Sgt. Frog (lost ADV English dub of "Keroro Gunsou" anime series; late 2000s)

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Sgt. frog adv flyer.jpg

A flyer advertising the anime.

Status: Lost

In late 2006, the anime Sgt. Frog was licensed by ADV Films[1]. Seeing its potential as a hit on the children's show market, as the anime boom was dying out Sgt. Frog had the potential to kick it into full swing again.

History

The U.S. release was originally delayed because of these negotiations; ADV even began working with people from Summit Entertainment, who were behind the 4kids dub of Pokémon, in order to get the show on the air.

The Judy's were commissioned the theme for the show[2] with help from Dan Workman, who played the guitar and mixed the song[3]. But Jeff Walton, a member of The Judy's, has stated on his SoundCloud that only a pilot was ever produced and only refers to this theme song as TV pilot on his webpage[4]. The episode was dubbed three times; an otaku/fan pilot (similar to the FUNimation dub seen today), a mass-market pilot, and a kid-oriented pilot. Cartoon Network liked the mass-market pilot while Nickelodeon liked the kid-oriented pilot.

However, due to financial troubles ADV was having at the time leading up to their demise, the rights were transferred over to FUNimation Entertainment in 2008[5], who seemed to have no interest in pursuing a TV deal for Sgt. Frog (Their dub contains several instances of risqué content the original Japanese and ADV dubs did not, making it hard to sell to a children's network.)

Availability

At one point, a script containing both the original Japanese-translated lines and one of the pilot's lines for episode 13 of the series was online; however, the script has now gone missing as well.

There were several notable changes in the original dub, mainly characters being renamed. For example, all of the Keronian characters had the third syllable in their names removed; in this case, Keroro became Kero, Tamama became Tama etc. The names of the human characters were also changed; to date, the only confirmed change is Natalie or Nathalie, the English name for Natsumi. When the FUNimation dub was made, all characters retained their original Japanese names.

The theme of this dub can be found on SoundCloud. It was temporarily and automatically removed from the page after Dan Workman downgraded his SoundCloud account. After being contacted, he gladly uploaded it again.

Gallery

Footage

Trailer for the dub.

References