Rodimus Prime wrote:Sabrblade wrote:Kurona wrote:I don't think Hot Rod's ever actually been called Hot Rod in Japan.
He was in the Japanese dub of The Rebirth.
I suspect that was because Rebirth wasn't originated in Japan, and he was called Hot Rod in the source material. Though I don't remember if that also applied to the series in the Unicron Trilogy, as the production and dubbing, especially for Armada, was a mess.
The American G1 cartoon didn't originate in Japan either. Toei helped animate most of its first two seasons and the movie, but it was conceived as an American cartoon. The third and fourth seasons were animated by AKOM in South Korea, but the third season still aired in Japan in a dubbed form after its English release in North America and elsewhere.
The reason Hot Rod was named "Hot Rod" in the Japanese dub of The Rebirth, instead of "Hot Rodimus" like he was in the Japanese dub of Season 3, is because Japan didn't get The Rebirth dubbed until 1996, where it was released direct-to-video with a very different dub from how Seasons 1-3 had been dubbed in Japanese. Namely, the English theme song and commercial bumpers were kept intact and unchanged, and nearly all of the names and terms in the episodes were left as their English names instead of their Japanese names (with the few exceptions being high profile characters like Optimus Prime still being "Convoy", and a few other odd changes such as Scorponok being renamed "Scorpion"). Only three actors from the original Japanese dub of the G1 cartoon were featured in the dub of The Rebirth: Tesshō Genda as Convoy, Seizō Katō as Galvatron, and Issei Masamune as the narrator.
As such, the Japanese dub of The Rebirth was much more heavily based on the original English version of the episodes when compared to how Seasons 1-3 were dubbed with a ton of name and terminology changes.
As for the Unicron Trilogy:
- Armada Hot Shot was "Hot Rod" in Japan
- Energon Hot Shot was "Hot Shot" in Japan
- Energon Rodimus was "Rodimus Convoy" in Japan
