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Saban

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The Saban "Saturn" logo from 1984 to 1988.
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The Saban "Saturn" logo from 1984 to 1988.

Saban Entertainment (also known as Saban International) was an independent/TV production company formed in 1984 by music and television producers Haim Saban and Shuki Levy. This company is known for importing, dubbing, and adapting several Japanese series (except for Kidd Video) such as Maple Town, Noozles, Samurai Pizza Cats, Kidd Video and Dragonball Z to North America and international markets for syndication, including both animation and live action shows. In doing so, the company also totally replaced the original production credits with their own. It also imported French shows, such as Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, and Mysterious Cities of Gold. Famous franchises include Digimon, Shinzo, and various toku adapts, which include Power Rangers, Beetleborgs and VR Troopers.

Contents

Early operation

Early in its life, Saban was a non-union company, meaning that many of its union-member actors operated under pseudonyms. In the mid-90s, after much bad press regarding payment and treatment of actors, the company went union. Several original animated series were produced for Marvel Comics, and the company's dubbed products began to rapidly increase as the anime boom began. Through a merger with US Fox Children's Entertainment in 1996, Fox Kids was born, although the block had actually been promoting itself officially as "Fox Kids" since 1993; prior to that, they were just simply the "Fox Kids Network", and all shows at that time had been promoted as airing "on Fox"

Tokusatsu adaptations

During the anime boom during the 80s-early 90s, Saban decided to take a risk and introduce the Henshin Hero genre to America. In Japan, the Henshin Hero genre gained a lot of popularity led by manga writer Shotaro Ishinomori who is considered to be the "Father of Henshin Heroes." Meanwhile, in America, the only form of tokusatsu that Americans were familiar with was mainly Godzilla, Gamera, and Ultraman; all which were dubbed respectedly. USA Network did a dub parody of Dynaman for its Night Flight Theatre time slot. Shuki Levy decided to adapt a show from the Super Sentai genre, his first choices being Sun Vulcan, Bioman and Jetman which became Saban's first choice for the first season of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Many thought that the idea was too extreme and absurd and would ultimately fail. All of the above sentai shows were rejected by Saban. Finally, 1992's Zyuranger was accepted and used for footage in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers' First Season.

Surprisingly, the risk taking worked and the series became a hit. After the success of Power Rangers, Saban would go on to introduce other genres in Tokusatsu. The Metal Hero adaptations, VR Troopers and Beetleborgs became hits as well; but both lasted two seasons each due to lack of footage. However, when it came to introducing Kamen Rider, it turned out to be a disaster and offended many fans who were familiar with Shotaro Ishinomori's work; as well as much of the Power Rangers audience despite the fact that Masked Rider is part of Power Rangers continuity. Ironically, Kamen Rider is Japan's equivalent of Batman and Spider-Man and the overall concept of the character was completely made a mockery. Shotaro Ishinomori himself was also offended by this. Many fans would later use this as a reason for Saban being held responsible for Masked Rider not returning to America; considering the fact the New Generation Rider shows have gained a female demographic along with the increasing young boys demographic.

Criticism

Predictably, such adaptations from Saban often receive strong criticism from fans of the original material. Although censorship for violent content is considered a necessary, albeit semi-tolerated evil, many considered certain edits excessive or unnecessary. Examples range from the avoidance of any mention of death among characters, to things that (to this day) were never really explained. In their American dub of the popular anime series Dragon Ball Z for example, a scene where a child is crying is edited so that tears are not streaming down his face.

Other complaints included dialogue revisions in the scripts, which were modified in an attempt to 'localize' the programs for an American audience. Nevertheless, viewed with an unbiased eye, of the assorted companies producing dubs specifically for television at the time, Saban was probably top of the pile. While many agree that nowadays 4Kids Entertainment is much worse than Saban was, some still to this day hate the company. The American adapted version of Kamen Rider into Masked Rider reportedly offended the original creator, Shotaro Ishinomori, as it went against all the principles of what his trademark character stood for. Saban has also received some criticism from people who mistakenly believe that they attempted to create an American version of Sailor Moon. A clip of a live-action animation hybrid version of this series has circulated on the internet mistakenly attributed to Saban, in this clip certain characters were also changed around; in particular, Sailor Jupiter was to be disabled and use a wheelchair both as an average citizen and as a Sailor. However this clip was not created by Saban but by Toon Makers and Renaissance Atlantic.[Animefringe: Features: Sailor Moon à la Saban: Debunked - An Interview with Rocky Solotoff] - Adam "Omega" Arnold.

The Saban "Gold Plate" logo from 1988 to 1996.
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The Saban "Gold Plate" logo from 1988 to 1996.

Renaming

In October 2001, the group was sold to Disney, and renamed BVS Entertainment. Concurrently, Fox Kids was replaced with the Fox Box (now known as 4Kids TV), featuring a line of shows from 4Kids Entertainment. Disney gained ownership of all Saban's products, and began to air many of them on ABC Family in a programming block called Jetix. The European Fox Kids channel continued to run under that name until the beginning of 2005, when it was also rebranded as "Jetix", as is the former Fox Kids channel in Latin America.

Meanwhile, the fates of the company's two most popular shows were somewhat ignominious. The entire production of Power Rangers was shut down, and moved to New Zealand for reasons of cost. The resultant series, ' and ' aired on ABC Family and Toon Disney in the USA and on the various Jetix channels around the world. Meanwhile Digimon's fourth season was produced and voiced by the same crew (under the banner of Sensation Animation, but farmed out to UPN as part of a deal between them and Disney for the 2002-2003 programming year. On this less-than-accessible channel, the show was subjected to a shifting timeslot and a saturation of re-runs that hurt it considerably. With its conclusion, and the breaking of the UPN/Disney deal, Digimon joined its brother and sister shows on ABC Family and Toon Disney. The fourth season as well as the previous seasons also aired on the Canadian station YTV.

List of television shows & films

1960s

Acquired from New World Communications. Originally produced by Grantray-Lawrence Animation.

1970s

Acquired from New World Communications. Originally produced by DePatie-Freleng Enterprises.

1980s

The Marvel Comics based series were acquired from New World Communications. They were originally produced by Marvel Productions.

1990s

2000s

References

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
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