Quoted By:
Found more stuff about Masakazu Kubo, the ShoPro rep for Pokemon. Source is picrel, 188-191.
>But Kubo’s and others’ missteps along the way illustrate his larger point about the future of anime and manga as global products. It’s not enough, he says, simply to find a partner in America and let go of the reins. In order to reap the profits they deserve, and appeal to a wider swath of the American population...Some degree of localization, Kubo believes, is inevitable. “For example, I tell our people working in the U.S. to localize our work so that it will be funny—and drop any dirty jokes. Japanese people don’t really understand what’s funny in the U.S. For example, I have no idea why ‘Sponge Bob’ is funny. But we want the U.S. kids to laugh, and we want their moms to laugh as well.”
>Pokemon was a Japanese idea exported to the United States. But Shogakukan and its Japanese partners are known in the anime industry for having lost millions to their U.S. distributor, a company called 4Kids. Kubo’s explanation of the 4Kids affair and its recent acrimonious end should serve as a case study, a hard lesson for Japanese anime producers seeking to do future business in the United States.
In particular, ShoPro and the Japanese licensors got no money from the media rights. That went to 4Kids. So when the license was up, TPC took the media rights back. That all is old news, but there's a funnier part:
>His company cannot completely break its ties to 4Kids, Kubo explains, partly because they can’t change the voice-over actors now wedded to the title’s characters.
The book was published in 2006, so the interview with Kubo probably happened in 2005. The author can reflect on 4Kids losing the license, but probably didn't know at that point that the VAs would be replaced. That wouldn't become news until March 2006. It lends credence to Masamitsu Hidaka's 2008 interview where he was surprised that the cast had changed, saying "we don't do that in Japan."
