The worst anime liscensing/dubbing firm in the world. They really started the kiddie-anime boom in the U.S. with pokemon, which made them billionares.
Later on, they liscensed Yugioh and turned it into a hack-fest that made the Card Captor
dub look good. The changed nearly everyone's names, altered the main storyline, censored any deaths in the show (either saying the dead charecter went to "The shadow Relm" or "Mysterisouly dissapeared"), added in this "Heart of the Cards"
shit (and made nearly everything the charectars say mention the heart of the cards), replaced the ENTIRE soundtrack with shitty Saturday-morning cartoon
music, and worst of all, mutaliated the dialog and gave the series THE WORST voice cast ever. And they didnt even release uncut DVDs... In the end, this series made them millionares.
4kids ended up buying fox kids, changed the name to fox boc, removed most of the shows, and added in a few crappy cartoons
like the new TMNT and "The Cramp Twinds". They also bought a few new animes (Sonic X, Shaman
King, Ultimate muscle, and Kirby: Right Back at Ya) to release on the fox box. While none of them were quite as bad as yugioh, they still sucked horribly. Shaman
King had most of its dialog TOTALLY rewitten and its main charecter (yoh) changed from a carefree guy to a total asshole. Sonic X got a shitty
dub cast. Ultimate muscle and Kirby...sucked from the begining. All of these animes had thier soundtracks replaced (they even recyled tracks. Sonic X's new soundtrack is IDENTICLE to shaman
king, except for the opening
music).
They recently liscensed Tokyo Mew Mew (which looks to me alot
like sailor moon), and according to Al Khan, the evil
bastard CEO of 4kids, they are planning to edit it tremendsouly (
Hell, the are releaseing it under the name HOLLYWOOD Mew Mew...). They also seem to be going after the
uber-popular anime "
Naruto". With the shitload of money that 4kids has gained from YGO, i sympithize with
naruto fans.
