Blog:Y'know, looking back at 4Kids...

Since has been going downhill and has somehow become the worst company in anime history (though I still watch their dubs), I think it's time we all looked back at 4Kids and all the things they did for us... except for all those dumb edits they put in anime, the worst offender being One Piece.

When I was like 6 or 7, I first learned of 4Kids when I saw their logo after the credits of each episode in the first PokeMon anime (specifically the Kanto region), and later on in life, I also watched another anime dubbed by 4Kids called Yugioh! on Kids WB.

In 2002, I first learned of 4Kids's saturday morning called "FoxBox" (before it was renamed "4Kids TV") from a Nintendo Power magazine which had a short comic with images from an episode from Kirby: Right Back At Ya! and then in my final years of elementary school, the class had posters each with a show that currently aired on FoxBox at the time like Sonic X, Kirby: Right Back At Ya!, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle (the show from 2003), and Shaman King, which encouraged me even more to watch the channel, and then I finally did, and fell in love with the channel with shows that I remember the most like Sonic X, Winx Club, Kirby, Ninja Turtles, Tokyo Mew Mew (which 4Kids renamed "Mew Mew Power"), and One Piece.

As a matter of fact, despite their notoriety for americanizing anime, 4Kids' saturday morning block was one of the things that helped get into anime (mostly because of One Piece), the other being Toonami (again, mostly because of Dragon Ball Z), which was on Cartoon Network at the time. In fact, Saturday was a fun day for me to watch cartoons, like, 4Kids TV in the morning, and Toonami at night.

Sometime in 2006, during my last years in Middle School, I sorta just dropped out of 4Kids TV, 'cause I thought it was starting to go downhill for a while, and I stuck to watching shows during the week (and weekends) as usual and began watching some of them On Demand, though in 2009, I did go back to watching 4Kids TV at least one more time when I watched Turtles Forever, which was basically the series finale of the 2003 Ninja Turtles series.

During my High School years (specifically as a Sophmore) in 2007, after investing in more mature anime like Bleach, Inuyasha and Death Note, I had discovered that 4Kids was ruining anime, including One Piece, by changing the background music, americanizing names and food, and changing firearms to squirt guns. As someone who had recently developed an interest in mature anime at the time, this turned me against the company, thus nearly ruining my childhood days in elementary and middle school. Though, this didn't effect my love for the Ninja Turtle show from 2003.

However, as years went by, I started to become more and more nostalgic of all the times I watched FoxBox (then 4Kids TV), and the fact that, again, despite their edits, the block was one of the reasons why I got into anime, because as a kid, those were some of the best years of my life.

Like I said, now that Funimation has become even worse than 4Kids and is no longer my favorite dub company, I think it's time for us to appreciate the latter company, because without them, we wouldn't have had that epic theme song for the first PokeMon and even it's cheesy (yet enjoyable) PokeRap. They even contributed to the Sonic franchise with its "Gotta Go Fast" meme (a quote from 4Kids' Sonic X theme), and some pretty good performances (in my opinion) like Jason Griffith as Sonic and Shadow, Dan Green as Knuckles, and Mike Pollock as Eggman, who still voices that role to this day. Plus, 4Kids had of great voice actors like Veronica Taylor, Sam Riegel, Mike Pollock, and Michael Sinterniklaas. Hell, some of these people are still in the voice acting business, despite the closure of 4Kids.

Bottom line: I still resent this company for what they did to the anime they dubbed, but I'm still thankful for them for all the things that made me who I am today.