Lost Ojamajo Doremi Singaporean English Dub (Magical Doremi)
Aug 21, 2023 13:12:59 GMT
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Post by oblivionaccess on Aug 21, 2023 13:12:59 GMT
As you might know, the magical girl anime Ojamajo Doremi received an English dub by 4Kids in 2005 under the name Magical DoReMi. What’s a lot less known is that there was actually an earlier English dub made for the show that predates the 4Kids dub by a whole year, and that’s currently completely lost.
This dub, known as Magical Doremi (without the weird 4Kids capitalizations), debuted on the Singaporean English language channel Channel i on June 20, 2004. It seems to have aired on Sunday mornings at 9:30am up until October of that same year (I can’t verify the exact date it was last aired, though the latest airing date I was able to find archived was October 10), after which it was removed from the schedule alongside most of the other anime on the channel. Channel i itself would ceased transmission on January 1, 2005, after its owner, SPH MediaWorks, merged with media conglomerate Mediacorp.
First known airing (June 20, 2004)
Last known airing (October 10, 2004)
The dub was produced by Voiceovers Unlimited, a Singaporean audio recording studio founded by Chuck Powers that operated between 2001 and 2007. According to the Dubbing Wiki, the company was originally a part of the Singaporean anime distributor Odex before eventually expanding outside of it, with most of their English dubs being created for Odex and the South East Asian market. Alongside Doremi, they also produced dubs for anime such as Detective Conan, One Piece, and Yu-Gi-Oh.
Of particular note is that one of the voice actresses associated with Voiceovers Unlimited, Denise Tan, actually has Magical Doremi listed on her resume under “Animation Voice Dubbing”. A few websites, including the Lost Media Wiki article, claim that Tan was the voice of Doremi herself, though I haven’t been able to find any concrete evidence of that.
Link
Other voice actors that worked at Voiceovers Unlimited include Joe Murray, Brian Zimmerman, and Chuck Powers himself, who also directed many of the dubs they produced (a more thorough list of voice actors can be found here). Powers also founded a company called Creative Fuzion, which, among other things, lists Magical Doremi on its portfolio.
Link
This dub is, as of this writing, completely lost. No footage of it has been posted anywhere online, and there’s no evidence of it being released on home media in any form. It’s unknown how many episodes of it were produced, and what changes may have been made from the Japanese version. Alongside that, there’s practically zero documentation about it online aside from what I’ve written about here. In an attempt to find more information about this dub, and to potentially obtain footage of it, I’ve tried contacting several people who worked at Voiceovers Unlimited, one of whom, the aforementioned Joe Murray, actually responded to me.
This confirms that Chuck Powers was indeed the director for the Magical Doremi dub, and that he and Brian Zimmerman were voice actors for it. I sent Murray a second email asking if he had any additional information, which he also responded to.
While he wasn’t involved in the dub’s production and couldn’t give much more information about it, he did confirm that it received no VCD release or TV distribution outside of Singapore. He states that he believes it was dubbed specifically for “Channel 8”, but he’s most likely referring to Channel i, as that was the English TV channel owned by SPH MediaWorks at the time. Seeing as he wasn’t involved, I assume that he wouldn’t have any footage of the dub itself, so I didn’t raise the subject.
Beyond this, I’ve also attempted to contact Chuck Powers, Brian Zimmerman, and Denise Tan on their Facebook pages, but they have yet to respond. If I don’t end up receiving a response from any of them, I’ll most likely continue contacting other Voiceovers Unlimited staff on the off-chance that some of them may have some additional information.
In terms of trying to find this lost dub, while I’m hoping that some of these leads may have footage or audio from the dub and that they’d be willing to share it, there’s no guarantees that any of them will. Practically all of the companies that were involved in its production no longer exist, and while it could potentially exist in Mediacorp’s archives, it’s uncertain whether or not they’d be willing to release it. Another method could be trying to find people from Singapore who recorded episodes of the dub from their TV.
I’ll conclude this by sharing an interview Joe Murray did in 2020, which, while having no information on the Doremi dub in particular, still sheds a lot of light into Voiceovers Unlimited’s history and their dubbing process.
This dub, known as Magical Doremi (without the weird 4Kids capitalizations), debuted on the Singaporean English language channel Channel i on June 20, 2004. It seems to have aired on Sunday mornings at 9:30am up until October of that same year (I can’t verify the exact date it was last aired, though the latest airing date I was able to find archived was October 10), after which it was removed from the schedule alongside most of the other anime on the channel. Channel i itself would ceased transmission on January 1, 2005, after its owner, SPH MediaWorks, merged with media conglomerate Mediacorp.
First known airing (June 20, 2004)
Last known airing (October 10, 2004)
The dub was produced by Voiceovers Unlimited, a Singaporean audio recording studio founded by Chuck Powers that operated between 2001 and 2007. According to the Dubbing Wiki, the company was originally a part of the Singaporean anime distributor Odex before eventually expanding outside of it, with most of their English dubs being created for Odex and the South East Asian market. Alongside Doremi, they also produced dubs for anime such as Detective Conan, One Piece, and Yu-Gi-Oh.
Of particular note is that one of the voice actresses associated with Voiceovers Unlimited, Denise Tan, actually has Magical Doremi listed on her resume under “Animation Voice Dubbing”. A few websites, including the Lost Media Wiki article, claim that Tan was the voice of Doremi herself, though I haven’t been able to find any concrete evidence of that.
Link
Other voice actors that worked at Voiceovers Unlimited include Joe Murray, Brian Zimmerman, and Chuck Powers himself, who also directed many of the dubs they produced (a more thorough list of voice actors can be found here). Powers also founded a company called Creative Fuzion, which, among other things, lists Magical Doremi on its portfolio.
Link
This dub is, as of this writing, completely lost. No footage of it has been posted anywhere online, and there’s no evidence of it being released on home media in any form. It’s unknown how many episodes of it were produced, and what changes may have been made from the Japanese version. Alongside that, there’s practically zero documentation about it online aside from what I’ve written about here. In an attempt to find more information about this dub, and to potentially obtain footage of it, I’ve tried contacting several people who worked at Voiceovers Unlimited, one of whom, the aforementioned Joe Murray, actually responded to me.
This confirms that Chuck Powers was indeed the director for the Magical Doremi dub, and that he and Brian Zimmerman were voice actors for it. I sent Murray a second email asking if he had any additional information, which he also responded to.
While he wasn’t involved in the dub’s production and couldn’t give much more information about it, he did confirm that it received no VCD release or TV distribution outside of Singapore. He states that he believes it was dubbed specifically for “Channel 8”, but he’s most likely referring to Channel i, as that was the English TV channel owned by SPH MediaWorks at the time. Seeing as he wasn’t involved, I assume that he wouldn’t have any footage of the dub itself, so I didn’t raise the subject.
Beyond this, I’ve also attempted to contact Chuck Powers, Brian Zimmerman, and Denise Tan on their Facebook pages, but they have yet to respond. If I don’t end up receiving a response from any of them, I’ll most likely continue contacting other Voiceovers Unlimited staff on the off-chance that some of them may have some additional information.
In terms of trying to find this lost dub, while I’m hoping that some of these leads may have footage or audio from the dub and that they’d be willing to share it, there’s no guarantees that any of them will. Practically all of the companies that were involved in its production no longer exist, and while it could potentially exist in Mediacorp’s archives, it’s uncertain whether or not they’d be willing to release it. Another method could be trying to find people from Singapore who recorded episodes of the dub from their TV.
I’ll conclude this by sharing an interview Joe Murray did in 2020, which, while having no information on the Doremi dub in particular, still sheds a lot of light into Voiceovers Unlimited’s history and their dubbing process.
