Doraemon (2002-2004 Phuuz Entertainment dub)

Doraemon is a Japanese anime that aired on TV Asahi. It has been famous in Japan and other countries.

In the early 2000's, Phuuz Entertainment picked up the rights to Doraemon and decided to give it a try out dubbing the series into English by dubbing a pilot, and 25 more episodes that were comissioned by TV Asahi and Shin-Ei Animation. After a second test screening of the completed pilot, a dubbed version of the 2002 episode "All the Way to the Country of the Future", lots of networks, including children's channels, were not interested in the anime and it turns out to be unaired. 26 episodes, with a total of 52 animated segments, were dubbed and edited. They dubbed a few 80's episodes ("The Substitution Rope Story", an episode previously dubbed by MTV UK, is one of the episodes), while the rest of the episodes they dubbed were made from 2000-2002.

Cast
NOTE: The voice cast is unknown, but the cast is only guessed. Also, some the names were reused from the Fox Kids Europe dub of Doraemon, and some of them would later be used for the Disney XD dub.

Edits
Mostly, there are not many edits, and the setting was kept, but there are some cuts and edits that had to be made for airing. The animation edits were done by Shin-Ei Animation themselves. Although, some features from the Japanese version were kept
 * 1) The names were changed
 * 2) Almost all scenes where Shizu/Serena was taking a bath was cut or shortened. If they were shown, she would wear a tank top and underwear.
 * 3) Some dialogue was improvised by some of the voice actors.
 * 4) Scenes that show adults hurting children were cut.
 * 5) Cigarettes were changed to normal lollipop sticks with bubbles coming out
 * 6) Alcohol was changed to either root beer, sparkling grape juice, or water.
 * 7) The theme song was changed, using a theme song that sounds similar to the 2003 Italian theme song, and it is unknown who performed it.
 * 8) The music was changed, too, and almost every character got their own musical theme.
 * 9) Some of the original Japanese sound effects were removed.
 * 10) Some of the episodes were shortened to fit the run time of 30 minutes.
 * 1) The Japanese setting and food were kept and named properly.
 * 2) Some of the names of characters, including Doraemon and Dekisugi, were kept because they were pronounced very easily. Although, Nobita and Giant's names were just nicknames and their original Japanese names were heard in some episodes.
 * 3) Most of the dialogue was faithful to the Japanese version, with some differences, including the name changes, the name changes of the gadgets, and the improvisation.
 * 4) Some of the original Japanese sound effects were kept.
 * 5) Only one full-lengh Doraemon TV special was dubbed, and it was also mostly unedited and was released on an extremely rare VHS.

Reception
There was no proper reception, since this dub was unaired, but many channels were not interested in Doraemon due to the content and how infamous the series might get, despite the inappropriate content being edited for broadcast.

Trivia
In the first episode of the dub, Nobita (Nobu) and Shizuka (Shizu) had different voices. Michael E. Rodgers reprised his role from the Fox Kids dub to voice Nobu (but he used the same voice he used for Conan in the Toonami dub of Detective Conan), while Michelle Ruff voiced Shizu. Originally, Michael E. Rodgers was going to voice Nobu in all 26 episodes, and he even recorded his lines for all of the episodes, but unfortunately,after a short test screening of the pilot before the other episodes were dubbed, the audience did not like Michael's voice work, complaining that Michael's Nobu voice sounded "annoying" and that his crying sounded "ear grating". And so, the voice director sadly called Michael and told him that for the last 25 episodes, his lines had to be redubbed and his voice work as Nobu was scrapped. For the rest of the series after the pilot, Nobu was voiced by an unknown male actor. It is unknown why Shizu/Serena's voice was replaced after the pilot, possibly because her previous voice actress was too busy with other things.

The pilot was test screened two times. The first time was in the summer of 2002 when they wanted to see if the voice acting was good, while the second test screening was screened in January 2003. In the first test screening, there was positive reception to most of the voice acting, with the exception of Michael E. Rodgers' voice acting as Nobu, in which they complained about the voice he used and his crying. In the second test screening, none of the networks wanted to have the dub due to fears of the anime getting low ratings, causing this dub to be unaired.