An Absurdly Deep Dive into the History of 4Kids | Part 19: 4Kids’ Pre-Death Dead Period (2009-2010)

The beginning of 2009 through the end of 2010 is what I like to call 4Kids’ Pre-Death Dead Period. They weren’t licensing anything new because they had adopted a “Screw Japan and Anime” attitude, only premiering Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds (Ironically an anime from Japan…) and continuing Chaotic, barely got the broadcast rights for a couple shows, and just stagnating for the most part. Even 2011 was largely boring barring one semi-major note we’ll get to next time, but they licensed one anime in that year so I didn’t count it. I’m just going to plow through this period to get to the more interesting stuff.

In 2009 the only shows that premiered brand-new on The CW4Kids, besides Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds, were acquired shows – Huntik: Secrets and Seekers, and Rollbots – the former of which being another show by Winx Club’s Iginio Straffi, so I’m sure he was thrilled to be associated with 4Kids again. Huntik lasted two seasons, but it seems only season one aired on The CW4Kids, and Rollbots was canceled after one season.

Outside of the previously mentioned shows ending this year, the only other news on the 4Kids front was their continued downward financial spiral. That’s right, everyone. It’s time to have some fun with FINANCIAL REPORT ANALYSIS! 😀

(Small note, the financial reports from here on sometimes have information on past reports that varies from the report that came out that year. The only reason I can give for this is that they likely had to redo their figures after certain revenues or expenses were reported after the fact. The figures are never so different that they really matter, especially the end net losses/income, but I thought I should mention it in case people wonder why there are inconsistencies between some posts on the specific numbers. I typically went by what that year’s report stated when I wrote that specific section, but technically speaking the following year’s report is probably more accurate.)

It was reported by paidContent that 4Kids had “put itself up for sale.” although 4Kids refused to comment on what they wrote off as rumors.

In Q1 of 2009, their revenue was down, $8.9mil, compared to $15mil in Q1 of 2008. They had a slightly less bad net loss of $2mil reported compared to $6.4mil in Q1 of 2008.

In Q2 of 2009, revenue was $4.4mil, down from Q2 of 2008 with $16.5mil. It suffered a net loss of $13.8mil compared to $5.5mil in Q2 of 2008.

In Q3 of 2009, revenue was $7.27mil, compared to $17.8mil in 2008, with a net loss of $5mil compared to about the same with a loss of $5.3mil in Q3 of 2008.

As the recession was ending, 4Kids was starting to pick up, but there was additional and devastating damage. In Q4 of 2009, 4Kids reported $16.1mil in revenue, up from $12.8mil in 2008, partially because they sold the license to TMNT to Nickelodeon at that time for $9.8mil. However, it also had a net loss of $21.3mil.

Overall, for the year, they had a net revenue of $36,783,000 compared to $57,201,000 in 2008. Their costs were down a little bit with $80,298,000 compared to $88,918,000 in 2008. They would experience a net loss of $52,456,000 compared to a loss of $36,819,000 in 2008.

As previously discussed, one of the big factors there was the $20mil worth of charges related to carrying leftover and returned Chaotic merchandise and their film inventory as well as money still owed to CUSA and Apex for their share of the production costs on the cartoon, However, there were other factors in play as well.

According to Al Kahn, one of the most damaging losses that year was when Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. 4Kids had over $50mil in illiquid auction rate securities at Lehman. In the financial report for 2011, it states that they were filing a proof of claim for $31,500,000 plus interest, which would probably be around $50mil as Kahn claimed. In the end, they settled for a mere $489,000, which means they took a hit of around $49,500,000, which, let me check my notes…..was uh….not good.

In lawsuit land, 4Kids was clearing up their issues with Fox and paid them $6,250,000 in settlement money.

Upper Deck also sued Bryan Gannon, the head of Chaotic USA, TC Digital Games and TC Websites. Gannon used to be an executive at Upper Deck, and they were claiming he used confidential information and trade secrets obtained from his time with Upper Deck (specifically the years 2002-2003) for use in the development of the Chaotic game. However, on October 5, 2009, Upper Deck voluntarily dropped the lawsuit without prejudice.

Jumping into 2010,

Q1 revenue was $4.2mil, TCG returns were basically nothing at $7,000. In fact, overall in its final year, TC Digital Games, TC Websites, IE Chaotic would only earn about $274,000 in 2010 before they all ended with $6,489,000 in total losses for the year.

Q2 revenue was down to $2.5mil, attributed to reduced leftover returns from TMNT and decreased returns on Dinosaur King merch, but Yu-Gi-Oh! was slightly up. Television sales via advertising were also down for both Dinosaur King and Chaotic.

On May 28, 2010, 4Kids was officially suspended from the New York Stock Exchange for failing to maintain an average global market capitalization of at least $15mil over a 30 day trading period. 4Kids would move its trading to the OTC Bulletin Board on June 1 under the symbol KIDE.

Q3 revenue was down from 2009 with $2,986,000 from $5,312,000. This was also the last quarter in which Chaotic was a factor as they had shut down TC Digital Games and TC Websites in September 30, 2010 and discontinued all support for the Chaotic game on October 1, 2010. They hoped doing so would save $1mil per quarter. To put their situation into perspective at this point, they were citing their failing performance on the lower returns from Monster Jam, which is a monster truck rally they had licensing rights to for many years, and the American Kennel Club. However, declining numbers across the board were also cited. Basically, all of their old remaining properties were decreasing in popularity while their new properties just weren’t all that popular from the start.

Q4’s revenue was $4.8mil, which was the best of the year, but this was down drastically from $16.2mil from 2009’s Q4. Expenses were down to $7.4mil compared to $21.3 mil in 2009’s Q4.

In the end of the year, 4Kids had $14,478,000 in revenue, primarily attributed to Yu-Gi-Oh! (44% of revenue) and residuals from Pokemon (21%) compared to $34,180,000 in 2009, and they had a net loss of $31,640,000 compared to $52,456,000 in 2009.

Al Kahn was quoted in the Q4 2009 conference call as saying,

“I guess there is really no covering up that this has been a hideous year for 4Kids and for our shareholders and for our employees.”

He put most of the blame pretty squarely on Chaotic, basically saying that, if he knew then what he knows now in regards to Lehman Brothers going under and the recession, he wouldn’t have taken the big financial risk with Chaotic, especially since it was still technically underperforming a little even without those factors in place.

Even though…like….no shit, Dick Tracy. Most people wouldn’t undertake huge financial risks if they knew a massive economic downturn and a significant financial disaster were on the horizon.

The CW4Kids changed their name to Toonzai, inspired by Toonami, on August 14, 2010. In addition, a new anime title finally arrived on the block – Dragon Ball Z Kai, which was a remastered recut version of the original Dragon Ball Z series with much less filler, fixes to animation issues and widescreen format.

While 4Kids did not dub Kai, Funimation did, the CW/4Kids acquired the broadcast rights to DBZKai, which meant they had to make edits to make it suitable for their broadcast, most notably censoring injuries, blood, violence, coarse language, many incredibly confusing edits and, most famously, changing Mr. Popo to an insanely bright blue color because they considered his character design to be racist in the same vein as Jynx from Pokemon IE blackface.

Looking back, it’s almost like they wanted him to look like Genie from Aladdin.

DBZKai did incredibly well in the ratings, beating out both Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL and reruns of the original Yu-Gi-Oh!, only sitting behind Justice League Unlimited. Despite also airing on Nicktoons at the time, Toonzai airings of the show typically consistently beat out Nicktoon’s viewership of the show, and each block claimed it was their highest-rated show. This was a good move for 4Kids, but a little bit too little too late.

They had hoped there would be some sunshine peeking through the clouds with their next big project – a general audience anime streaming site called Toonzaki.

4Kids launched Toonzaki, on September 15, 2010 after being bombarded with a demand for uncut and subbed content. Toonzaki was a means of granting fans their wishes. Despite some uncut and subbed content already being made available on their Youtube channel, and a few DVD releases, there was a decent-ish amount of hype surrounding the launch.

Believe or not, Toonzaki had many more titles than just 4Kids stuff – several of which were actually aimed towards a more mature audience, such as Fullmetal Alchemist, Trigun, Murder Princess, Descendants of Darkness and Gunslinger Girl. Being clear, they did not own the licenses to any of these titles – they just made streaming agreements with other websites.

I saw numerous comments regarding this praising 4Kids for moving in the right direction, and I agree with that, but I also saw just as many if not more state it was, again, too little too late, and I agree with that too. Some even went so far as to call it “cheating”, since most of Toonzaki’s content was hosted on Hulu, Funimation or Crunchyroll (IE all titles except Yu-Gi-Oh! ones), meaning you didn’t necessarily have to watch most of these titles on Toonzaki. Basically, it felt like 4Kids wanted credit for what other people did, again, barring Yu-Gi-Oh! uncut.

The website had other issues in that, since many of their videos were Hulu embedded videos, no one outside of the US could watch many of their shows. In addition, Toonzaki had a lot of difficulties gaining traction. While having an anime aggregate site was a bit convenient, and some even stated the players from the various websites worked better on Toonzaki, for some reason, whatever hype there was died down quite quickly.

This post made on ANN’s forums to discuss Toonzaki before its premiere got zero comments.

Their Facebook page did okay. They were definitely active, but they barely managed to get into double digit likes on their posts most of the time, and they didn’t get that many comments. Remember, this was back in 2010-2011, back when Facebook was basically at its peak.

It’s Twitter account did way worse with only a few retweets on each tweet and, somehow, a grand total of two likes across their entire timeline, and zero comments.

I don’t know where they even advertised this site. The one print ad I found was for, I think, New York Comic Con….and that was it. No commercials whatsoever. No other print ads. No big announcements – hell, no official announcements period. Nothing.

4Kids was so lazy with this that their blog wasn’t even their blog – it was a blog roll of posts from other websites, like Anime News Network and Anime Shinbun, and nearly all of the articles weren’t even about their anime or website.

When you search “Toonzaki” there’s only eight pages of results, and I’d say 75% of them are mostly unrelated.

There was another thing that I didn’t see brought up anywhere else, but it was bugging me, so, uh, here goes….that naming scheme is awful. The name itself is fine, but as Mark Kirk put it in that interview with ANN from 2010, “Toonzai will also have an online component, which is for the kids, and Toonzaki is essentially its older brother.” Toonzai is literally one letter off from Toonzaki. So any little kid who wants to watch the edited kidified version of 4Kids’ shows from Toonzai (which were hosted on 4Kids.tv) might stumble upon Toonzaki, which had stuff like Deadman Wonderland, Monster, and fucking FIST OF THE NORTH STAR. If you think I’m overreacting, I typoed both names into each other several times while writing this part of the article.

As far as I could tell through the Wayback Machine, there were no parental controls or age confirmation for any of these titles, so they were leaving themselves pretty open to complaints from parents. I know this website was for general audiences, and I know 4Kids kept their logo off it, but it was still a 4Kids product. They should have put this under 4Sight and adopted a more different name. I don’t know how they would have worked the branding or advertising, but it doesn’t work the way they had it set up.

To drive that point even further, they eventually added games to the website….Not saying adults don’t play games, I do all the time, but why would you feel the best addition to your general audience anime streaming site that’s supposedly not, in any way, aimed towards kids would be a bunch of Flash games? It’s not only that they added games to the site – the games they had were completely random games that had absolutely nothing to do with anime. It was ridiculously out of place.

Being completely fair, though, Crunchyroll also had a games section for several years at this point, but many of their games were anime-related, and the section also doubled as general discussion of all PC and console games. In fact, the discussion seemed to take up much more space in that section than the mini-games did. Plus, they never catered to a child audience, so it’s not quite as weird or questionable.

Considering Crunchyroll was legal at this point, and other anime companies such as Funimation and Viz were also streaming anime online, there just wasn’t much of a point to Toonzaki except to watch uncut Yu-Gi-Oh! titles, which had already been made available previously on their Youtube channel, for a time anyway.

After 4Kids went bankrupt, Konami/4K Media got the rights to Toonzaki in the property auction. According to this blog post from a user named Ravegrl, the site was quickly neglected after that and experienced a lot of issues such as broken videos, links and images. The biggest issue came on August 2012 when 4K Media took down all Yu-Gi-Oh! videos to transfer them to another server. For some reason, that transfer caused the entire service to be down for three months. The last update was on April 2013.

On July 24, 2014, Toonzaki shut down for good, again with no announcement, with its URL redirecting to Yugioh.com. Apparently, Konami just wanted to focus on putting the Yu-Gi-Oh! episodes on their own website and had no desire to be an aggregate site for other anime, so Toonzaki was booted.

The Facebook page was sporadically kept alive long after Toonzaki shut its doors purely to promote Yu-Gi-Oh! episodes on Yugioh.com, which kinda feels like putting a neon billboard on a corpse. Konami stopped doing this in 2016, however, leaving Toonzaki to finally rest in peace after living such a brief and uneventful life.

Next – Part 20: It’s Time to Get Your Game Revved up!

Previous – Part 18: 4Kids is No Longer Foxy 

---

If you enjoy my work and would like to help support my blog, please consider donating at my Ko-Fi page. Thank you! ♥

An Absurdly Deep Dive into the History of 4Kids | Part 17: 4Kids TV 2 – The Kidsening (2007)

2007 was a light year for 4Kids in regards to premiering new content – they only premiered one new show.

On September 8, 2007, 4Kids released their dub of Dinosaur King, which was based on an arcade game in Japan that implemented trading cards, and it’s generally regarded as 4Kids’ attempt to replace Pokemon. When 4Kids got the rights to the show, they immediately created a Dinosaur King TCG with Upper Deck sometime in 2008. I imagine this was another effort to avoid high levels of overhead since they were already experiencing losses with producing Chaotic’s TCG in-house. The original cards could be scanned to play the dinosaurs, characters and abilities in the arcade game in Japan. However, the American version of the trading card game had no scanning capabilities whatsoever. It was simply a trading card game. The American TCG was never made available in Japan since the original cards used with the arcade game already acted as their TCG.

In terms of dubbing, Dinosaur King has all of the typical 4Kidsisms, but it’s considered one of the better dubs to come out of 4Kids. It definitely helped that Dinosaur King feels very reminiscent of Pokemon, especially with Veronica Taylor voicing the lead, who has a yellow lightning-based sidekick, and the Alpha Gang almost being a carbon copy of Team Rocket, with Ursula, the leader of the most commonly seen three, being voiced by Rachel Lillis.

Despite not being another massive title for the company, and definitely not a series many people remember very much, Dinosaur King did okay for itself. It tended to do well in ratings, at least in comparison to the other 4Kids TV shows, it had a bunch of toys, a Nintendo DS game, the TCG lasted until 2010 or 2011 with fairly regular releases every year, and the TCG reportedly sold well in other countries too. The show lasted until 4Kids died in 2012, and, for some reason, they latched onto the license even long after 4Kids had died and stayed gasping for air as 4Licensing until 2017 when they let out their final death rattle. In 2017 the license was handed over to Discotek Media, who retains it to this day.

Sega, the owners of the franchise in Japan, never continued the series either in anime or video game format. According to Negative Legend on Youtube, there is no official information anywhere about why Sega has shelved the franchise for so long, but the best anyone can guess is the most obvious one – it probably wasn’t profitable enough. This was most likely especially true since 4Kids, as I mentioned, latched onto the international licensing rights until 2017. Meaning, presumably, Sega was stuck without an international market after 4Kids went belly up. I have no idea how popular it was in Japan, probably mildly popular at least, but it simply wasn’t worth it to keep it in production without the international rights. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been profitable enough even with the international rights. It’s impossible to know without a direct answer from someone at Sega.

Everything else they aired in 2007 was already established, which signified the start of stagnation for 4Kids. They obviously had a bunch of cogs in motion, but they needed to keep taking new opportunities in order to get back up after they took their big Pokemon-shaped punch to the stomach.

That opportunity came on October 2, 2007 when Warner Bros. and CBS would announce that Kids WB would be going off the air in 2008 following the merging of the WB and UPN. They created the CW in the two networks’ place, but opted to shut down the Kids WB block due to content restrictions, the competitive time slot and the increasing difficulty to get advertising, specifically food-related advertising, on the block due to government restrictions. At the same time, they announced that they would be selling the five hour time slot to 4Kids, meaning 4Kids now owned and operated two of the biggest Saturday morning cartoon blocks on TV that year at the same time – which I’m certain has to be a level of hell.

On May 17, 2008, Kids WB would air for the final time.

On May 24, 2008, The CW4Kids would air for the first time.

Yes, that’s what they named it. Isn’t it clunktastic?

One other notable event that happened this year was Al Kahn dining on his foot at ANOTHER ICv2 panel, this time centered on anime and manga.

“I think basically it’s over in Japan, for the moment… I think Japan is tired, I think manga is tired… [There’s] a tremendous reduction in the sale of manga on a weekly and monthly basis… [Japanese] publishers and creators don’t really care what you want. It’s a real systematic problem… We’ve walked away from Japan to a great extent… [I’m] very skeptical of the Japanese model. If you’re big in manga, you should be looking elsewhere, because it’s going south.”

“Nothing new has come from Japan in ten years.” (What?) “Kids there are tired of manga. They don’t want to carry around a three pound book anymore.” (He really has never seen a manga in his life has he?) “They’re more interested in devices. Pretty soon, there won’t be any physical media, just digital.”

“(The Japanese anime and entertainment industry) is in the duldroms.” “(Innovation) has moved to Korea.”

“Manga is dead.”

Let me remind everyone, he was, again, saying this at an ICv2 panel for anime and manga, which was being held during NY ComicCon….

Again, Kahn had a slight point among his ramblings. Both anime and manga experienced downward sales in the 2000s. Anime had dropped ¥20bil in 2007 from 2006, while manga book sales were down 4.2%. However, as I mentioned previously, part of this was attributed to the fact that manga was now available to read on cellphones, and sales of manga via this option were exploding. They really hadn’t caught up with the development in technology to properly factor in this part of the manga industry when calculating their sales.

In America, however, this situation was slightly different. Yes, anime was also on a downward trend in the US, at least in regards to DVD sales. It wasn’t so much that anime wasn’t popular and moreso that DVD sets of anime were insanely expensive in America, and most people, either kids or adults, just couldn’t afford them. That’s one of the reasons why buying anime movies was so much more appealing – it’s just one DVD to buy of one feature. Manga was cheaper and more accessible, which is why manga sales kept improving, but the insane prices of anime in the middle of a recession were unreasonable.

4Kids DVDs were cheaper because they tended to include very few episodes, instead of whole seasons (usually) and almost never included the original Japanese track/footage. They usually only included their English dubs, maybe some other language dubs that were based on their scripts, and their music/sound effects etc. which made their DVDs cheaper to produce and sell. However, DVDs for 4Kids shows were constantly scattered all over the place, if a show got a VHS or DVD release at all, and rarely did a show get a complete DVD release.

Piracy was considered a significant problem at that point too, even though that’s, oddly, one of the things Kahn thought he was more or less immune to, because actual anime fans wanted quick and easy access to their favorite anime without paying insane prices or dealing with mutilated TV broadcasts. Piracy, however, was actually noted as being overall beneficial to making anime popular in the west because it allowed fans to access anime they loved and discover new titles all the time because they either couldn’t afford to watch those shows legally or they were simply not available in their region. Their increased interest would increase word of mouth, creating new fans, increasing DVD sales and increasingly availability, making legal acquisitions increase as a result.

I’m sure they didn’t see it that way, however. There is certainly a debate to be had over the positives and negatives of piracy, especially back when anime wasn’t nearly as widely and readily available as it is now, but it’s always hard to tell exactly how sales are impacted by piracy. You can equate every download to a lost sale, but in many cases the person illegally watching or downloading the anime (or manga) either wouldn’t or couldn’t buy the legal copy to begin with. And you also have to somehow factor in how many more anime or manga related items a person has bought because piracy allowed them to consume and enjoy it more.

But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself because, as we know, Al Kahn doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground when he talks about this stuff, especially when he’s talking about manga. What he’s actually talking about isn’t innovation or artistry or catering to the fans – it’s about money again.

Kahn noted that, in particular, he was frustrated with the fact that the anime industry currently didn’t premiere any massive hard-hitters like Dragon Ball Z, Pokemon, or Yu-Gi-Oh! were. Basically, he was viewing anime as a dying form of media overall because they weren’t creating new kid-friendly (or can be made kid-friendly) massive powerhouse merchandise machines that he could hopefully get the rights to. And he was mostly saying manga was dying because I don’t know. Why he keeps talking about manga when his company is almost entirely divorced from the manga industry is beyond me. Given his views on manga and American literacy in children, I doubt he could even name one manga that wasn’t related to one of his anime titles.

Take note of the fact that he specifically said “Nothing new has come from Japan in ten years.” He was entirely ignoring literally anything that came out of Japan during that full decade (kinda throwing shade at big mainstream shows that had been dubbed by other companies at this point, like Naruto, as well) and treating them as if they didn’t count because they were either not geared towards his demographic, were not hugely popular or were not merchandisable.

Dragon Ball Z Kai was never theirs, even if they got the broadcast rights to the show in the following year. Yu-Gi-Oh! was still theirs, for the moment, but it was also on a downward trend and hadn’t managed to reach the same peaks it had upon its initial debut, even though 4Kids was injecting a lot of money into it. They just lost the license to Pokemon. They abandoned the license to One Piece. And they lost the bid to acquire the rights to Naruto. Without another big name that would also be family-friendly (or could be edited down to be such) and ripe for merchandising, 4Kids had no interest. Anime as a whole was dying to him because the anime he licensed were dying and Japan wasn’t nice enough to birth him more cash cows.

As ANN stated,

“Al Kahn reminded all those assembled for the session that publishing does not have to be about transferring physical objects, but that the entire anime industry has not yet figured out the best way to monetize digital content and embrace the technology of online distribution. To him, one of the greatest contributions of the popularity of anime in the West has been the fact that as Western animators and producers have been learning new techniques and honing their skills, Japan may be less and less relevant to the most cutting-edge popular culture products throughout the world.”

The concept of digital manga was already firmly in place for several years and was enjoying massive success in Japan while it wasn’t as such in America. Streaming anime was a bit of a different bag. In Japan, anime was already available online through various sources. Plenty of companies were only a few years away from launching digital avenues of anime distribution that would prove to be successful, and it was already in the process in 2007. For example, Toonami’s Jetstream had some anime streaming online, and Crunchyroll, while, at the time, using illegal means of anime distribution, was already created in 2006 as what some have credited as the first official anime streaming service. It would become legitimate and legal in 2009.

Manga is a bit easier to distribute online since it’s just scanned images. That’s why digital manga took off several years before digital anime. Creating a digital marketplace for anime that wasn’t in garbage quality and could still work well on internet speeds of the day was a work in progress, but you can rest assured that it was very much in progress. Did Al Kahn not understand that this stuff takes time? He is right that the anime industry in both Japan and America would need to capitalize on digital anime in order to stay relevant and profitable, but he’s acting as if such developments were decades off not two or three years.

“According to Kahn, there is little coming out of the Japanese anime studios that is truly innovative, and the most creative new animation is now coming out of South Korea and other countries in the region. “I think it’s over in Japan,” said the 4Kids executive, and he added that the problem is on a systemic level, as publishers and creators do not care about actual user demand. For its part, 4Kids itself is not interested in Japanese products, with the exception of Dinosaur King, nearly to the extent that it was at one point.”

While there is definitely something to be said about Korean animation, and there is a lot to praise there, Kahn was obviously either incredibly jaded on Japan because there hadn’t been another massive title for him to milk recently or he was just talking out of his ass – or both – especially because he acknowledges that the market was catering to niche titles at the time, as in creative titles that have smaller audiences but are typically very well-received critically, but also said there was no innovation in Japan.

I don’t know what prompted the Korea comment. Was something really big animation-related going on there in 2007 that I don’t know about? 4Kids had only worked with South Korea twice before this point, and that was with Cubix, which was one of their bigger properties, but it definitely wasn’t massive, and the new seasons of Chaotic. In 2010, they would work with South Korea again for Tai Chi Chasers. Oops. I meant to say they’d work with Japan and South Korea for Tai Chi Chasers……after Al Kahn had eaten enough crow and went crawling back to Japan and anime.

He and his other executives have stated several times in the past that their fans don’t even know anime comes from Japan, but he also notes;

“In Al Kahn’s view, fans monitor the success or failure of shows in Japan very carefully, but American marketers have to remember how particular properties relate to specific age groups in the United States. For example, popular as it was with vocal fans, 4Kids had a very hard time localizing One Piece in a way that would satisfy fans on one side, and advertisers and television company executives on the other. Approaching that series, his company found itself between a rock and a hard place, and Kahn said it learned the valuable lesson that popularity in Japan is only one of the factors that governs how well any given title will perform in America.”

A valuable lesson no one else really had to learn because it was easy enough to figure out. Why don’t you explain that lesson to Funimation, which is about a year or two from swimming in cash from their dub of One Piece?

So which is it? Do their fans not know about or care about the anime industry in Japan or do they monitor it so closely that they base everything they watch, anime-wise, on what is popular over there? Fans did and still do monitor what is popular in Japan for a variety of reasons, (I wouldn’t say many people are monitoring it “closely”, but we do keep an eye on it. I doubt many children back then were doing it, though.) but this statement is just Kahn trying to fancifully avoid saying that they didn’t do adequate research with One Piece before buying it and then screwed everything up.

“Al Kahn, however, again was not as optimistic, and cautioned that frequently, buyers are now looking not only at a particular toy’s immediate sales potential, but also at its staying power on the shelves. Many only want to stick to only buying products that they are already familiar with, and are not willing to experiment or expand into new areas.”

Again, Al, which is it? Is anime dying because there’s no innovation and we need new exciting titles to introduce to stores, or does the innovation exist but it’s just not feasible to work with because stores want more of the same and nothing new?

Basically, Kahn does have some points, kinda, but they’re constantly buried in contradictory statements, odd opinions and flatout incorrect information that it’s difficult to see them.

While they were able to find some common ground, most of the other panelists never agreed with Kahn, and some noted that 4Kids seemed like they were isolated because 4Kids’ experiences largely didn’t reflect in the experiences of their companies.

It’s a rather intriguing debate to read about because it highlights just how much Al Kahn thought he knew about the anime and manga industry based almost entirely on his experiences in America with an American audience that was purely children while similar companies who had immersed themselves in Japanese culture and their market trends and were more diverse in their audience had a better understanding of the market as a whole. Outside of Yu-Gi-Oh! and Dinosaur King, 4Kids would basically stop dubbing anime for three years after this.

To wrap up this year, 4Kids didn’t do very well. You could say it did bad. Or horribly. Whatever. They were down in net revenue with $55,609,000 compared to $71,781,000 in 2006. Their expenses were up with $81,378,000 compared with $80,917,000 in 2006. Overall, they had a net loss at the end of the year of $23,326,000 compared to the net loss of 2006 of $1,006,000. Decline in the revenue from Yu-Gi-Oh!, TMNT, their residuals from Pokemon and One Piece were given blame for this while Viva Pinata was noted as helping offset them.

Their stocks also took a significant tumble that they would never rebound from. Chaotic still hadn’t truly gotten off the ground yet. They had launched the website for the online game on October 24, 2007, and the TCG had been launched with it, so 2008 would be the real flagship year for the franchise and wouldn’t really be a component of their financial report outside of noting the huge investments they had put in place for it.

Next – Part 18: 4Kids is No Longer Foxy

Previous – Part 16: Yu-Gi-Oh No!

---

If you enjoy my work and would like to help support my blog, please consider donating at my Ko-Fi page. Thank you! ♥

SSBS – Dinosaur King Episode 4: Bungle in the Jungle Review

Plot: After leaving for the Amazon to find a new dinosaur, Chomp gets separated from the group and lost in the dense jungle. Soon after, Max gets lost trying to find him. Can they regroup, find the dino and capture it before the Alpha Gang?

Breakdown: Ya know, sometimes I get really sad watching kids shows as an adult because there are certain occasions where it makes me feel my old-ness. I was watching the first five minutes of this episode and had the following thoughts.

*Max’s dad tries to give him all sorts of supplies for keeping him safe in the Amazon (barring the stupid ‘this one stops bad breath’ one)* *the supplies don’t make it through the transporter for some reason* Me: “Oh that’s a shame. They could really use those supplies. They should be more properly prepared before making these trips so they stay safe.”

*About 30 seconds later* Me: “Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, they really should have stopped off to get vaccinations too.”

“Ah, no. Don’t split up. There’s a reason the buddy system exists, guys. You’re in the Amazon rainforest, not the park.”

“Ah, good. At least Zoey and Rex were smart enough to put their dinos in their card forms to ensure they don’t lose them. Nice to see some responsible kids nowadays – what the hell is happening to me?”

Anyway…..*lip smack* This episode is boring as buckets and as stupid as the last thing on Twitter that made you really angry.

This episode has no story…..like….none. Chomp gets lost for stupid reasons. Max gets lost for stupid reasons. Zoey and Rex meet a saltasaurus. The Alpha Gang fight the saltasaurus with Spiny…..Zoey and Rex just…..watch. They don’t help at all. Dunno why. They just leave their dinosaurs in their cards and spectate this innocent dinosaur getting attacked by evil people. Our heroes.

The saltasaurus manages to get away because Spiny randomly lost its energy. The saltasaurus starts chasing Max for seemingly no reason – we’ll get to that in a sec. Chomp fights a crocodile, which is simultaneously the most interesting thing in this episode and yet, still, somehow boring. Chomp is suddenly able to hear Max yell out for it. Max and Chomp fight the saltasaurus despite being reunited with Zoey and Rex.

Rex: “Should we call out our dinosaurs?”

‘Durrrr, should we….help or something?’

‘Nah, they got this.’

‘Why the fuck are we here?’

*the saltasaurus gets defeated and turns into a card*

Zoey: “Did Chomp win?” No…..No….he didn’t. Chomp died and the saltasaurus did a victory transformation into a card.

Rex: “Yeah, he clobbered that saltasaurus!” You’re awful happy about an innocent herbivore dinosaur getting its ass whupped.

Max: “You fought so hard, you turned back into a card.” So, it’s probably a good idea to leave him in that state to rest, then, righ–

*instantly de-cards him*

Oh well, screw me, apparently.

They find a lizard that Max found a few minutes prior to the saltasaurus chasing him and deduce that the saltasaurus was after the lizard, not Max.

You may be wondering things like ‘What?’ and ‘Huh?’

Dr. Taylor explains this by claiming the saltasaurus was thinking the lizard was its family, since ‘saltasaurus’ literally translates to ‘lizard from Salta.’ Salta is the name of the town in South America where the fossils of saltasaurus were first found – information that has no bearing on this explanation whatsoever, but Dr. Taylor still thought to share it. It’s not like the saltasaurus knew it was Salta anyway. Salta didn’t exist back when the saltasaurus existed….They’re both lizards, so it followed it, thinking it was family.

First of all, saltasauruses were not lizards. It’s just a name. They do have some lizards traits, but they’re not lizards.

Second, this saltasaurus must have the eyes of a hawk fusion-danced with an owl because it somehow saw this teeny tiny lizard in enough detail to think it was family when the saltasaurus is massive.

Third, dinosaurs aren’t exactly known for their brain power, but it is way too stupid to believe that this dinosaur would follow this tiny lizard, thinking they were the same species. That’s like a lost lion finding a house cat and following it, thinking they’re family……Actually, that’s being a bit generous. It’s more like the Liger Zero Zoid following a cat, thinking they’re family.

Whatever, they have a saltasaurus now. From what I read, it never matters. No lessons were learned, no characters were developed, no story was furthered. This was a huge waste of time.

Oh well, at least they didn’t destroy any precious historical landmarks today.

I’m sincerely thinking about dropping this series. It’s just not enjoyable to watch. It has the intelligence level of a candy bar wrapper and it’s not fun. If anything, you have to be fun, especially for a kids’ show. I can accept plenty of silliness and, even though I find it insulting to kids, stupidity in the writing for shounen shows, but if you’re not going to be fun, why even bother?

This is a show where you collect dinosaurs, give them magical powers by swiping cards, have them fight each other, and, when they’re not doing that, they’re cool trading cards or chibi-dinos that are convenient pets. All the while, you’re traveling the world in an instant and seeing precious historical landmarks (that you may or may not destroy.) It is ridiculous that this show can’t manage to be entertaining with that premise, but they found a way.

---

If you enjoy my work and would like to help support my blog, please consider donating at my Ko-Fi page. Thank you! ♥

SSBS – Dinosaur King Episode 3: Tanks a Lot!

Plot: A saichania card is awoken in a museum in London, and the Alpha Team and the D-Team scramble to claim it. Meanwhile, Rex becomes very frustrated with Ace, who keeps causing trouble.

Breakdown: I wonder if a piece of Veronica Taylor’s soul broke off into the abyss when she found out she was pegged for another show that makes her prattle off painful pun titles in voiceover. Hm.

This series continues to infuriate me, but it’s one of those things where I’m more pissed about the accumulating smaller details than the overall big picture.

For example, again, we are destroying valuable artifacts for no reason. First, the guards at the museum have no qualms with smashing dinosaur bones and displays just to apprehend some yahoos with shopping boxes wandering around, especially when the museum seems to technically still be open since Dr. Taylor is meeting with the curator.

Second, there are so many stupid moments. For example, Chomp finds a triceratops display and nuzzles it, which is actually insanely sad. Max points out that he probably misses his family, but without even a second of pause he goes on to say that they’re his family now and they’ll have lots of adventures together.

Real tactful timing, Max. Imagine doing that in any other similar situation. ‘It’s okay recently orphaned child, we’re your family now.’

What’s even stupider is they’re looking for the saichania, Max and Chomp find it, but Max doesn’t realize it’s real even though it’s clearly moving, breathing and blinking. He doesn’t even give it a second look or touch it before turning his back and being silent for just long enough for the saichania to walk away, like a goddamned ninja, and then Max suddenly decides to also leave without looking back.

Dr. Taylor has a moment of stupid too. He asks what would lure out a saichania, and he thinks about the fact that they live near water, which is something….most animals do since all living beings need water. If you don’t live near a fresh water source…..you…die.

Zoe briefly raises her voice at Paras when she starts eating a plant, and immediately after she sees Paras’ sad face she says now she knows how Ace feels. Why do you know how Ace feels? Wouldn’t this be more how Rex feels? You don’t know what that plant is. You could’ve been saving your dino’s life. Hardly akin to yelling at her for ruining a valuable book.

Later, she explains what she learned from that millisecond of ‘experience’ with the dinos, which is really as obvious as the nose on your face. They’re trying to be helpful, don’t yell at them – if you do, it hurts their feelings. Oh wow, you mean yelling at a living being and treating them like crap will make them feel bad? Golly, what a revelation. Sure am glad I’m two years old so this lesson is not painfully basic.

And how did she learn that from yelling at Paras for eating a plant? How was that helping?

Also, that doesn’t address the issue that Ace is being really hyper and destructive, and Rex can’t figure out why or what to do about it. In fact, that’s never really addressed at all.

Thirdly, the saichania’s walk cycle is animated like it has a full diaper. I have no clue how a real saichania moves, but I am almost certain it doesn’t barely move its legs while shuffling around. That doesn’t really have much to do with anything, but the CGI just really bothers me still.

Fourth, the way the saichania is lured out is with a bunch of vegetables. Wanna know why? Remember how I said earlier that Dr. Taylor said saichanias like to live near water? Well, he jumped from that to hippos, because hippos also live near water. So he gathered up hippo food.

Now, saichanias were herbivores, but that’s not the point. He’s a goddamn paleontologist. He should be able to deduce luring out an herbivore with plants immediately instead of going “Saichania’s lived near water…what else lives near water?….err….HIPPOS!…So saichanias must be exactly like hippos. Hippos eat plants! So I should lure out the saichania with plants!” It’s a good thing no carnivores or insectivores live near water.

Fifth, Zoe gets her first solo battle today, and it consists of immediately calling for help.

But Paras gets into gear!

Then immediately calls for help too. Because that’s one of Paras’ special abilities. Not lying. It can heal. And it can call for help. You certainly do belong to a female protagonist in a shounen show.

Then Max and Chomp show up and defeat Spiny easily. Yay.

As for the main plot of the episode, it’s one of the most predictable and boring plots I’ve seen in many moons.

Rex is a bit peeved at Ace for being all rowdy and getting mud on his nice book, which he then licked “clean.” The plot is resolved by Ace saving Rex’s life because that’s always how understandings are made between two characters.

The…..end.

Alright, there’s a tiny bit more to that. Rex had to understand that Ace was trying to help when he licked the book, but Zoe already pointed that out, before the opening theme song, even, so I guess Rex is a crappy listener. Also, this wasn’t a time to shine for Ace because he loses against Terry.

As for the saichania, despite Dr. Taylor luring it out, the Alpha Team manages to snag it and they also get away with some important tablet. So, congrats, guys. You caused a bunch of damage to a museum and failed in both of your objectives. But hey, at least that minor tiff between Rex and Ace is over. Thank god. You can slow down now, pulse.

Overall, this episode is not good. I guess it’s not as infuriating as the previous episode, at least they didn’t flippantly destroy as many historical artifacts, but it’s, ultimately, very boring. That conflict was really lame, and the resolution might as well have come from the mouth of Dora the Explorer it was so preschool level.

Also, I can’t prove this, but given the animation, I really think Ace pooped on Rex’s book originally. If he had muddy feet, he would have been getting mud all over the room and on Rex’s bed as he was running around. Instead he popped a squat and suddenly left footprints. 4Kids would obviously change this, and I feel like that’s for the better. Afterall, if I’m right, then that means this entire plot is literally built….on crap.

It’s definitely more understandable that Rex would be upset, but it’s also a lot more gross, especially considering Ace licked it clean….

Next episode….

….Previous Episode

---

If you enjoy my work and would like to show your support, please consider donating at my Ko-Fi page. Every donation goes to helping me pay my bills and keeping this blog afloat. Thank you! ♥

SSBS – Dinosaur King Episode 2: Battle at the Pyramids

Plot: Rex’s father discovers more Dino Cards. While waiting for them to arrive, a spinosaurus emerges in Egypt. Since Max is the only one with a stone and a dino, he’s is the only one able to transport himself to Egypt through use of the Dino-Holder. However, the Alpha gang has their sights set on the spinosaurus as well. Did Max and Chomp bite off more than they can chew?

Breakdown: I apologize for that pun, and this episode is pretty boring. Second episodes are usually just about establishing excess stuff that they weren’t able to establish in the first episode. The other two team members need dinos, we need to establish more things about the universe, and the Alpha gang needs a bit more firepower to stay on even ground with the D-Team. Most of the episode is either recapping stuff we already knew, talking about nothing or quickly spewing out exposition.

All you really need to know is now Rex has a carnisaurous named Ace and the power of wind, and Zoe has a parasaurolophus, which is way too hard to pronounce and spell, named Paras and the power of nature. Zoe’s move card is also a healing ability. So yay, more female characters relegated to being support/healers! Whoo.

The Alpha Gang also caught the spinosaurus to make their numbers a bit more even, and Dr. Z fabricated a move card for the T-rex.

…..Oh and the D-Team is also massively stupid and uncaring. First, Max doesn’t notice nor care that Rex and Zoe didn’t teleport to Egypt alongside him. They could be dead for all he knew, but he doesn’t even bat an eyelash.

Second, they’re specifically fighting in the ruins of ancient Egypt because the setting makes for a better battle. And just in case you’re wondering, yes, they do flatout destroy some of the monuments. Specifically, they beheaded the sphinx and they put a massive dent in one of the pyramids. The kids don’t notice nor do they care.

Third, after they’ve destroyed parts of what made Egypt so magnificent and fascinating to begin with, they decide, after the battle, that they’ll stay in Egypt for a week and see the sights…..the thoroughly destroyed sights. Oh and Dr. Taylor and Reese also don’t care that they both destroyed some of the most beloved ancient artifacts in the world (They’re goddamn paleontologists) and are taking an unsupervised week-long trip in Egypt on the fly.

Idiots.

Even if they’re poorly CGI’d representations of the monuments, it’s really hard to root for the protagonists when they flippantly destroy some of the coolest remaining parts of ancient Egypt. They don’t even properly react when it happened. They just throw dinosaurs into them and then YAY we win!

Next episode…..

…Previous Episode

Final Notes: Can someone tell the writers so stop trying to hard when it comes to Dr. Taylor? They are going to ridiculous lengths to make him seem like a wacky off-the-cuff character.

---

If you enjoy my work and would like to help support my blog, please consider donating at my Ko-Fi page. Thank you! ♥

SSBS – Dinosaur King Episode 1: Prehistory in the Making

Plot: The time of dinosaurs was seemingly over until Max and his friends found a little dinosaur inside of a rock that fell from the sky. With the power of an accompanying card, the dinosaur can both be recalled back into the stone and grow into a huge and powerful dinosaur. These dinosaurs aren’t around for no reason, however. With a threat looming over the horizon, they’ll need the dinosaur’s help to save the world.

Breakdown: Okay, time to go over my history with Dinosaur King.

……..I don’t have one. 😀

I vaguely remember this being on TV, never watched it and never saw or heard much of it. But it’s a shounen card game-ish anime so here I am.

Our story starts off with ugly images of dinosaurs and a meteor hitting the earth and killing them all before we see our main character, Max, waking up, indicating that the images were merely a dream brought on by his dinosaur book.

Max is voiced by Veronica Taylor doing absolutely nothing to differentiate her voice from her Ash voice, making this really distracting.

He sees a light in the sky that crashes into the nearby mountains and is excited at the idea that it’s a meteor. He wakes up his friend, predictably named Rex, to go investigate, and we get our theme song that has all the markings of a 4Kids theme song. Dumb lyrics? Check. Catchy? Check. Rapping? Major check.

Also, this theme song gives us a sneak peak at the disgusting CGI that is in this show. I really mean it. On its own, it’s pretty okay, but meshed with the traditional 2D style of the anime it’s atrocious.

Max, Rex and his other friend, Zoe, who make up something called the D-Team, go to investigate. Max, by the by, has a visor with big horns on it because dinosaur. Also, these horns light up for some reason. They see a bunch of damaged trees and Max thinks the meteor must be in a tree that has a big hole in it.

Max finds some weird rock in the tree with a lightning bolt on it, so he must’ve found Pikachu. Rex finds another stone with a symbol for wind on it while Zoe finds a third stone with a symbol for grass.

Max presses a button on the rock, causing them all to glow for a minute. After the glowing subsides, Max finds another item in the tree that contains two…..trading cards…..Okay. I’ve seen dumber things in shounen shows. Bakugan rings a particular bell in that regard. The cards have equally clashing artworks of triceratops on them, and he notices that the symbols of the backs of the cards match the symbol on the stone. He basically scans the cards with the stone and summons a triceratops.

They freak out for a bit, and Max does something that puts the triceratops back in its card. He decides to scan the card again….because why not I guess, and he summons a chibi-ceratops that he later names Chomp because he bites everything.

Cut to a bunch of dinosaurs fighting in an arena, we’re introduced to who I suppose is our villain – Dr. Z. He wants to be king of the dinosaurs, and if he is our villain you can already tell that he’s really no threat. He has a bumbling sidekick and he’s constant comic relief.

rawr

A T-Rex breaks through the house and starts chasing Dr. Z before it’s turned into a chibi-T-Rex by some little girl named Laura.

A stereotypical German maid woman named Helga storms into the scene scolding everyone and telling them their dinner’s ready, and we’re made aware that Dr. Z is apparently in love with Helga.

Stoic guy with blue hair #24234C named Seth arrives and the story of these people is laid out very blatantly in a few lines of dialogue – they have a time machine, they’re stuck, their time machine’s broken, and when the time machine broke Dr. Z lost his collection of dinosaur cards and they were scattered across the world.

Dr. Z uses a device that alerts him to the location of one of the cards and they prepare to leave before the commercial.

Back with Max and the others, they explain their situation to Max’s dad who happens to be a dinosaur expert. He’s perfectly fine with the dinosaur thing and is actually really excited about the discovery, but wants to keep it a secret for safety’s sake. Max’s mom comes in and they convince her that Chomp is just a really odd dog who followed Max home. She believes them because….she’s dumb, and lets Chomp live at their house as long as Max takes care of him.

Dr. Z sends his minions, who call themselves Alpha Gang, off to capture the dinosaurs while Max’s dad and Zoe’s older sister, Reese, do research on the stones.

We get a really convoluted and silly theory as to how these stones and cards work. Max’s dad, Spike Taylor (of course), theorizes that the dinosaurs’ consciousnesses were sealed within the stones right before dinosaurs went extinct. Someone outfitted the stones with microchips that somehow have the ability to turn the dinosaurs into cards. When activated, the cards turn back into dinosaurs and for some reason when they’re scanned again they turn into chibi dinosaurs. When scanned a third time they return to card form.

Back with Max and the others, the Alpha Gang arrives and attacks with their T-Rex….Terry (of course…again.)

Spike arrives and tries to capture Terry with a net and obviously fails. Terry keeps trying to get at Chomp and Max. Chomp tries to fight back, but obviously the little guy is no threat to a giant T-Rex in chibi state.

Spike throws Max some fancy device and, get this, it works just like the stone only easier. Apparently in the time frame of a few hours, Spike managed to understand fully how the stones, chips and cards worked, managed to replicate the technology on his own and make the process easier, designed and produced the device…..Not only that, but he also managed to write a manual for it that is like 5000 pages.

Right. Sure. Then again, I feel really stupid nitpicking that considering this is a show where actual dinosaurs are kept in trading cards and summoned with rocks.

Obviously this device was created so quickly so that they could get the toy line out faster….

Max saves Chomp by recalling him back to card form with the device and then he scans the card into the device triggering a transformation sequence for Chomp into his regular dinosaur form. Considering they did this a few times already without this transformation sequence, I find this to be even more pointless than usual transformation sequences. Additionally, this sequence is segued by a little screen on the device so I’m left wondering if Spike actually programmed this sequence into it….

Zoe: “Another dinosaur!”

Spike: “Where did this one come from?”

What? You mean Chomp? Zoe and Rex have seen him transform three times now. Spike has seen him transform. They know that those cards call a triceratops. They can’t be confused about Terry either because they’ve been well aware of him since he appeared. What the hell are you people confused about?

Terry and Chomp battle, and for some reason the background is mostly changed to CGI while they’re battling. I would say this is welcome, but now that I’ve gotten used to the ugly clashing with traditional animation, this looks even uglier somehow.

Chomp’s losing because, well duh, and Max starts panicking. The device starts glowing red as Chomp gets more damaged because I don’t know and the other card that Max found pops out of it. He scans that card and it….gives him lightning powers? What the hell does a triceratops have to do with lightning? Why does this card give him lightning powers?

Chomp beats Terry and sends him flying off, which prompts him to turn back into card form. Chomp, now exhausted, also turns back into card form, but is turned back to chibi-Chomp by Max.

Defeated, the Alpha Gang shows up and introduces themselves; Ursula, Zander and Ed. They’re basically Team Rocket, and it’s especially obvious with Ursula. Not only are her personality and mannerisms very reminiscent of Jessie, but she’s also voiced by Rachel Lillis. Eric Stuart also voices Dr. Z, and I will give him credit for increasing his range because I totally didn’t recognize him.

The Alpha Gang runs off and we get a bit more explanation about the device, called a Dino-Holder. It not only acts as the stone but it also translates the dinosaur’s thoughts into words. Sure why not? Also, yay, that means we’re going to hear these dinosaurs talking. Whoo.

Spike gives custom-made Dino-Holders to Zoe and Rex too, despite the fact that they don’t have cards yet, and they start glowing their respective colors as they hear the voices of dinosaurs coming from the devices begging for help. And that’s the end of episode one.

—————————————————-

This show is incredibly stupid so far. I mean, I never expect logic or non-stupid much from shounen ‘gaming’ anime, (or maybe this is just action?…Whatever you’d call definitely toy-line-based shows.) I really don’t. But, man, you need to suspend all kinds of disbelief for this show. The premise is so convoluted and just gets more convoluted the more you think about it.

I know this is episode one, but I already have all sorts of questions that I can’t see answered anytime soon, like why do the dinosaurs need chibi forms? Why does Dr. Z want to be king of the dinosaurs? Why did he choose trading cards, rocks and chibi dinos to achieve this? How did Spike manage to do all that with the Dino-Holder in such a small amount of time? What is the point of giving the dinosaurs elemental powers? You really need to buff goddamn DINOSAURS? What’s the logic with the selected elements anyway? Why does a triceratops get lightning? How are these powers contained in cards? Why are these powers contained in cards? Just why on a lot of things.

Also, I really can’t get over how much this seems like a meld between Pokemon and Digimon (Season three in particular) just with dinosaurs.

None of the characters stand out from the archetypes. Max is the leader, headstrong and curious, never gives up and really cares about his friends. Rex didn’t get much exploration but he seems like the responsible one. Zoe is the girl. Alpha Gang is Team Rocket, Dr. Z is the bumbling evil scientist, Seth is the stoic competent villain and Spike is the bumbling good guy scientist.

The art for the CGI is very dated and it clashes so horribly with the traditional animation that it’s very distracting. If you were distracted by how much the CGI clashed with the regular animation in Duel Masters, you’ll be crying at this, especially considering that the CGI and traditional animation in that show were usually kept separate and hardly ever shared the screen. Here, it’s constantly in the same frame.

The traditional art is fine and the colors pop. Some of the designs are kinda cool, even if Zoe and Rex’s necklaces are kinda distracting. The animation is typical shounen anime fare – just okay.

The OP is catchy, even if ‘Make your move’ kinda seems weird to put in the lyrics if this isn’t a legit game. The BG music is completely forgettable.

All in all, I’m really not impressed with this first episode, and I can really understand why this show didn’t take off. Hopefully it will get better from here.

Next Episode, our “heroes” destroy ancient Egyptian monuments.

---

If you enjoy my work and would like to help support my blog, please consider donating at my Ko-Fi page. Thank you! ♥