Monday, July 21, 2014

CN PT - an apology

I HATE Cartoon Network PT with a passion. Why? For only one reason: the dubs.
Yes, I really want CN HQ back in my daily life. Low ratings replaced our favorite voice actors with potentially nice, but awkwardly ingratiating strangers, whose faces we couldn't even see and identify.
Let's celebrate this despairfest that has been lasting for almost eight months. This will be a bumpy ride.
Let's start with Ben 10 and Ben 10: Alien Force. In the original series, Ben, aged 10, has the voice of a 14-year old who had to get past puberty. In Alien Force, however, now at the age of 15, he still happens to have the same voice he had a few years prior.
This dub was comissioned to air on SIC and it premiered on October 10th, 2009 (what a coincidence). It was dubbed at the (crappy) Dialectus studio, famous for making some of the worst dubs ever made. Bravo, Dialectus, bravo. Thanks for destroying Ben's reputation. This show has an annoying voice actor which has been heard on numerous shows from then on: he's Johnny's father, the interpreter of the Portuguese theme songs for Hover Champs and Race Tin Flash and Dash S (E VAMOS LÁ, À VELOCIDADE MÁXIMA...) and numerous other voices for pre-school shows on Canal Panda. This just explains the horrible quality of the studio's dubs.
At least Dialectus went bankrupt, but the VAs moved to other studios. They just wanted to continue their work.
Let's move on, shall we?
Next in line is Ben 10: Omniverse. I initially hated the show because of the designs. Ben looked awful and Fourarms looked like a plumber.
Turns out that I was wrong. I started to like the show, the designs, and - if anything else would happen - the theme song. Unfortunately, when the Portuguese dub for it premiered, I was in shock.
Ben, now a 16-year old bloke thanks to the events of Ultimate Alien, which was never dubbed over here, still has some weird sensation that he still keeps his 14-year old voice from the previous shows, where he had to get past puberty without changing his voice.
There seems to be some sort of retreat: Khyber the Huntsman becomes Khyber the 'Untsman. In Portugal they destroyed his reputation by not calling him a caçador rather than an 'untsman - reminding me that I went to 'Ertz Rent-A-Car. They didn't change his name, considering that the name Khyber actually exists, although it's the name of a mountain in Pakistan.
Other voice actors include Billy's first Portuguese VA, who also voiced a bunch of characters on a bunch of cheap European productions.
"Adventure Time, come on, grab your friends, we'll go through very distant lands. With Jake the Dog and Finn the Human, the fun will never end, it's Adventure Time!"
Most of you think that the Portuguese dub is one of the best, when, in reality, it's the complete opposite: Finn is voiced by a woman, to which I have the idea that whoever voices him is a woman which has an alter ego, coing more or less by the Conchita Wurst variety. Jake sounds like he's old and can't actually mimick the original voice. Lady Rainicorn is speaking a dialect of Korean that never existed, the Ice King is a bit weird, LSP sounds more manlier than the man who voices it in the original version and Beemo sounds more girlier than someone who speaks with an Asian dialect.
The dub has the worst theme song ever. I recommend that you watch it once and go to the bathroom and puke: HORA DE AVENTURAS SÃO MOMENTOS DE LOUCURAS COM JAKE O CÃO E FINN O HUMANO SÃO TANTAS AVENTURAS SEM FIM!!!
Ow, my vocal chords AND ears! Who is that mysterious author who made this atrocity? Maybe not the one that this link mentions. Probably someone with his name.
There you go, better out than in.
This show had the most dubs a CN show could ever imagine: three. The TVI dub, the movie dub and the Dance Pantsed dub. All these voices are just an attempted emulation at their distinctive voices, but failed miserably. To quote Coisas da Interwebs, "Bubbles doesn't sound cute, she's boring. Blossom sounds like one of those highscool students which claims as being better than the others and Buttercup looks like that in 15 years, she will go to a reformatory because she's so aggressive. Professor Utonium sounds a bit Portuguese (only without the mustache).", and Mojo Jojo sounds more annoying, the Gangreen Gang has several names depending on the episodes, and the dubbing quality was crap, for something made around 2001.
They also pay in Escudos, later Euros.
The Dance Pantsed dub is even worse: it consists of voices that have nothing to do neither with the original voices nor the ones that were being screened in Portugal a little over a decade ago.
Dexter's Laboratory: it's an OK dub, but not worth it. We got an incomplete collection featuring only the first two seasons, which were the only ones dubbed over here.
Uncle Grandpa: Having seen very little of the original dub, I'd like to say... boring.
We have the privilege to call it TITIO AVÔ, I wonder why? This isn't Brazil. You can't say that in Portugal.
This isn't Portugal. This isn't even Brazil.
This dub retains the CN qualities: same studio, same awful voices, same female lead character... wait, what? I've only seen a few minutes of these and I can't watch it because of dubs like these.
I've seen two dubs: the RTP dub where they called the titular characters (minus Grim) Beto and Mena, and the CN dub we're getting right now. In the CN dub, Grim's renamed "Skull" (Caveira, probably because of business reasons with Spain) and it's so awful it can make your earlobes bleed.
For a starts, there's ALWAYS a woman who reads out 99,9% of every sign there is, which is unnecessary these days. A subtitle didn't help?
Also, there seems to be a vague misunderstanding about the voices. For a start Grim sounds less Jamaican than he actually is (he sounds pretty normal to me, however, from a Portuguese point of view, and not making fun of the similarities between both ethnicities, Sebastian from The Little Mermaid sounds African to me), Billy sounds more annoying, Mandy sounds a bit bored, Irwin sounds a bit less black and the episode titles have little to nothing to match the original titles: "Prank Call of Cthulhu" becomes something like "The Deadly Call".
Also, considering that we were talking about Cthulhu, the name Cthulhu - owing to the lack of the "th" sound - becomes Cutulu or, near the end of the episode, Quetulu, with both names sounding like an immigrant from the former Portuguese colonies in Africa.
JOHNNY TEST. This is an abomination. So is the dub.
Another CN show whose reputation has been destroyed. Starting with Gumball, which is now voiced by a grown woman called Teresa Arcanjo, who has to use the dude-bro language and has to live with an acid Anais, a girly Darwin, Nicole (which could perfectly be voiced by Gumball's Portuguese VA) and Richard, who sounds more stupider than he actually is.
They pay in Euros and if the show was set in real life, it was set near the building where I live.
As for Gumball, this isn't a man.
This isn't even a woman.
This isn't an LGBT.
It's a new gender. The "fe male" gender.
And if you thought that the worst CN dub ever made was listed so far...
think again...
...SURELY you haven't seen this!
THIS is the worst CN dub of all time. THIS is the worst CN-related abomination that I have ever seen in my entire life. Let's see it, character by character:
Mordecai sounds like he's a 40-year old speaking in the "dude-bro" sociolect which looks like the Portuguese Garfield from The Garfield Show sounds more or less like he was speaking to a Portuguese 17-year old on Facebook;
Rigby sounds like he's 30 or something, for the same reasons as Mordecai minus the Garfield part;
Pops sounds like he's younger and less semi-antiquated;
Benson sounds more annoying than he actually is;
Skips sounds like he's younger and more aggressive;
and Muscle Man sounds like he's someone's old demented uncle who says perverted nonsense. Also, Musculoso, really? Is this a strange attempt made by Turner to make Portugal and Brazil a single market? And High-Five Ghost is simply Mais Cinco. Reminds me of an old TVI game show called "Dá Cá Mais 5" that I used to watch 2-3 years ago.
This dub is so AWFUL!!! And I say it with all the rage I can think of, because CN dubs in Portugal tend to be the worst.

9 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Then why is the title called "an apology" if you hate almost all the dubs?

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    1. It's an ironic joke.
      "Apology", in this sense, makes it look like the Portuguese word "apologia". A false friend.

      Delete
  3. This is fucking annoying. You gonna need live with CN PT.
    Its getting anoying, first ToonZone now that fucking stupid blog.
    I know its your opinion, and you gonna delete this comment, but stop, CN HQ DONT GONNA RETURN! Live with CN PT and with the fucking Dual Audio.
    ITS NOT BECAUSE ONE STUPID FAGGOT THAT CN PT GONNA STOP AIRING JUST FOR CN HQ.

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    1. You bloody cretin!
      (If you thought that the previous message was enough, I will delete it following consensus from the community)
      or I'll no longer watch Cartoon Network ever again

      Delete
    2. I honestly think both of you are acting like buffoons, like, really.

      We have one angry customer who thinks an angry comment will suffice against you, and even using faggot. But then again, I spend my time on sites like 4chan and stuff so I've kinda gotten used to their derogatory slang and passed it onto him by mistake.

      And then we have the angry reciever who honestly thinks deleting a comment will magically solve all his problems.

      When you have a blog dedicated to how much you love African CN and giving so many reasons why Portuguese CN sucks balls, you're bound to expect that from some people.

      Hell, you could have expected it from me but I'm old enough to know better.

      Short story, you're both acting childish. Please stop that, we're all grownups here, let's try and act like ones.

      Delete
  4. Trivia: I've found links to two episodes of "Cow and Chicken" in Portuguese: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoFrZW15ZkI

    According to me, f.e. the Portuguese voice actor of the Talking Banana tried to sound like an American according to a non-English language speaker.

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    Replies
    1. I already discovered those episodes last month, I was surprised.
      Dubbing studio: Nacional Filmes.
      Anyway, I dreamed about Cow and Chicken on CN PT and when I posted that dream on my dream blog (Dream World), I put the EU-PT lyrics: "A mãe teve um frango, a mãe teve uma vaca, o pai está orgulhoso e não ficou desconfiado". (http://welcometomyamazingdreamworld.blogspot.pt/2014/07/a-mae-teve-um-frango-mae-teve-uma-vaca.html)
      Those episodes were recorded around August 28th-31st, 2000.
      At 39:20, he sounds like he's saying a cross between Chinese and Korean: 칭총친데드 (chingchongchindedeu).
      And I. R. Baboon sounds African to me.

      Delete