Ojamajo Doremi Episode 1 Sub/Dub Comparison

Plot: Doremi is a girl who loves magic. She can’t do any, but she tries. She studies witchcraft and tries to perform magic, but to no avail. Until, that is, she stumbles upon a rundown magic shop run by an old witch. When she outs the witch as such, she accidentally turns her into a frog. The only way to change her back to normal is to train Doremi to be a witch. Doremi couldn’t be happier at this, but finds that witchcraft is harder than it looks.

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Series Name: Ojamajo Doremi is changed to Magical DoReMi.

They remove Doremi’s opening narration. It’s the same magical girl spiel of explaining that she’s an average girl but practicing magic, hijinks and whatnot.

Surprise! The opening theme is completely changed! A good chunk of the clips are kept, but many are changed, and of course we have to include cheesy effects and cut-outs and stuff. The original theme is okay. The dub is, like many of 4Kids dubbed themes, awful in terms of lyrics but a massive ear worm.

A shot of the flying flowers is removed.

The sign on the witch’s shop is actually painted over instead of erased. From what I can tell, it says “The Rusty Broom” The original says “Marika’s House of Magic”

In the original, Doremi is chanting “Puapu Arukuku.” What that means, I do not know. I looked it up and everything. In the dub, she’s chanting, not kidding, “Lovey duvey, duvey lovey.” This SDC is going to be more pain, isn’t it?

Name Change: Pop (Really, you named your daughter Pop?) is changed to Caitlyn. Or whatever one of the thousands of spelling variations of that name that exist for no reason.

Oh my god, Caitlyn’s voice….the pain….chipmunk…..oh lord….

After Pop mocks Doremi for her various crushes, she does that bii-daa thing where you pull down one eye lid and stick your tongue out. Then her dad shows up, getting yelled at by her mom who is berating him for wanting to go fishing instead of helping with the housework. Doremi then explains in inner monologue that her parents constantly fight and that her sister’s in kindergarten. All of this is removed for whatever reason. I figured they’d remove the tongue thing, but why the rest of the scene?

Name Change: Igarashi, the boy Doremi crushes on in this episode, is changed to Robby.

Holy crap! They replaced something instead of removing it again!

Subbed:

Dubbed:

I just wonder why….I mean, not like this board adds a thing to the scene. 4Kids: We keep you guessing AND angry!

Also, guess they have absolutely nothing scheduled, so why are they even there?

And they remove the kanji from Doremi’s book cover and pages. (As well as every other students)

Subbed:

Dubbed:

The papers on the wall behind Hazuki are edited, but not blanked for some reason.

Subbed:

Dubbed:

Name change: Sugiyama is changed to Bennigan.

Doremi’s friend tells her they’re on the bottom of page five. In the dub it’s the top of page 15.

Name Change?: Something was bugging me about Doremi’s name in the English version. They kept calling her “Dorie” but not saying her full name so I didn’t know if I could count it as a name change. It seems like all her name is in the dub is Dorie and it’s never mentioned if that’s short for Doremi. I could’ve sworn during an earlier tangent that she called herself ‘Doris’ but I couldn’t be sure.

In order to make the title ‘Doremi’ make sense, they changed the capitalization of the word to make DoReMi for Dorie, Reanne and Mirabelle. Being honest, I actually like this change because it includes all of the girls instead of focusing purely on the leader like magical girl shows annoyingly tend to do.

Doremi’s book cover is edited.

Subbed:

Dubbed:

Doremi is sent to the hall while Dorie is sent to the principal’s office (for reading a different book in class?)

The boy in Doremi’s class mocks her by calling her ‘clumsy Domiso’ and she corrects him saying her name’s Doremi. He then says ‘Dojimi?” which means ‘Clumsy girl’ and she yells her name in his ear. In the dub, he mocks her for making a mistake, but doesn’t say anything about her name. Also, instead of correcting him, she just threatens him by saying if he doesn’t stop she’ll turn him into a frog.

Hazuki says Doremi doesn’t want to go to the soccer game because she failed in her confession earlier. In the dub, she says people who get sent to the principal’s office don’t get to go to the soccer game.

Name Change: Hazuki Fujiwara is changed to Reanne Griffith.

The bratty kid from before makes fun of Doremi again as she leaves while dropping all of her books from her upside down book bag by saying “Do-ji-mi-fa-so-la-mi-re” in the tone of the music scale. This apparently translates roughly as saying “Look at the clumsy girl!” In the dub, since this really can’t be mirrored, he just says “You dropped all your witch books, dummy.”

Upon seeing the witch’s gloves, Doremi flashes to her witch book that said witches always wear gloves. (This dialogue was changed to hats or something in the dub) In the dub, since that specific line was changed, they edit out the shot of the book and any mention of suspicion that she is a witch.

She also thinks back to the book saying that witches look at you with red eyes, and we see the witch’s red eyes. In the dub, she just introduces herself.

Dorie finally thinks to herself that the lady looks like the witch on the cover of her book while Doremi recites the rest of the stuff about witches. They hate children and can smell them with their big noses as we see the lady at profile showing her big nose.

There’s a long pause after Doremi finds out that Majorika’s a witch. She’s about to say out loud that she’s a witch, but it’s obvious that Majorika doesn’t want her to. We pause for like five seconds while a drumroll goes on before she finally says it. In the dub, it’s just ‘suspenseful’ music, which takes away from the comedy of the scene.

In the original, Majorika introduces herself and Doremi does the same. Majorika then laughs at her name while Doremi says it’s still better than Majorika’s. She then yells at Doremi.

Name Change: Majorika is changed to Patina.

In the dub, Patina says the only way she can be changed back is by training Dorie to be a witch. Dorie agrees, but she has to be back home by seven. The witch then laughs at her for saying she needs to be home by seven and says she’s even dumber than she looks….Yes, she’s dumb because she has a curfew…and is a child. Dorie then says at least she’s not a green blob thing and Patina yells at her.

In the original, Doremi’s just called a witch’s apprentice. In the dub, she’s called a witchling.

Name Change: The fairy, Lala, is changed to Laralie.

The magical girl transformer item for this series is called a Maho Tap. To its credit, it is rather unique amongst the magical girl transformers since it seems to be a small music box type thing with an activation button. In the dub, they’re called ‘dream spinners’.

When Doremi transforms (in a rather lackluster transformation sequence for a magical girl anime, to be honest) she says “Pretty witch, Doremi-chi!” In the dub, she says….*sigh* “Faladeiladongding, now I am a witchling!”…….Yup….yup…I can see this tormenting me.

Doremi’s ‘wand’ is actually a musical instrument called a Peperuto Poron. In the dub, it’s called a ‘wandaler.’

Doremi’s original magic words are Pirikapiri Lala Poporila Peperuto. In the dub, I guess she just makes a lame rhyme out of whatever spell she wants to cast, which is basically the most cliché witch thing ever.

In the original, the little gumball things in Doremi’s wand are called ‘magical spheres’. In the dub, they’re called ‘spell drops.’ I actually prefer the dub’s name because at least it’s somewhat unique.

I guess in the dub, Patina has a thing about slang since she seems to make a joke or cringe whenever Dorie says slang in the dub where it’s not present in the original. I guess this is to make up for not mentioning that witches hate children in the dub.

Oh good, goofy pop music for no reason. I was indeed missing Mew Mew Power and Cardcaptors.

To be completely fair, there’s a vocal song in the original too, but it’s played at a very low volume. In the dub, their song is played at “BUY OUR SOUNDTRACK” levels.

In the original, Lala says, if someone outed Doremi as a witch, she’d turn into a frog like Majorika. Doremi then imagines herself as a frog and starts pouting. In the dub, Laralie just says if anyone outed her as a witchling it’d be very difficult to complete her training. The scene with Doremi as a frog and her pouting are removed.

The girl who also has a crush on Igarashi says she doesn’t care what happens to her, just as long as his wound gets healed. In the dub, she says she was going to use her wish to make him love her and then continues on the same.

Also, the girl doesn’t know that the wound will be transferred to her if she wishes him to be healed in the original. In the dub, that’s specifically what she wishes for.

After she makes the wish, there’s a fairly large blood stain that appears on her pant leg since the wound transferred to her….I honestly don’t know why there’s so much blood. Igarashi’s wound was barely bleeding, but the point is that 4Kids left this in….4Kids, eraser of all things blood, left this in.

Now that I’m thinking about it, I think Doremi was one of 4Kids’ earlier works, and this is especially reflected in the fact that they’re leaving a lot of text alone or painting over it instead of removing it, and even leaving in all of the many many many anger veins. Yet…..what 4Kids became….

They cut out a shot of Igarashi visiting the girl, Maki, in the nurse’s office. I guess because he wasn’t saying anything, but the nurse and Hazuki were both talking during that scene. Eh, maybe time or something.

Name Change: Maki is changed to Jen.

Majorika laments over how troublesome Doremi is as a witch and names her ‘Ojamajo’ or ‘troublesome witch’. She doesn’t say the same or even ‘troublesome witch’ in the dub.

In the original, Hazuki says it seems like Doremi’s giving up. Doremi agrees and says her premonitions were wrong again. She then restates her catchphrase that she truly is the unhappiest pretty girl in the world.

In the dub, Reanne says she never even bothered to learn his name, Dorie says she’s right and that she’s a big coward. Despite the catchphrase being said several times by now in the original, this final line is the closest they ever get to saying it by making her say she’s the most misunderstood little girl in the world.

As expected, the next episode preview and ending theme are removed. Damn shame too because the ending theme is incredibly nice to listen to. So relaxing.

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First impressions? The dub could honestly be much worse, so far. They kept in mostly everything and the changes weren’t that awful, outside of some cheesy magical girl stuff. As for the original and the series as a whole, well it seems more casual than a lot of magical girl fare. I’m not even sure there’s a villain to fight. And the magical theme along with limited magic is a nice template, but I’m not that impressed by it. Hopefully I’ll get more into it as episodes go by.

Next episode, Hazuki wishes her life was more like Doremi’s, and she gets her wish when the Ojamajo decides to work her magic.

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