#they did make a promo for a blimp at the end of a montage of great earthquake and tsunami moments so like 🤷🏻‍♀️

[lovecolibri]

KR went too dark and depressing and didn't give the character moments the show relies on to smooth over those hard things with some heart (aka all the good talks she insists happen off screen like the Bobby/Chim and Eddie/Chim talks when Maddie left, Eddie's apology to Bobby, Buck talking to Bobby to come sit with Eddie, the Buck/Chim talk etc), so now it seems like she wants to swing hard the other way. Which will probably mean lots of emergencies, more "gross" emergencies, and one-liner quips while still missing the mark on what has always been at the heart of the show because ultimately she has shown over 2 seasons of being in charge, that her idea of what the show should be is not what fans and the general audience always loved and enjoyed about the show and what made it stand out from other procedural shows.

You can only bank on so much good will from the audience. Most people let a lot of things slide in season 4 because of Covid and filming restrictions, but season 5 was an inconsistent mess where the few bright spots were when the show remembered to focus on its mains and even those weren't handled as well as they could have been. Eddie's arc was consistently the only thing getting positive reviews and his big decision, as well as Maddie and May's, that 5b set up all happened off screen. Hen and Karen's vow renewal was a montage in the last couple minutes of the episode with multiple cut aways to other things and the family we know and love was either not there or not sitting together, while the episode wasted time on pointless emergencies (all season actually but especially egregious here). The good will the show built up with the audience over the first 3 seasons was at its breaking point after 5x11 so them presenting an opening emergency needed to capture the audience's interest again.

This....did not. And it might end up being super cool and they might pull off something great! But they shouldn't be shocked that people are "meh" about this idea and unwilling to blindly trust the show is going to deliver, especially seeing KR still labeled as the showrunner. And doubly especially after seeing that article with her saying they went too dark last season as if she wasn't the one at the helm, and then refused to course correct for 5b after all the feedback and requests for the focus to be back on the mains. Instead, she added another character who wasn't needed at all to pull even MORE focus from the mains and we ended up with more emergency filler time because they had to cut 99% of that storyline 🙄

People are allowed to call the show out for burning up their good will, under-delivering, and leaving someone in charge who has proven over two seasons that she still doesn't understand the heart of the show. People are allowed to want to wait and see before getting excited about a storyline that in comparison with seasons 2 and 3, and after season 5's was SO underwhelming, looks like the set up for more of the same. 🤷🏻‍♀️

#911 #911 spoilers #it might turn out fine or even be really good! #but i would rather be pleasantly surprised than utterly underwhelmed #after they bungled the blackout so hard for the season opener is it any wonder that people aren't excited for a blimp? #it could be a red herring too but i don't think the promo team is that smart #they did make a promo for a blimp at the end of a montage of great earthquake and tsunami moments so like 🤷🏻‍♀️

[thatguywiththecoydog]

Anpanman: Apple Boy and Everyone's Hope (2014)

Introduction

Fox's primary free-to-use streaming service, Tubi, had announced that they would be picking up at least 10 of the Anpanman movies to be released in English and Spanish back last October, with them slated for a fall 2020 release. This never happened, so many fans of the Anpanman franchise that spoke native English or Spanish would have to wait a little longer for dubs of these movies to come out.

The delay of these movie dubs went unannounced, leading fans to speculate that the dub was either in limbo or just silently canceled. This was until the first of them was released on April 15, 2021, with no announcement, or even complete details on who is dubbing them or the cast list. This had fans believing for a short while that the dub had taken a bit longer to assure its quality, but as you will soon read, this was most likely not the case.

Naturally, fans were excited as this was the first time these movies would see an official dubbed release in the west. There were other dubs of the franchise in English and Spanish, such as an English dub of the television series made for India that aired on Pogo, and a Spanish made in Spain sometime in the 1990s. However, these dubs are hard to come by and there are no official ways to watch these dubs in North America, as far as I'm aware.

Promo for the Indian Pogo dub posted by @doraedoramichan2021 on YouTube: https://youtu.be/oxAx5EEdX_4

So now we have an official dub of one of the movies that can be watched at no charge with ads. Joy!

Plot synopsis (spoilers below)

The plot starts with Dokin (spelled as "Dokeen" in the dub) and Horrorman (dubbed as "Horror") as they read a book of fairy tales, landing on Snow White. They end up accidentally releasing a shadowy figure from the book as it flies off into the darkness.

Meanwhile, Melonpanna's and Creampanda's (spelled "Cream Panda" in the dub) class are making sketches of the ocean. This is where Baikinman comes in to cause trouble for them with his giant crab robot. Anpanman rushes in from the blue to beat the tar out of Baikinman to save the day as the theme song plays in the background.

After that, we cut to the movie's other titular character, Apple Boy, attempting to fly his hot air balloon over the ocean. After the balloon falls to the ocean, he is swept away by the current.

A whale finds him dehydrated and floating lifeless in the ocean, where he gives him to Anpanman so he can help. After offering a piece of his anpan head to Apple Boy, he takes him to Uncle Jam's bakery, where Uncle Jam and Batako let him stay while they wait for a new shipment of apples from SL-Man.

Back at Baikinman's lair, he discovers that the book of fairy tales was being read by Dokeen and Horror. Looking very worried, he explains to the two of them that he was told never to open that book.

Anpanman, Melonpanna, and Cream Panda find SL-Man with the apples, Baikinman comes by to ruin the apples with his giant caterpillar robot. After Anpanman slows him down, Melonpanna and Cream Panda take SL-Man to the bakery.

Uncle Jam and Batako receive the apples and make them into apple juice. They give the juice to Apple Boy which he quickly drinks and rejuvenates from.

As Anpanman is still fighting Baikinman, Melonpanna and Cream Panda come back with Apple Boy for assistance. Apple Boy ends up beating him by planting an instantly-growing apple seed on the robot's tongue, where Anpanman then punches him into the next time zone.

That evening at the bakery, Apple Boy explains to the crew, with Shokupanman (dubbed as Bread-head Man) and Currypanman there as well, that he needs his balloon to search for the fabled magic apple seeds that can apparently grow the biggest apples anyone has ever seen. Anpanman, Mellonpanna, and Cream Panda help him search for the tree that gives off the magic seeds, while Bread-head Man and Currypanman search for the Apple Balloon. With no luck in finding the tree, they return to the bakery.

As the heroes in the bakery are setting off to find Appleina, an apple girl who might have clues as to where one can find the magic seeds, Horror informs Baikinman and Dokeen of the whole situation through a mock TV newscast.

Once at Appleina's, she shows the crew (and by extension the young audience this movie caters to) how to grow large apples. After many hardships of growing the trees, they finally blossom. Just as they are admiring their hard work, a bunch of bats swoop in and suck the life out of all the other apple trees around them. Unrelated to this, Baikinman attempts to steal all the apples for himself.

At this point, the bats go together to form the wich from the Snow White book that Dokeen and Horror were reading at the beginning of the film, revealing that she was the shadowy figure at the beginning of the movie that escaped from the book.

The witch turns everyone into moldy apples for no other reason than she is evil. The only ones left standing are Apple Boy and Appleina. Uncle Jam and Batako rush to bake Anpanman a new anpan head so he can turn back from apple form and be powered up enough to beat the witch. However, the witch destroys the Anpanman Blimp's oven, meaning they can't bake the head. Apple Boy stuns the witch with the power of a magic apple that he ended up growing. This also bakes the cold head into a perfectly cooked one, giving Uncle Jam and Batako the chance to turn Anpanman back to normal.

They successfully do this and Anpanman beats the witch back into the storybook, as the movie ends and everyone sings about apples.

My opinions

Before you say it, I am fully aware this movie is made for young children, but that is no excuse not to have a quality movie in my opinion. If anything, kids deserve more good content so they can learn and remember seeing that content for years to come. It just makes me feel bad for these children who watch movies that don't have much substance purely because they are "made for children."

The movie itself

The movie is average at best, and boring at worst. I did type out a pretty large plot synopsis for this movie, making it sound like a lot, but there really was not as much as you would think. This movie is only 46 minutes in total too, so there really should have been more here. Like, there was some emotional stuff going on with Apple Boy back on the Apple Planet he came from, but it's never really relevant to the story, nor the series as a whole because of him being made for this movie and only this movie. The movie also has a surprising amount of filler. Like, the part where I briefly mention Anpanman looking for the tree is a montage in the movie that lasts about two minutes, along with a scene where Apple Boy falls off a cliff, which is also not relevant to the main plot. I want to say a good quarter of this movie in total was filler, so we only have about 33 minutes of actual plot.

The writing that is there is also broken. I believe that the most entertaining part about this series is the series villains, Baikinman, Dokeen, and Horror. They don't make too many appearances in this movie to serve as comic relief, rather, Baikinman feels shoved in here to serve as more padding to make that over-40-minute time slot. There are also parts of the movie that make absolutely no sense under any perspective, not just an outsider's. Like, why does giving Anpanman a new head suddenly transform him from a moldy apple back to normal?

Overall, I feel as though both adults and children would be bored to death by this movie. 3/10.

Dubbing quality

If the movie itself wasn't soleless enough, the dubbing somehow makes this worse.

The movie was dubbed by Macias Group, a Florida-based studio that is best known for dubbing English shows into Spanish but does have some English dubbing in their catalog.

They had hired voice actors that I have not even heard of, nor do I think anyone else has. This doesn't make the dubbing automatically bad, in fact, a no-name cast can be quite good if given the right direction. However, this cast I feel did not give enough life to the characters. Some characters sound fine, like Horror or Dokeen, but others sound like the actor is struggling to put on a good performance, like Baikinman.

The characters also tend to speak in a way I like to call "Dora the Explorer Syndrome." It's kind of hard to explain what this is over text, but characters will talk extremely slowly for the young children, along with sounding considerably condescending. Watch the first two minutes of a Dora episode and compare it to this movie and you'll hear what I mean.

The voice acting itself sounds a bit bland and flat, almost like the actors didn't really care for their roles and were just doing it for a small paycheck. I don't blame them, really. An obscure series that they most likely haven't even heard of streaming exclusively on an unpopular streaming service most likely won't pay too high certainly wouldn't get me motivated. To do something like this, it needs to pay high enough or be on a service where it will get more notoriety, and most importantly, the people need to have a passion for the project and voice acting in general, neither of which sounded like they were here. I also heard a bit of recording echo, but I'm going to chalk that up to the actors recording at home rather than a booth due to COVID restrictions. If the dub had a bit more heart, then I probably would have liked it that much more.

I feel as though some of the name changes could have been better. Like some were unnecessary like Dokin to Dokeen or Horrorman to Horror, but things like Baikinman and Anpanman were kept the same, which probably needed the most explanation to an English audience.

The iconic songs from the Japanese version were also translated to English, which is a rarity in 2021 dubbing land. However, the songs sound off from their Japanese counterparts. If you were to listen to the theme song (https://youtu.be/3qSiSWTJkzw) or the closing song (https://youtu.be/c4DY7xmLlQI), you hear that they are bouncy, happy, and catchy. The English versions sound a bit off-beat to the rhythm these songs are supposed to be in. Now, I don't mind if the rhythm is a bit different so it can be optimized to the English language better, but here, it's so off it makes the songs sound worse. Most likely, the singers were given no direction and only listened to the Japanese version a few times. Not only that, but the lyrics are nearly directly translated from Japanese, also messing with the flow of the songs. When listening to the Japanese musical tracks, it almost makes you wonder what could have been.

Overall, the dubbing is not too good and probably could have done better either with a different cast with more motivation, or a whole 'nother studio behind the wheel.

Final thoughts and other recommendations

If you do want another English dub of Anpanman that I think is miles better, watch the fandub by Thomas Blue on Fandubbers Unite, starring myself as Anpanman (renamed to Bean-bun Man) and @clwsblog as Baikinman (renamed to Cavity Creep). It has better writing, better acting, and better songs. Both kids and adults alike will enjoy this version. Before you ask me, no, there is no bias here. I truly believe we did it better and for no pay!

Here is a link to Thomas Blue's dub:

https://fandubbersunite.weebly.com/beanbunman.html

If you really want to watch the official English though, even after my warnings, then go ahead. Here's a link to the Tubi listing:

https://tubitv.com/movies/592033/anpanman-apple-boy-and-everyone-s-hope?start=true

#anpanman #anime #tubi #english dub