Xros Wars English Pilot Dub Intro & Additional Info- Fusion Battles English Dub from William Winckler Productions

[MarcFBR]

So this is a weird return.

Back when Toei first began to start shopping around Digimon Xros Wars for a US distributor to license it, they had gotten William Winckler Productions (WWP) to produce various dub pilots for it (alongside other Toei pilots, and a large series of compilation films of non-Digimon content at roughly the same time.)

A selection of clips of various WWP productions was added to archive.org roughly a month ago, from an account that appears to be William Winckler himself (or someone uploading on his behalf perhaps.)

Included in all of these is an intro for the pilot dub (clipped out and embedded above.)

Unfortunately the intro isn't super interesting to us overall for a few key reasons:

The intro, likely meant as a temporary stand-in, is just a clean version of Xros Wars OP1, with the Fusion Battles logo used in other countries quickly thrown over the Xros Wars logo (the dub was realistically meant to help sell the show, so would have been produced cheaply with various stand-in elements.)

The only real change to the intro other than that is using an instrumental version of Never Give Up!, the first intro theme to Xros Wars.

Despite comments from William Winckler that the intention was that they would have continued the pilot dub and do the entire series had Saban not licensed it and done it themselves, it seems unlikely just due to the way these things tend to work.



And a bit of an interview with William Winckler where he talks about the dub.

The cast listed on IMDB still appears to be accurate to a cast list we had years ago.

His comments about G. Larry Butler being quite good as MadLeomon has been among the most consistent info about the dub as I recall.




We wrote about the pilot dubs for Xros Wars back in 2011.

Thanks to moonmistblue (2) & CureKaoru, who came across much of this trying to find info on the Pretty Cure dub content WWP did at the same time.


None of the audio from either pilot dub have popped up in any real way after 10+ years (that I'm aware of.)

The Fusion Battles title was used in a few regions, most notably attached to the English dub done in Asia, and is still generally the title/logo Toei uses in their catalogs as the English 'translated title' for Xros Wars.



William Winckler Productions first dubbed anime in the 1980s, dubbing Tekkaman: The Space Knight (passing around funny English clips of the show used to be reasonably popular online among anime fans.)

A bit before the Xros Wars pilot dub they produced dozens of compilation films of classic Toei anime, with new dubs. A handful were released in the west, while others came out in Japan as 'help to learn English' type material.

A few years ago they produced English content for the original Japanese version of the anime Free, English dubbed compilation films of Minky Momo which were released on Amazon, & dubbed a number of Ultraman films that got limited theatrical releases in the US & are now on Blu-ray.

 

[AppliFang]

Idk i like how Saban's Digimon Fusion turned out lol...wished tagiru's season got dubbed though... (still salty about that haha)

Maybe he lost the right to the show cause of how the he is? Talk down on other productions is kinda unprofessional imo...hmm

The way he said he made the "pilot"....Not trying to say sub vs dub is better but he just directing?transalting idklol ...he didnt "make" it...

 

[Mattman324]

(passing around funny English clips of the show used to be reasonably popular online among anime fans.)

Unfortunately, since that time, the space lance slipped, so its power started to go.

 

[Muur]

Idk i like how Saban's Digimon Fusion turned out lol...wished tagiru's season got dubbed though... (still salty about that haha)

Maybe he lost the right to the show cause of how the he is? Talk down on other productions is kinda unprofessional imo...hmm

The way he said he made the "pilot"....Not trying to say sub vs dub is better but he just directing?transalting idklol ...he didnt "make" it...

I found those comments to be disrespectful too. Who's to say his is any good, not like anyone but him and his friends have seen it.

Well the Japanese apparently did. I find it interesting that it seems to have aired in Japan

Also interesting was looking at 2011 WTW

 

[Cardcaptor Takato]

This is a fascinating bit of Digimon history I'm not as familiar with and it would be interesting to one day hopefully see more of this dub if only from a historical point of view. I do agree though it's totally disrespectful for Winkler as a professional to attack his colleagues' in the industry's work. Especially as Saban has a much bigger history of making professional anime dubs for US TV that do well in ratings and are well liked by a lot of fans. And the cast of the Saban Fusion dub are professionals who put a lot of hard work into their roles.

 

[Gargomon_1985]

I remember seen an episode in Italian dub wile on a vacation in Italy with my family and its was called "Digimon Fusion Battles" (I thing it was around 2012 before the English dub was out)

 

[shynely]

Well the Japanese apparently did. I find it interesting that it seems to have aired in Japan

The ones that showed in Japan were the compilation movies, not the Digimon Fusion dub.

 

[Muur]

Well the Japanese apparently did. I find it interesting that it seems to have aired in Japan

The ones that showed in Japan were the compilation movies, not the Digimon Fusion dub.

I mean it sounds like they turned the first few episodes into a "movie". Maybe episode 1-3

 

[Unknown Neo]

This is pretty crazy. Imagine what could have been if they didn't go with Saban. Really. Maybe we'd have gotten Young Hunters. That would have been something.

 

[shynely]

I meant it sounds like they turned the first few episodes into a "movie". Maybe episode 1-3

They did that with some other shows, but I'm not seeing anything that suggests they did it with Digimon. The first post says

A bit before the Xros Wars pilot dub they produced dozens of compilation films of classic Toei anime,

And the video where he talks about Digimon Fusion makes no mention of a compilation movie.

edit: Okay, the old thread from 2011 talks about their Fusion dub being "potentially" another compilation movie, but that was speculation, and the Winckler Digimon dub is definitely not among the ones that got shown in Japan, since recordings haven't turned up.

 

[Cardcaptor Takato]

This is pretty crazy. Imagine what could have been if they didn't go with Saban. Really. Maybe we'd have gotten Young Hunters. That would have been something.

I don't know that it would have made that much of a difference as I wouldn't be surprised if it was the case that Younger Hunters was treated as a separate show from Xros Wars and they probably would have had to buy the license separately.

 

[Unknown Neo]

Oh hey. But maybe. Who knows I guess. This is really interesting. It's a bit weird for if it was a separate license but I could understand that. Some think it is.

 

[Yamato-san]

I once saw a German Xros Wars clip, and it looks like they just dubbed off of the English dub. I can't help thinking........ ouch. Germany had a (mostly) faithful dub of the Digimon franchise up through Savers, only for that to happen. I take it, because of the international Fusion Battles rebranding, a lot of other countries were effected by this? And if that is the case, which countries did have a Xros Wars dub that was more faithful to the Japanese version?

 

[Vice]

I once saw a German Xros Wars clip, and it looks like they just dubbed off of the English dub. I can't help thinking........ ouch. Germany had a (mostly) faithful dub of the Digimon franchise up through Savers, only for that to happen. I take it, because of the international Fusion Battles rebranding, a lot of other countries were effected by this? And if that is the case, which countries did have a Xros Wars dub that was more faithful to the Japanese version?

Same thing happened in Latin America, from Adventure to Savers/Data Squad they dubbed the Japanese versions instead of the English dubs. Until Fusion came out, the English dub was used. It’s a shame, because like the US a lot of countries that got the Fusion dub never dubbed the Hunters Arc. The only countries I know that used Fusion Battles were Malaysia, Italy and I think India.

I remember hearing about the WW dub, can’t believe it’s been 10 years already. I remember hearing that Taiki’s name would be Gary lol I guess Mikey does sound better.