Dub Renames Have Come A Long Way

Y'know, I watched the dub of Getter Robo G as a kid (thanks to a video rental store with a really eclectic collection), and one thing about it that I never remembered was how bizarre the characters' names really were.



I mean, we have badguys with names like Emperor Ramzorch and Colonel Fuhrer*. That's not really so weird. Not really.

But then we get to the protagonists. There's Doctor Copernicus, whose children are named Ceres and Joey. Think about that: These characters are named Ceres Copernicus and Joey Copernicus. (Also, Ceres has such an old lady voice it's amazing.)

Hayato is renamed Paladin, which seems odd unless you connect it to his habit of carrying a crucifix, and even then it's a stretch.

Then there's Benkei's name, which I can't quite figure out but which sounds like Foul Tip. Okay, he's a baseball player. I guess, guys.

Ryoma, though. Ryoma's dub name kills me. His name is apparently Tricky Hummer.

Tricky. Hummer.

Somebody strung those words together and decided it would be a decent name for a character.

What amazes me beyond that is that, despite a lot of editing and censorship (plus awful voice acting), the spirit of the dialogue often seems to remain fairly intact, such as retention of phrases like "switch on" to represent the combination sequence command; they even added a bunch of attack calls to the first enemy robot that weren't there in the original version.

Also, while it's removed for painfully obvious reasons (they didn't dub the first Getter Robo anime), it's kind of a shame that American audiences didn't get to see the amazing memorial service that was held for Musashi, the recently deceased third team member from the first series, and also their first robot.

Yeah, they made a funeral pyre out of their old robot. Which is particularly odd when one considers that it just kind of had a missing arm and, like, its ears were broken off. Even if that thing was your weaker, old-model robot, was utterly junking it really the best course of action? Rebuild that thing into a support unit or something, fools.

*Yeah, that's what the guy who looks like Hitler is named; it's subtler than his Japanese name (Hidler) is, though.

-Signing off.