiowut99:

The One With the Endgame Setup (and Underwear)

With Professor Daitokuji missing, worries amount that he may have lost to the Seven Stars, so Judai and the others head to a dark forest to look for him.  Elsewhere, Asuka pursues a missing Fubuki only to duel a mysterious duelist and the last of the Seven Stars, but their overwhelming power gap leads to her defeat.  Manjoume also pursues clues about Daitokuji only to meet the mysterious duelist; they duel but he loses.  Is Daitokuji safe? And what is the identity of this mysterious duelist?

*crashes in weeks late with Starbucks* WHAT’S HAPPENING Y’ALL

But really, apologies for the delay in getting this finalization done for you all! Truth is, 44 was done a while ago, but because this is leading to one of my top Season 1 duels, I wanted to put it out alongside 45 and 46 for a nice triple-feature… but some animation fixes I worked on for 45, combined with work and SOCIAL ACTIVITY happening IRL, made me take longer than expected to finish it up and then knock out 46, which I just did the other day. 😒

This is a good build-up episode for the main Amnael duel coming up in 45 and 46, though! Detective Thunder reprises his duties and we get some shots of a shadowed Amnael being a silent badass.  Poor Mrs. Tome getting mistaken for evil though; she’s one of the purest in this show.  The animation work is also great this episode.

Enjoy, folks! Check out the post with 45 and 46 here~

kaiowut99:

The One With the Evil Final Exam - Part 1

Six of the keys to the seven Spirit Gates have been used.  Judai heads to the Abandoned Dorm, where he finds Daitokuji’s mummified corpse.  The last of the Seven Stars, Amnael, shows himself, and a duel between Judai and Amnael begins.  His foe has a deck based around alchemy, and each time Judai attacks with his multi-Attribute E-Heroes, he’s stopped by the Permanent Trap Elemental Absorber.  Monsters also continue to emerge from Alchemic Kettle - Chaos Distill, waging direct attacks on him…

GX Episode 46: An Earth/Water/Fire/Wind Fusion! Elixirer 

(The One With the Evil Final Exam - Part 2)

The duel between Judai and Amnael continues, and it turns out that Amnael is Daitokuji, as is the mummified corpse.  He confesses that his current form is the result of the power of alchemy allowing him to attach his soul to a doll body.  The field of battle changes as he uses his Macrocosmos Permanent Trap and Helios the Primordial Sun and his second Sun, taking them into outer space, where the planets surrounding them have Asuka, Manjoume, and Fubuki locked away.  Judai takes hits from Planet Alignment just as the third Sun shows itself…

Here’re episodes 45 and 46! If you haven’t already seen, I posted 44 yesterday.  Here, we see the Judai/Amnael duel play out, as Judai deals with the issue of Elemental Absorber blocking his attacks, the revelation that Amnael’s the professor they’ve been worried sick about, and their duel reaching new heights–literally–as things burn up in outer space.  It’s a pretty fun duel, Amnael’s Alchemy Beasts are neat, the whole duel is chock-full of alchemy references–for those newer to the fandom, I recommend some of The Mad Poet’s writings on alchemy references in GX from *checks notes* nine years ago whaaat for some fun trivia–right down to the name Judai gives Elixirer’s attack, “Fusionist Magistery” (”Magistery” referencing the Philosopher’s Stone in meaning, and when attached to “Fusionist” completes Daitokuji’s attribution of alchemy to fusion).

The animation work in 46 is also good, and the episode feels like it gets better once they’re in space; things seem pretty well-paced, the music is on-point, and with the lessons Judai’s made to take in from the duel, this duel stands out among those in Season 1.

However, the dub seriously did this series of episodes dirty–most notably in 46.  Where Amnael here is relating alchemy to Judai’s use of Fusion and alluding to his making friends as a form of alchemy, dub!Amnael plants the idea of Jaden’s duels being fixed to get him to this point where his key would be on the line.  It’s a bad writing change because, despite his life being on the line, Daitokuji is still there and is still a Professor to Judai, and he wants to see him do better; 4Kids instead ends up making him look much more antagonistic only to try and undo it towards the end (writing out Daitokuji’s explanation of alchemy’s true use in the process).  I’ll have to get around to a dub/sub comparison for this one…

Some other Translation Notes that aren’t necessary but do enhance the viewing experience:

Amnael’s attack name for Helios Duo Megistus, “Flames of Vulcanus,” refers to Vulcan, the god of fire (including the fire of volcanoes, deserts, metalworking, and the forge) in ancient Roman religion and myth. 

“What lies below is as above, just as what lies above is as below.” was me making a more aesthetically pleasing subtitle out of “as above, so below,” which is a phrase from Hermeticism; “The actual text of that maxim, as translated by Dennis W. Hauck from The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, is: “That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above corresponds to that which is Below, to accomplish the miracle of the One Thing.” Thus, whatever happens on any level of reality (physical, emotional, or mental) also happens on every other level.This principle, however, is more often used in the sense of the microcosm and the macrocosm. The microcosm is oneself, and the macrocosm is the universe. The macrocosm is as the microcosm and vice versa; within each lies the other, and through understanding one (usually the microcosm) a person may understand the other.^[36]“

As I said in 44′s post, the animation fixes I was working on for 45 were part of the reason these were delayed (along with SOCIAL ACTIVITY), but it was good to get them done; 45 saw five fixes (three card-related), while 46 had three (one card-related).  List below the cut, as usual.

Enjoy, everyone! Thanks for your patience if you were looking forward to these.  With these done, I’ll start prepping a few things for 47 now, but I’ll actually take a little break to work on the next 5D’s Dub-Uncut for episode 22 (I may squeeze in some scripting here/there tho).  Let’s see how I can improve that mess…

Keep reading

kaiowut99:

The One With the Evil Final Exam - Part 1

Six of the keys to the seven Spirit Gates have been used.  Judai heads to the Abandoned Dorm, where he finds Daitokuji’s mummified corpse.  The last of the Seven Stars, Amnael, shows himself, and a duel between Judai and Amnael begins.  His foe has a deck based around alchemy, and each time Judai attacks with his multi-Attribute E-Heroes, he’s stopped by the Permanent Trap Elemental Absorber.  Monsters also continue to emerge from Alchemic Kettle - Chaos Distill, waging direct attacks on him…

GX Episode 46: An Earth/Water/Fire/Wind Fusion! Elixirer 

(The One With the Evil Final Exam - Part 2)

The duel between Judai and Amnael continues, and it turns out that Amnael is Daitokuji, as is the mummified corpse.  He confesses that his current form is the result of the power of alchemy allowing him to attach his soul to a doll body.  The field of battle changes as he uses his Macrocosmos Permanent Trap and Helios the Primordial Sun and his second Sun, taking them into outer space, where the planets surrounding them have Asuka, Manjoume, and Fubuki locked away.  Judai takes hits from Planet Alignment just as the third Sun shows itself…

Here’re episodes 45 and 46! If you haven’t already seen, I posted 44 yesterday.  Here, we see the Judai/Amnael duel play out, as Judai deals with the issue of Elemental Absorber blocking his attacks, the revelation that Amnael’s the professor they’ve been worried sick about, and their duel reaching new heights–literally–as things burn up in outer space.  It’s a pretty fun duel, Amnael’s Alchemy Beasts are neat, the whole duel is chock-full of alchemy references–for those newer to the fandom, I recommend some of The Mad Poet’s writings on alchemy references in GX from *checks notes* nine years ago whaaat for some fun trivia–right down to the name Judai gives Elixirer’s attack, “Fusionist Magistery” (”Magistery” referencing the Philosopher’s Stone in meaning, and when attached to “Fusionist” completes Daitokuji’s attribution of alchemy to fusion).

The animation work in 46 is also good, and the episode feels like it gets better once they’re in space; things seem pretty well-paced, the music is on-point, and with the lessons Judai’s made to take in from the duel, this duel stands out among those in Season 1.

However, the dub seriously did this series of episodes dirty–most notably in 46.  Where Amnael here is relating alchemy to Judai’s use of Fusion and alluding to his making friends as a form of alchemy, dub!Amnael plants the idea of Jaden’s duels being fixed to get him to this point where his key would be on the line.  It’s a bad writing change because, despite his life being on the line, Daitokuji is still there and is still a Professor to Judai, and he wants to see him do better; 4Kids instead ends up making him look much more antagonistic only to try and undo it towards the end (writing out Daitokuji’s explanation of alchemy’s true use in the process).  I’ll have to get around to a dub/sub comparison for this one…

Some other Translation Notes that aren’t necessary but do enhance the viewing experience:

Amnael’s attack name for Helios Duo Megistus, “Flames of Vulcanus,” refers to Vulcan, the god of fire (including the fire of volcanoes, deserts, metalworking, and the forge) in ancient Roman religion and myth. 

“What lies below is as above, just as what lies above is as below.” was me making a more aesthetically pleasing subtitle out of “as above, so below,” which is a phrase from Hermeticism; “The actual text of that maxim, as translated by Dennis W. Hauck from The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, is: “That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above corresponds to that which is Below, to accomplish the miracle of the One Thing.” Thus, whatever happens on any level of reality (physical, emotional, or mental) also happens on every other level.This principle, however, is more often used in the sense of the microcosm and the macrocosm. The microcosm is oneself, and the macrocosm is the universe. The macrocosm is as the microcosm and vice versa; within each lies the other, and through understanding one (usually the microcosm) a person may understand the other.^[36]“

As I said in 44′s post, the animation fixes I was working on for 45 were part of the reason these were delayed (along with SOCIAL ACTIVITY), but it was good to get them done; 45 saw five fixes (three card-related), while 46 had three (one card-related).  List below the cut, as usual.

Enjoy, everyone! Thanks for your patience if you were looking forward to these.  With these done, I’ll start prepping a few things for 47 now, but I’ll actually take a little break to work on the next 5D’s Dub-Uncut for episode 22 (I may squeeze in some scripting here/there tho).  Let’s see how I can improve that mess…

Keep reading

kaiowut99:

The One With the Endgame Setup (and Underwear)

With Professor Daitokuji missing, worries amount that he may have lost to the Seven Stars, so Judai and the others head to a dark forest to look for him.  Elsewhere, Asuka pursues a missing Fubuki only to duel a mysterious duelist and the last of the Seven Stars, but their overwhelming power gap leads to her defeat.  Manjoume also pursues clues about Daitokuji only to meet the mysterious duelist; they duel but he loses.  Is Daitokuji safe? And what is the identity of this mysterious duelist?

*crashes in weeks late with Starbucks* WHAT’S HAPPENING Y’ALL

But really, apologies for the delay in getting this finalization done for you all! Truth is, 44 was done a while ago, but because this is leading to one of my top Season 1 duels, I wanted to put it out alongside 45 and 46 for a nice triple-feature… but some animation fixes I worked on for 45, combined with work and SOCIAL ACTIVITY happening IRL, made me take longer than expected to finish it up and then knock out 46, which I just did the other day. 😒

This is a good build-up episode for the main Amnael duel coming up in 45 and 46, though! Detective Thunder reprises his duties and we get some shots of a shadowed Amnael being a silent badass.  Poor Mrs. Tome getting mistaken for evil though; she’s one of the purest in this show.  The animation work is also great this episode.

Enjoy, folks! Check out the post with 45 and 46 here~

kaiowut99:

A Vengeful Bommer – The Sorrowful Trap, Chariot Pile

Everybody, listen! (or at least everyone interested anyway OTL)

A bit later than I’d hoped, here’s dub-uncut!5D’s episode 21!

So, to catch people up, the official Spanish YGO channel on YouTube flubbed a few uploads of the 5D’s dub such that they ended up uploading a few episodes of the English dub instead of the Latin American dub (21-29)–but with none of 4Kids’s background music! Which meant that I could swoop in and re-insert the original Japanese soundtrack (which I did by matching each track to how it was looped in the episode), but I wanted to do more by also tweaking the dub itself so that not only was it matching the original footage, but the dialogue was more in line with the original dialogue timing-wise (since I couldn’t salvage much of what they changed).  Hence, the “dubbed uncut” gimmick here.

This one was… interesting.  First off, there’s how I had to figure out how to handle the cold open recap, since 20 wasn’t accidentally uploaded BGM-less.  Looking into vocal isolators, I came upon PhonicMind.com and did a test with a quick clip from 20, and it came out surprisingly well! So I got together the audio I needed into one file which I ran through PM and added it into the episode, as seen here.

As for the episode proper, well… While the duel stuff was handled about as you’d expect at this point in 4Kids’s 5D’s–actually, a bit better than average there, tbh–the plot-relevant stuff was… ugh.  They made it so the Staffer who calls up Bommer as he’s reading the email about his village instead calls up “Goodwin’s office” and is surprised to see Greiger there, who’s now “hacking into his files,” edits, in-your-face dialogue, and all.  Since I can’t exactly revoice the Staffer, I had to at least keep that, but I eliminated the in-your-face dialogue so it’s more implied that he’s in there–though as you’re watching this, you should still know it’s Bommer’s own room.  Likewise, I rearranged some of the later dialogue when he’s telling Yusei about his village and mentions the hacking to get around that “hacking” thing.  I also went ahead and translated Bommer’s computer screen to help compliment the dub-uncut thing, though it was a pain getting one of the close-ups cleaned while still keeping the perspective D: And I also thought I’d translate the Key Card sponsor bit since Crunchy still keeps them for some reason, after I cleaned up the Japanese in Photoshop.  Consider it a look at how I’d sub 5D’s, haha.

Speaking of vocal isolating, I also went and sampled some other audio to isolate: I grabbed Rally’s lines from episode 3 to vocal-isolate and echo for the flashback because Rally’s flashback line as-is had the SFX they use for the whooshing-to-and-from-flashback transitions in the dub, and as there’s only a fade as the flashback ends… Related, I also sampled Yusei’s line about summoning Turbo Booster from episode 65 to give it a proper explanation where there should be one, and I nabbed part of the dub’s Junk Warrior chant from episode 87 to throw in.  Let me know what you think about these; I didn’t think they were crazily jarring, but I’m sure you might notice it sounds a bit off compared to the rest of Yusei’s lines here, lol.

Some other modifications I made include recycling one or two “It’s my turn!” lines from Yusei and Greiger for either accuracy or ease in tweaking the SFX to match the original more, using some Duel Links audio for Yusei to the latter effect (Yusei’s “My monster attacks you directly!” to replace “Send his LP to the scrap heap!” over a split-screen SFX), adding a “Whoa!” or two from the MC from a later episode to match JP!MC a bit more, tweaking a later Greiger line to make for an effect explanation, moving a Greiger line to where there wasn’t one thanks to a break to a Card Showcase Interruption, and tweaking some Yusei lines from a later episode for an effect explanation or two.  I also had Yusei shout “Greiger!” as he rides up to stop him from going for Goodwin to match JP!Yusei; dub!Yusei just shouts “No!” which ehhh. 

The music recreation wasn’t too bad, though it did take me a bit to speed up Enemy Attack to match the episode’s use of it at the beginning.  Hopeless Battle does work here, but I still wish we had the official version 😭 I’ve already shared the properly-sped Hopeless Battle on NAC, but I’ll also share this version of Enemy Attack when I post this there.  I also did an alternate take on the Bommer scene at the end where, since “Rage” sounds a lot like “Standstill” from GX, I thought I’d see how it worked.  The answer: surprisingly well!

Overall, happy with how this came out, but lemme know what you think, folks! Going back to work on GX 44 now to get our Amnael showdown started; I’ll probably be doing 45 and 46 shortly after since it’s probably my favorite Season 1 duel.  Then I’ll work on 5D’s 22.  Stay tuned!

(via kaiowut99)

kaiowut99:

A Vengeful Bommer – The Sorrowful Trap, Chariot Pile

Everybody, listen! (or at least everyone interested anyway OTL)

A bit later than I’d hoped, here’s dub-uncut!5D’s episode 21!

So, to catch people up, the official Spanish YGO channel on YouTube flubbed a few uploads of the 5D’s dub such that they ended up uploading a few episodes of the English dub instead of the Latin American dub (21-29)–but with none of 4Kids’s background music! Which meant that I could swoop in and re-insert the original Japanese soundtrack (which I did by matching each track to how it was looped in the episode), but I wanted to do more by also tweaking the dub itself so that not only was it matching the original footage, but the dialogue was more in line with the original dialogue timing-wise (since I couldn’t salvage much of what they changed).  Hence, the “dubbed uncut” gimmick here.

This one was… interesting.  First off, there’s how I had to figure out how to handle the cold open recap, since 20 wasn’t accidentally uploaded BGM-less.  Looking into vocal isolators, I came upon PhonicMind.com and did a test with a quick clip from 20, and it came out surprisingly well! So I got together the audio I needed into one file which I ran through PM and added it into the episode, as seen here.

As for the episode proper, well… While the duel stuff was handled about as you’d expect at this point in 4Kids’s 5D’s–actually, a bit better than average there, tbh–the plot-relevant stuff was… ugh.  They made it so the Staffer who calls up Bommer as he’s reading the email about his village instead calls up “Goodwin’s office” and is surprised to see Greiger there, who’s now “hacking into his files,” edits, in-your-face dialogue, and all.  Since I can’t exactly revoice the Staffer, I had to at least keep that, but I eliminated the in-your-face dialogue so it’s more implied that he’s in there–though as you’re watching this, you should still know it’s Bommer’s own room.  Likewise, I rearranged some of the later dialogue when he’s telling Yusei about his village and mentions the hacking to get around that “hacking” thing.  I also went ahead and translated Bommer’s computer screen to help compliment the dub-uncut thing, though it was a pain getting one of the close-ups cleaned while still keeping the perspective D: And I also thought I’d translate the Key Card sponsor bit since Crunchy still keeps them for some reason, after I cleaned up the Japanese in Photoshop.  Consider it a look at how I’d sub 5D’s, haha.

Speaking of vocal isolating, I also went and sampled some other audio to isolate: I grabbed Rally’s lines from episode 3 to vocal-isolate and echo for the flashback because Rally’s flashback line as-is had the SFX they use for the whooshing-to-and-from-flashback transitions in the dub, and as there’s only a fade as the flashback ends… Related, I also sampled Yusei’s line about summoning Turbo Booster from episode 65 to give it a proper explanation where there should be one, and I nabbed part of the dub’s Junk Warrior chant from episode 87 to throw in.  Let me know what you think about these; I didn’t think they were crazily jarring, but I’m sure you might notice it sounds a bit off compared to the rest of Yusei’s lines here, lol.

Some other modifications I made include recycling one or two “It’s my turn!” lines from Yusei and Greiger for either accuracy or ease in tweaking the SFX to match the original more, using some Duel Links audio for Yusei to the latter effect (Yusei’s “My monster attacks you directly!” to replace “Send his LP to the scrap heap!” over a split-screen SFX), adding a “Whoa!” or two from the MC from a later episode to match JP!MC a bit more, tweaking a later Greiger line to make for an effect explanation, moving a Greiger line to where there wasn’t one thanks to a break to a Card Showcase Interruption, and tweaking some Yusei lines from a later episode for an effect explanation or two.  I also had Yusei shout “Greiger!” as he rides up to stop him from going for Goodwin to match JP!Yusei; dub!Yusei just shouts “No!” which ehhh. 

The music recreation wasn’t too bad, though it did take me a bit to speed up Enemy Attack to match the episode’s use of it at the beginning.  Hopeless Battle does work here, but I still wish we had the official version 😭 I’ve already shared the properly-sped Hopeless Battle on NAC, but I’ll also share this version of Enemy Attack when I post this there.  I also did an alternate take on the Bommer scene at the end where, since “Rage” sounds a lot like “Standstill” from GX, I thought I’d see how it worked.  The answer: surprisingly well!

Overall, happy with how this came out, but lemme know what you think, folks! Going back to work on GX 44 now to get our Amnael showdown started; I’ll probably be doing 45 and 46 shortly after since it’s probably my favorite Season 1 duel.  Then I’ll work on 5D’s 22.  Stay tuned!

kaiowut99:

A Vengeful Bommer – The Sorrowful Trap, Chariot Pile

Everybody, listen! (or at least everyone interested anyway OTL)

A bit later than I’d hoped, here’s dub-uncut!5D’s episode 21!

So, to catch people up, the official Spanish YGO channel on YouTube flubbed a few uploads of the 5D’s dub such that they ended up uploading a few episodes of the English dub instead of the Latin American dub (21-29)–but with none of 4Kids’s background music! Which meant that I could swoop in and re-insert the original Japanese soundtrack (which I did by matching each track to how it was looped in the episode), but I wanted to do more by also tweaking the dub itself so that not only was it matching the original footage, but the dialogue was more in line with the original dialogue timing-wise (since I couldn’t salvage much of what they changed).  Hence, the “dubbed uncut” gimmick here.

This one was… interesting.  First off, there’s how I had to figure out how to handle the cold open recap, since 20 wasn’t accidentally uploaded BGM-less.  Looking into vocal isolators, I came upon PhonicMind.com and did a test with a quick clip from 20, and it came out surprisingly well! So I got together the audio I needed into one file which I ran through PM and added it into the episode, as seen here.

As for the episode proper, well… While the duel stuff was handled about as you’d expect at this point in 4Kids’s 5D’s–actually, a bit better than average there, tbh–the plot-relevant stuff was… ugh.  They made it so the Staffer who calls up Bommer as he’s reading the email about his village instead calls up “Goodwin’s office” and is surprised to see Greiger there, who’s now “hacking into his files,” edits, in-your-face dialogue, and all.  Since I can’t exactly revoice the Staffer, I had to at least keep that, but I eliminated the in-your-face dialogue so it’s more implied that he’s in there–though as you’re watching this, you should still know it’s Bommer’s own room.  Likewise, I rearranged some of the later dialogue when he’s telling Yusei about his village and mentions the hacking to get around that “hacking” thing.  I also went ahead and translated Bommer’s computer screen to help compliment the dub-uncut thing, though it was a pain getting one of the close-ups cleaned while still keeping the perspective D: And I also thought I’d translate the Key Card sponsor bit since Crunchy still keeps them for some reason, after I cleaned up the Japanese in Photoshop.  Consider it a look at how I’d sub 5D’s, haha.

Speaking of vocal isolating, I also went and sampled some other audio to isolate: I grabbed Rally’s lines from episode 3 to vocal-isolate and echo for the flashback because Rally’s flashback line as-is had the SFX they use for the whooshing-to-and-from-flashback transitions in the dub, and as there’s only a fade as the flashback ends… Related, I also sampled Yusei’s line about summoning Turbo Booster from episode 65 to give it a proper explanation where there should be one, and I nabbed part of the dub’s Junk Warrior chant from episode 87 to throw in.  Let me know what you think about these; I didn’t think they were crazily jarring, but I’m sure you might notice it sounds a bit off compared to the rest of Yusei’s lines here, lol.

Some other modifications I made include recycling one or two “It’s my turn!” lines from Yusei and Greiger for either accuracy or ease in tweaking the SFX to match the original more, using some Duel Links audio for Yusei to the latter effect (Yusei’s “My monster attacks you directly!” to replace “Send his LP to the scrap heap!” over a split-screen SFX), adding a “Whoa!” or two from the MC from a later episode to match JP!MC a bit more, tweaking a later Greiger line to make for an effect explanation, moving a Greiger line to where there wasn’t one thanks to a break to a Card Showcase Interruption, and tweaking some Yusei lines from a later episode for an effect explanation or two.  I also had Yusei shout “Greiger!” as he rides up to stop him from going for Goodwin to match JP!Yusei; dub!Yusei just shouts “No!” which ehhh. 

The music recreation wasn’t too bad, though it did take me a bit to speed up Enemy Attack to match the episode’s use of it at the beginning.  Hopeless Battle does work here, but I still wish we had the official version 😭 I’ve already shared the properly-sped Hopeless Battle on NAC, but I’ll also share this version of Enemy Attack when I post this there.  I also did an alternate take on the Bommer scene at the end where, since “Rage” sounds a lot like “Standstill” from GX, I thought I’d see how it worked.  The answer: surprisingly well!

Overall, happy with how this came out, but lemme know what you think, folks! Going back to work on GX 44 now to get our Amnael showdown started; I’ll probably be doing 45 and 46 shortly after since it’s probably my favorite Season 1 duel.  Then I’ll work on 5D’s 22.  Stay tuned!

kaiowut99:

A Vengeful Bommer – The Sorrowful Trap, Chariot Pile

Everybody, listen! (or at least everyone interested anyway OTL)

A bit later than I’d hoped, here’s dub-uncut!5D’s episode 21!

So, to catch people up, the official Spanish YGO channel on YouTube flubbed a few uploads of the 5D’s dub such that they ended up uploading a few episodes of the English dub instead of the Latin American dub (21-29)–but with none of 4Kids’s background music! Which meant that I could swoop in and re-insert the original Japanese soundtrack (which I did by matching each track to how it was looped in the episode), but I wanted to do more by also tweaking the dub itself so that not only was it matching the original footage, but the dialogue was more in line with the original dialogue timing-wise (since I couldn’t salvage much of what they changed).  Hence, the “dubbed uncut” gimmick here.

This one was… interesting.  First off, there’s how I had to figure out how to handle the cold open recap, since 20 wasn’t accidentally uploaded BGM-less.  Looking into vocal isolators, I came upon PhonicMind.com and did a test with a quick clip from 20, and it came out surprisingly well! So I got together the audio I needed into one file which I ran through PM and added it into the episode, as seen here.

As for the episode proper, well… While the duel stuff was handled about as you’d expect at this point in 4Kids’s 5D’s–actually, a bit better than average there, tbh–the plot-relevant stuff was… ugh.  They made it so the Staffer who calls up Bommer as he’s reading the email about his village instead calls up “Goodwin’s office” and is surprised to see Greiger there, who’s now “hacking into his files,” edits, in-your-face dialogue, and all.  Since I can’t exactly revoice the Staffer, I had to at least keep that, but I eliminated the in-your-face dialogue so it’s more implied that he’s in there–though as you’re watching this, you should still know it’s Bommer’s own room.  Likewise, I rearranged some of the later dialogue when he’s telling Yusei about his village and mentions the hacking to get around that “hacking” thing.  I also went ahead and translated Bommer’s computer screen to help compliment the dub-uncut thing, though it was a pain getting one of the close-ups cleaned while still keeping the perspective D: And I also thought I’d translate the Key Card sponsor bit since Crunchy still keeps them for some reason, after I cleaned up the Japanese in Photoshop.  Consider it a look at how I’d sub 5D’s, haha.

Speaking of vocal isolating, I also went and sampled some other audio to isolate: I grabbed Rally’s lines from episode 3 to vocal-isolate and echo for the flashback because Rally’s flashback line as-is had the SFX they use for the whooshing-to-and-from-flashback transitions in the dub, and as there’s only a fade as the flashback ends… Related, I also sampled Yusei’s line about summoning Turbo Booster from episode 65 to give it a proper explanation where there should be one, and I nabbed part of the dub’s Junk Warrior chant from episode 87 to throw in.  Let me know what you think about these; I didn’t think they were crazily jarring, but I’m sure you might notice it sounds a bit off compared to the rest of Yusei’s lines here, lol.

Some other modifications I made include recycling one or two “It’s my turn!” lines from Yusei and Greiger for either accuracy or ease in tweaking the SFX to match the original more, using some Duel Links audio for Yusei to the latter effect (Yusei’s “My monster attacks you directly!” to replace “Send his LP to the scrap heap!” over a split-screen SFX), adding a “Whoa!” or two from the MC from a later episode to match JP!MC a bit more, tweaking a later Greiger line to make for an effect explanation, moving a Greiger line to where there wasn’t one thanks to a break to a Card Showcase Interruption, and tweaking some Yusei lines from a later episode for an effect explanation or two.  I also had Yusei shout “Greiger!” as he rides up to stop him from going for Goodwin to match JP!Yusei; dub!Yusei just shouts “No!” which ehhh. 

The music recreation wasn’t too bad, though it did take me a bit to speed up Enemy Attack to match the episode’s use of it at the beginning.  Hopeless Battle does work here, but I still wish we had the official version 😭 I’ve already shared the properly-sped Hopeless Battle on NAC, but I’ll also share this version of Enemy Attack when I post this there.  I also did an alternate take on the Bommer scene at the end where, since “Rage” sounds a lot like “Standstill” from GX, I thought I’d see how it worked.  The answer: surprisingly well!

Overall, happy with how this came out, but lemme know what you think, folks! Going back to work on GX 44 now to get our Amnael showdown started; I’ll probably be doing 45 and 46 shortly after since it’s probably my favorite Season 1 duel.  Then I’ll work on 5D’s 22.  Stay tuned!