The Adventures of Albert and Sidney (partially found English dub of "Doraemon" anime series; late 1980s-early 1990s)

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Albert and Sidney Title Card.png

The Adventures of Albert and Sidney's Title Card

Status: Partially Found

Doraemon is a successful Japanese media franchise created by manga duo Fujiko Fujio. The property has inspired three separate anime series and countless films since 1973. While the franchise has seen distribution in many countries, exposure in the English-language world has been relatively limited. An English dub of the 1979 iteration called The Adventures of Albert and Sidney produced by Canadian children's entertainment company Cinar, is believed to have only aired in Barbados in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The show aired Saturday mornings on CBC TV 8 in the country.[1][Notes 1] No home video releases of the dub are known to exist, nor have any full episodes surfaced online.

History

Until recently, information on this production had been scarce. The first reported mention of the dub was by a Barbadian user on a forum called The TFP in 2004, who recalled part of the theme song.[2] Other users online have also mentioned the dub, but few concrete details of the show and no actual footage has resurfaced online yet.[3][4][5][6][7]

It is also known that the signs weren't translated. Doraemon and Nobita were renamed Albert and Sidney, respectively. The spelling of Sidney's name is also still in doubt: some sources called him "Sydney", while others used the spelling "Sidney".

According to the NATPE 1987 issue of Television/Radio Age magazine, the dub was distributed by Cinar, a children's entertainment company based in Montreal, Quebec.[8] Cinar was selling the show as 150 ten-minute episodes.[9] The English version was recorded in Montreal, as the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) approved The Adventures of Albert and Sidney as Canadian content on June 6th, 1986, under its dubbing category.[10]

It is believed that Cinar had produced The Adventures of Albert & Sidney for broadcast in the United States on TBS. The channel had acquired the rights to 50 episodes of Doraemon in 1985, but ultimately never aired the show.[11][Notes 2] Canadian musician Jérôme Langlois lists The Adventures of Albert & Sydney [sic] as a project he worked on, crediting the series to Cinar and Turner Broadcasting.[12] The latter company's cold feet are similar to the reluctance it showed other Japanese properties it had acquired at the time. Tokusatsu series Ultra Seven, which was also localized by Cinar for Turner, remained unaired in the United States for years. The same occurred to G-Force: Guardians of Space.

In March 2017, a Lost Media Wiki contributor contacted CBC if they had information about the dub, but unfortunately, the channel had long since removed Albert & Sidney from its archive.

On February 21st, 2020, Twitter user Collin LW claimed to have found a 14-second clip of the dub. The clip was later posted on his Twitter and Tumblr and was later reposted to YouTube by "DoraeDoramichan's Channel", which turned out to be a hoax. [citation needed]

In February 2020, Jérôme Langlois revealed that each episode was roughly 8 minutes, the theme song is an original composition and not a translated version of the original Japanese theme, other characters' names he remembered from the show are "Buster", "Ricky" and "Lucy" (whom are iterations for Gian, Suneo and Shizuka), he composed the entire ordered series done in a whole summer of 1985 and also possesses VHS copies of the 30-second theme song and a 1-minute and 12 seconds excerpt from his work on the show. Despite his willingness to digitize them, scheduling and legal concerns hinder that decision.[13]

In September 2020, Jérôme uploaded the footage from his tapes onto Google Drive and it was later reuploaded to YouTube and Vimeo by The Lost Media Warrior. The footage does confirm that the spelling of Nobita's name in this dub is in fact "Sidney" and that Suneo's name was changed to Ricky. The Google Drive link was later removed but has now been mirrored to OneDrive.

Download: https://1drv.ms/v/s!AqsjLYEl7OKotRQGeqFB-Hhe_Hhk?e=ZsuPYZ

YouTube link: https://youtu.be/i77jn9zHgsM

Vimeo link: https://vimeo.com/460310798

Confirmed voice cast[14]

  • AJ Henderson - Albert
  • Steven Bednarski - Sidney
  • Michael Rudder - Sidney's Dad
  • Alison Darcy - Lucy [15]

Notes

  1. Cinar's assets are currently held by Canadian children's media company WildBrain (formerly known as DHX Media). However, it is unlikely they have the rights to Albert and Sidney as the dubbing license has most likely expired. The anime is not listed in their distribution catalogue.
  2. It is likely that three Albert and Sidney episodes would have aired in the same half-hour time slot, thus explaining Cinar's 150-episode count and Turner's 50-episode order.

Gallery

"The excerpt of the dub."

See Also

External Link

References

  1. TV Tropes page on Doraemon, which references the dub. Retrieved 14 Mar '17
  2. TFP discussion of the English dub. Retrieved 22 Feb '17
  3. An archive of a forum talking about the Barbados English dub. Retrieved 22 Feb '17
  4. "Bajan in Japan" blog article that references the dub. Retrieved 22 Feb '17
  5. Article which user "Natz" commented about the series. Retrieved 22 Feb '17
  6. Archived Anime Suki forum thread which has user "Yeti" reference the dub. Retrieved 22 Feb '17
  7. Random Wire comment section on the Doraemon page, which has users "VC" and "tai" commenting on remembering and searching for the English dub. Retrieved 22 Feb '17
  8. Page 371 on the January 19th, 1987 edition of Television/Radio Age Magazine, which mentions that Cinar had the distributive rights to the show. Retrieved 29 Dec '19
  9. Page 200 on the January 19th, 1987 edition of Television/Radio Age Magazine, which mentions that Cinar was selling the show as 150 ten-minute episodes. Retrieved 04 Jan '20
  10. List of Canadian programs certified by the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission. Retrieved 07 Jun '19
  11. Archived site which has a page on the Fujiko F. Fujio Museum. Retrieved 04 Jan '20
  12. Musique Jérôme Langlois website which lists his music credits in film & TV. Retrieved 04 Jan '20
  13. https://jeromelanglois.net/blogs/moon-melodies/posts/moon-melodies
  14. https://youtu.be/kzzpLDwQh20
  15. ALBERT AND SIDNEY UPDATE - VOICE OF SHIZUKA/LUCY FOUND! - ENGLISH DUB HISTORY BONUS! Retrieved 06 Jul '22