What I know and feel about Tri ( or Tri is coming! Tri is coming!)

If there’s one franchise that I continue to love is the Digimon franchise. But lately, there’s one thing the Digimon franchise has done to me is make me eat my own words on multiple occasions, especially the popularity it still has in international. At first, I didn’t think Xros wars would never come to the states, but sure enough it did, none of the PSP titles would ever come her yet sure enough Digimon Cyber Slueth was on its way to the Vita and PS4. Next was the movie Digimon Adventures Tri an Movie(or ova series some would argue) made its’s  debut in Japan last fall with the announcement that it was also getting a subtitled release internationally on Crunchyroll. with that news I figured that was going to be it. I realized and happy to know that Digimon still has a pretty niche audience in the US for the series to still be distributed enough that we will be able to get the series digitally, but I was pretty certain that we would not be getting anything like a dub for the series, especially after the lukewarm response that the Xros Wars got from fans. But yet again I was wrong, early July of 2016 veteran Digimon voice actor Jeff Nimoy(voice of Tentomon and several other characters) announce on his twitter that he just started recording lines for the new Digimon Tri dub. Not only that but the will also be released in select theaters across the country. Like most digifans, I had tons questions in my head. “Will the whole cast come back?”, “will we get a straight dub?”

The Cast
As I mentioned the announcement first came when Jeff Nimoy posted on his Twitter page that he will be voicing his well know digirole, Tentomon. So it’s safe to say that like the Japanese version, there is an effort to bring back atleast some of the cast. It wasn’t long that veteran voice actors Joshua Seth( voice of Tai) and Micheal Reisz( Voice of Matt) has also express interest in returning.

The Music
Over the years, as more and more Digifans are exposed to the Japanese music of Digimon more and more fall in love with their infamous songs such as Butterfly and Brave Heat. It’s no surprise that there are fans out there that hope that the dub will retain these songs when bringing the movie to a bigger audience. At Anime Expo 2016, TOEI was there to promote several upcoming anime and games, one of them of course included a trailer for the Digimon Tri dub. What might disappoint fans of the original subbed version of the show is that the trailer didn’t include the Tri remix of Butterfly that some may hoped, but a new theme similar to what we know and expect from the dub.

This unfortunately had upset quite a few people, I for one didn’t mind the theme too much yes it was kinda bad but, it’s kinda what I feel about most anime songs, Japanese or English. Personally I think the only thing this theme had going against it, was how it was shamelessly slapped on to a trailer meant for a completely different style of song. it may be because of the fact that the Dubbed movie is coming out by fall and Toei and ElevenArts are in a rush to promote it, I’m sure if they put a trailer of there own together to better compliment the song it would not have gotten as much backlash.

The “Style”(and a bit more about the music)
When it comes to the old dub vs sub debate among anime, Digimon fandom seems to be the most divisive. There are fans who don’t mind and fondly grew up with the English dubbed series, but there are also some that are not too happy about how previous Digimon dubs have done things such as change names, music, and add dialogue to the English and believe that this has somewhat changed the from what it is in the original Japanese version. Even though I am someone who personally see’s no fundamental difference between the to and tends to watch it dub, I don’t think fans have much to worry about in terms of how this dub is going to be handle. The main reason is that unlike most Digimon series that have come out over the years this series is in a new style and aimed at a new demographic. when i watched the first movie I didn’t get the feeling like this was made to be a Saturday morning cartoon aimed at children, this show definitely made to be a series for older teens( a seinen, is that what it’s called?) and not only that its also aimed at those who grew up with the show. I think both TOEI and Eleven Arts, have shown that they are aware of this. In a Comicverse interview with Eleven Arts CEO Ko Mori, gave us a vague but intriguing idea on what they are aiming to achieve with their direction with the dub, and the music as well. In the interview, he mentions that they intend to keep the tone and style seen in the Japanese version, but create new music that Americans will be more familiar with. Whether that means we are getting new orchestral music, license songs, or a new version of “Hey Digimon”. Either way from the looks of it, Eleven Arts is attempting to create a dub that pleases both the fans of the Japanese and English dub alike.
My thoughts
As I said, despite me having more of a preference for the English dub(again, to me both versions are the same show), but I do understand the want for Digimon to retain things that are exclusive to the original Japanese version, especially as the franchise continues to reach it’s now older demographic. But I think we should remember that there are people that grew up for almost 15 years referring to Taichi as Tai and it will be a tough thing to just throw away for a small group of people. From the look of thing though, I have good faith that this release will appeal to both fans of the dub along with enough to appeal to those that want the “mature” style seen in the original movie.
Links
http://comicsverse.com/digimon-tri-american-release/ (Eleven Arts interview regarding the Digimon Tri dub realese)