Was Anne of Green Gables ever dubbed into English? I Miss Bionix examines various issues surrounding the 1979 World Masterpiece Theater production, including the discovery of episodes that were dubbed for Western markets. What happened? Who were the intended countries for this version? And how is it possible that this fantastic series was never released in North America?
This article explores several issues, including the very complicated issue of international copyrights. These Anne episodes appear to be owned by Belgian/German company Studio 100, who were responsible for the recent CGI remakes of Heidi and Maya the Bee. In 2008, the company bought Germany's EM Entertainment, which included a number of classic World Masterpiece Theater series, including Heidi, Maya and Anne. Previously, EM acquired the catalog from KirchGroup, who may have been the original broadcast distributors in the 1980s.
If you're wondering why it's so difficult to obtain the rights to many classic anime movies and TV series, this is a perfect illustration. Any North American distributor would have to navigate through several companies in Japan and Europe, each party demanding a hefty paycheck and attaching strict conditions. And without a possibility for TV or cable broadcast, the costs would be far too prohibitive for most indie distributors.
The English Anne episodes are currently available on YouTube, minus one episode. Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to watch, as I'm not in the proper country. D'oh.
Here is a short preview of the English-language dub of Anne. It was produced in South Africa, who were responsible for many European anime dubs in the 1980s. Sounds very good.
6 comments:
Could this dub have been made for Animax? I want to hear this dub. This and Future Boy Conan have English dubs so I wonder what else is Nippon Animation hiding in their vaults. Sucks that us Americans are stuck with that inferior Sullivan produced Anne of Green Gables cartoon.
Seems to be blocked in the US as well, which is a shame. I'd love to somehow watch the dub!
@df11eeba-99e5-11e4-8f3d-b797ab35b7e9 This dub wasn't produced for Animax. It was recorded in the late 1980s for broadcast on SABC, a South African television channel. I was able to find out that this dub later aired on JET TV in South East Asia and a Japanese satelight channel. It may have eventually aired on Animax Asia (documentation for that channel is always flakey), but it wasn't produced for it. Heck, if it did air on Animax, there's even a slight chance they produced their own English dub in Hong Kong or the Phillipines.
If you guys want to watch the episodes, any simple VPN will do. This link should work for everyone: http://eachvideo.com/watch?v=47kapGSbq74 It's a direct mirror of the YouTube channel, down to the comments, just with region restrictions removed.
The English Anne episodes are currently available on YouTube, minus one episode. Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to watch, as I'm not in the proper country. D'oh.
Oh, I figured my way around that Daniel! I saved every episode too (except that one cited).
Could this dub have been made for Animax? I want to hear this dub. This and Future Boy Conan have English dubs so I wonder what else is Nippon Animation hiding in their vaults. Sucks that us Americans are stuck with that inferior Sullivan produced Anne of Green Gables cartoon.
I'm sure there's plenty hiding in their mitts they simply don't get around to considering "us" for. I would so kill to see all of Conan in English!
Seems to be blocked in the US as well, which is a shame. I'd love to somehow watch the dub!
Not me! I know a way around those blocks!
I figured that dub was made years before Animax was around. The opening theme song was also used in the German and French versions so the dub was based on whoever had it up in Europe at the time. I do recall people who seen this dub had slight objections to the accents since I'm sure it was hard finding the right people in SA to sound neutral enough to get a passable voice for a story set on an island off the Alantic coast of Canada.
Wow, it would be wonderful if someone did all the work of ripping this audio and uploading it to be used on the japanese bluray rips.
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