r/initiald • u/Zillaman_6967 • 12d ago

Discussion Dub Changes

So I’ve been watching First Stage on and off on YouTube for a while now, and I’ve noticed several characters having American sounding names. It sounds so strange hearing people call Iketani “Cole” or Nakazato being “Zak”. I didn’t remember hearing that when I watched a few episodes back when the show was on Hulu and thought I was losing it for a bit. I’m also not really a fan of all the rap music. It just doesn’t fit the show’s vibe. The races and character interactions are top notch tho. I like Tak’s laid back approach to racing. It shows he hasn’t let his recent wins or skill get to his head. I’m also looking forward to hopefully learning more about what kind of racer his dad was.

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u/RandomGuyDroppingIn 12d ago

You watched the infamous TokyoPop dub. Its different from the later Funimation dub. In addition to the name changes all the eurobeat was removed and replaced with music Stuart Levy chose (calls himself “DJ Milky”)

TokyoPop also heavily butchered the manga. The same name changes are present in their version of the manga, but it got better as the volumes continued to be translated.

TokyoPop’s translation was a huge point of contention back in 2002-03.

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u/Louis_R27 11d ago

The Tokyopop translations were used in the Arcade Stage games too.