Tezuka In English Discussion Forums

HI! New visitor here, with a basic question I've always wondered about -

I've been catching up on my 60s Astro Boy thanks to Adult Swim (& all hail TiVo!) Were the redubs into English actually based on translations of the original Japanese scripts? You get the feeling after watching several episodes that for the English version (credited to Fred Ladd) they simply took the images from the Japanese version and filled in dialogue to match. Not to say that's easy to do, but some of the resulting story lines - talking as a fan here - come off as surreal, nonsensical, and/or just plain dumb. I recently finished reading the Buddha series, so when I'm watching Astro Boy all I can think is "Come on! Tezuka must've written something better than that!"

(Off-topic: a funny story from a scriptwriter tasked to do "fill in the blank" rewrite: http://www.wfmu.org/LCD/19/bomb.html - warning: contains a few naughty words.)

Hi RevWaldo - nice to have you join us.

To answer your question, I'm pretty sure Fred Ladd did basically exactly what you think he did... he made it up. That's the impression I got after reading the Astro Boy Essays anyway. While you're right, Tezuka could've written something better, I think it's important to point out that Tezuka set out to give the original Astro Boy anime a shot at being syndicated in English. He also purposely "dumbed down" a lot of his stories to appeal to a wider T.V. viewing audience than the original manga stories.

I'm far from the Astro Boy expert around here though - perhaps Jeffbert will be able to shed more light on the subject.

Maybe Fred just didn't all the access he needed for proper translations? :O

You know, like unforseen issues with bringing the show over.

Sorry for replying late (running around for the holidays) - thanks to everyone for their replies! Sounds like I should check out the Astro Boy Essays!