Just found out the original Naruto English dub had a completely different script for ep 1

I was down a YouTube rabbit hole last night watching comparison videos and stumbled on this. Apparently the first few episodes of the Naruto dub on Toonami back in 2005 had a totally rewritten script that changed whole scenes. Like in the original Japanese, Naruto just says he's gonna be Hokage to prove himself, but the dub added a bunch of extra dialogue about revenge and being alone that wasn't in the sub at all. The video I watched showed clips side by side and it was wild how different the tone was. They ended up re-dubbing episodes 1-3 later to match the original script more closely. Has anyone else seen those original Toonami broadcasts or am I just late to finding this out?

2 comments

2 Comments

hall.quinn14d ago

Hold up, is it really that big of a deal though? I mean yeah, they changed some dialogue for the first few episodes, but the whole point of a dub is to make it work for a different audience. Toonami back then was trying to hook kids who might not have cared about the exact Japanese script. And "revenge and being alone" is basically Naruto's whole vibe anyway, so it's not like they added something that wasn't already there in his character. The fact that they went back and re-dubbed it makes me think even the studio realized they overthought it. So sure, interesting trivia, but I wouldn't call it a total rewrite or anything.

beth_stone14d ago

Wait, didn't they do the re-dub way later though, not right after the original aired? It was a fan campaign that pushed for it, not the studio suddenly waking up and realizing they messed up.

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