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

zombiekaiba:

So today I went “oh yeah, my university library/online database access is gonna be cut off soon. I’d better hurry up and research any last important topics I wanna know about”
…..and then I spent an hour doing very important 4Kids History Research
a summary:
It’s the 80s. Reagan-era deregulation has hit TV broadcasting, and most of the laws that used to limit the amount of kid-targeted advertising stations could air have been whooshed away.
Enter My Little Pony, Transformers, Care Bears, etc. And enter the company that will be 4Kids: Leisure Concepts Inc.
Leisure Concepts is a “licensing company,” which evidently means “glorified toy marketer.” Their big claims to fame include: pitching Thundercats to Rankin Bass (and getting Thundercats toys into Burger King), and helping a mall outlet store set up its Budweiser Dog Mascot merch displays
Now it’s 1995, and the CEO of Leisure Concepts is openly, proudly talking about getting the company “vertically integrated” ajghalkhsg
Vertical integration was a form of Old Hollywood monopoly where companies like Warner Bros/MGM/Paramount owned the production (movie studios), exhibition (movie theaters), and distribution (advertising) of their movies. It was outlawed in the 50s for being Very Blatantly A Monopoly
But with all the Reaganism going on, I guess LC is confident they can get away with it lmao. They already have distribution/advertising, obviously, so they start working to assemble a production division. They’re thinking about calling it 4Kids Productions
At this point, Leisure Concepts has no intention of getting into the anime business. The first show they produce through their 4Kids arm is……a live-action Wrestlemania-style martial arts show???
Meanwhile, in 1997, a 4Kids employee takes a business trip to Japan for a toy convention, stumbles across the first few episodes of the Pokemon anime while he’s there, and goes “Dude. We could sell so many toys of this shit”
Leisure Concepts has apparently worked with Nintendo before (selling “Super Mario Bros. Christmas lights and ornaments” and “Game Boy shampoo” zkjgksgk), so they’re able to make a deal for the US licensing rights to Pokemon.
They still have zero intention of getting into anime dubbing. The deal they’re offering to the Pokemon Company is “We’ll find an American TV network for you to air your ~~20 minute toy ad~~ (ahem) show on, set you up with some nice US toy companies, and take a percentage of the profits.”
But none of the networks they try selling Pokemon to wants the Weird Japanese Animal Collecting Show. LC can’t accept that answer–they’re convinced, no matter what they naysayers think, that this is the toy-selling opportunity of the century
Finally, LC throws up their hands and goes “Fine! We have our own [brand-new, tiny] production company [that we’ve never used for anything besides making a bizarre campy martial arts show] now! If you idiots won’t take the show, we’ll dub it ourselves!”
And somehow, they manage it? They pull together enough translators/actors/etc to Dub This Damn Toy Ad practically overnight?? And apparently they get around the issue of not having a TV network by offering the first few episodes to stations for free???
Anyway, the next thing anyone knows, MSNBC is running segments on Pokemania, Pokemon is on the cover of Time Magazine, and every children’s anime producer in Japan is suddenly flinging their shows at the feet of 4Kids (which has literally never breathed in the anime business’s direction before this).
And that’s how 4Kids faceplanted into becoming the world’s most (in)famous dubbing company when they Just Wanted To Sell Toys

lethargicactionhero:

erykahisnotokay:
runawayhurricane:
totalharmonycycle:
southernrepublicangirl:
Ah the free market at work.
(Similar to when I went to CVS to pickup a 90$ prescription and they had their own generic version for 7.99).
This is important!
Tell your Friends.
I can’t believe some insurances quit covering them 😐
From Slate:
The generic Adrenaclick will cost $109.99 for two doses, compared with $649.99 for the same amount of drug in an EpiPen. That’s good news, both for financial and safety reasons: STAT reported last year that some parents and institutions had begun filling up syringes with epinephrine as a cost-cutting measure, a DIY solution that could pose great risk to the children who may have eventually needed injections. A more affordable alternative will help ensure safer epinephrine injections.
That’s assuming, though, that the people who need these devices know exactly what to ask for when they’re sitting in their doctors’ offices. Otherwise, they’ll still be stuck with the overpriced product. Here’s why: The mechanism by which Adrenaclick injects the drug is slightly different from EpiPen’s mechanism, so the Food and Drug Administration has ruled that the two are not therapeutically equivalent. That distinction is important because it means a prescription for an EpiPen cannot be filled with Adrenaclick. If you want the cheaper option, you have to have an Adrenaclick prescription.
You must ask your doctor for an Adrenaclick prescription!
I also found a coupon from Impax on 0.15mg and 0.3mg epinephrine injection, USP auto-injectors, which appear to be the generic version of Adrenaclick; these coupons cover up to $100 per pack for 3 packs of these injectors (6 total injectors).
Some customers may be automatically eligible for $100 off the retail price thus only paying $10 for a pack, but this may be good backup for those who for whatever reason do not meet those requirements.
Pass this information on, potentially save a life.

(via chibicrow)

5D’s 23 - Dub-Uncut Edition (Ft. Japanese OST?! WIP #1)

So… a neat little find happened where one of the official YGO channels–the Latin America one?–had uploaded the 4Kids-dubbed episodes, except that there were a few without the dub’s music–and in GX’s case, some without sound effects, too! (which led to this bit of gold by @yamimario fsejfklsdfjksdl)

5D’s 22-26 were part of it, and since I love #23, I thought I’d give restoring the Japanese OST a try first, like my project with ARC-V #10 but much cleaner. And like it, it’s becoming a dub-uncut deal where I’m tweaking the dialogue some to make it match the Japanese script more–not so much in accuracy (though in 23′s case, it helps it’s already somewhat accurately dubbed) as in timing, so people aren’t talking when they shouldn’t be.

For this part, I spliced in the respective audio from 22 to go over the quick recap (save for some of Koda’s whimpering, for which I just resorted to the Japanese version for a bit because I hate Akiza’s line there ~~she’s so insufferable this early in the dub~~; also recycled a later line for “This might hurt!”), and recycled some lines from 22 over the new footage that the dub cut out here. And I’m tweaking the OST as released on the Sound Duels to recreate the soundtrack; you might hear a weird thing around where Yaeger walks out, and that’s from how they pitched-down the track there, which I tried to recreate but Vegas couldn’t make it so fine-tunedly. So far, it’s turning out great (I’m up to after the Aki/Divine scene), and this part isn’t final yet (want to see if I can get a Jack grunt or Godwin “heh” somewhere), but let me know what you think!

Special thanks to @stardustdragon123 for sharing their findings over on NAC, and @skelenator-rainbow for giving me a heads-up! :D