Day 1: Sub/dub/manga? My Beyblade history
Aah, I’m so far behind everyone else!
I watched the English dub on Cartoon Network when it came out in 2002. I was thirteen, and I loved it. It was my last anime before I knew what anime was. Several of my friends got into it too, and we wrote fanfiction and made fanart and had a good time.
The Norwegian dub came along eventually, and I watched that too, but the voice actors were pretty uninspired. There’s a clip on youtube, and I don’t know how clear it is, but Kai’s voice actor sounds bored out of their mind.
I watched a bit of V-force too, when it came, but I wasn’t happy with the new designs or the cgi beybattles, so I fell off eventually. G-Rev never came to my TV as far as I know. I still haven’t seen any more of those seasons. I guess I’m worried they’ll change how I view season one (though I am getting increasingly curious, and I do feel as if I’m missing out when you guys talk about those seasons).
I remember we learned early on that Nelvana had made several big changes when they adapted the Japanese anime to English (removing scenes, adding Dizzy etc), but at the time, there was no English subtitled version available, either official or fanmade, so while I longed to see the original, there was nothing I could do but wait. Fast forward to 2017, and now there’s suddenly several different subtitled versions (Misdre, you’re amazing)! So I jumped back in, watched the sub several times, and now it’s my favourite. It’s a little richer and makes more sense than the dub, though there are things about the dub (music, voice actors) that I still love too.
Haven’t read the manga yet. Hoping to someday.