#anyway this became a fucking dissertation very quickly. and also a treatise on why you should ship riven with musa lol. but i can't talk

[opalsiren]

not to winx club dub discourse in 2021 but i decided to watch the ep where we meet musa's dad in the rai dub instead for a change and... whew do i have some thoughts

first off, i understand that the rai dub is closest to the original italian version and is considered more ‘authentic’ and therefore better. doesn’t change the fact that, at least based on this one episode alone, the 4kids dub is superior. please don’t take this too seriously lol

so i'd never watched the rai dub before but in this version musa's dad writes a song for musa's mom which she... doesn't like, they go broke trying to get famous and can't pay their medical bills, resulting in the death of musa’s mom. whereas in the 4kids dub her mom instantly falls in love with her dad's song, she gives up her classical training and he gives up his royal status to be with her, they're pretty successful and take time off to have musa, then musa's mom passes

like... there's a message in the 4kids dub, that you can go against tradition to do what you love and be with the person you love. which directly parallels musa's relationship with riven since he's somewhat of a social outcast but she loves him and wants to be with him anyway. what is the message of the rai dub? don't follow your dreams or you'll die broke? make it make sense!

i think that the message that musa needs to keep making music, even if it is painful for her dad who is having a hard time getting over his partner’s death, is just more coherent. it centers the conflict around musa’s family and the importance of keeping her mother’s memory alive, rather than ‘you will go broke and die if you pursue your passion also i don’t like riven for arbitrary reasons’

as for musa’s dad not vibing with riven... what was the point of that? we are told that they have met offscreen, so musa’s father’s reasons for disliking him seem silly and contrived. how are we supposed to be invested when we don’t see this meeting firsthand? further to that, there is a very subtle implication in the 4kids dub that riven and musa’s relationship parallels her parents’ enduring love, in that they rebelled against society together. this implication is compounded by the fact that the concert at red fountain takes place a few episodes after the whole jared fiasco where all of musa’s friends are essentially telling her to dump riven and date jared instead

also, musa’s parents both had to change for one another and make sacrifices to be together. later on in the series, musa earns her charmix by finally telling riven outright that she likes him, showing enormous growth from the early season one musa who always tried to ‘play it cool.’ later, riven makes the ultimate sacrifice for musa by taking a death blow from darkar intended for her. the parallels are subtle, sure, but it almost seems like the rai dub is trying to tell us that all the change and growth musa’s parents went through together was in vain? again, there is a lack of clarity around what the actual message of this episode is

at least based on this one episode, the rai dub suffers from a very telling structuring issue. don’t get me wrong, the 4kids dub has its problems, but the narration employed in the rai dub meant that we were told rather than shown the evens of the episode. also the dialogue is just... stilted, and weird, and off in so many places. i understand that the 4kids voice acting is critiqued as goofy and silly, but the rai dub voices are boring and lacklustre to the point where i could barely distinguish one character from the next. there is so little variation even in accent, tone, or the use of slang or verbiage. yes, british!tecna, musa’s use of early 2000s slang, and stella’s over-reliance on phrases such as ‘fabulous’ and ‘dawling’ are a little gauche, but these quirks breathe life into the voice acting and show the passion behind the project as a whole

one thing i did like about the rai dub is that the red fountain gig is supposed to be musa’s ‘musical debut’ which does add to the stakes. when you watch the 4kids’ answer to this episode it’s very easy to be like ‘she could just... not perform at this one concert, and then keep her music from her dad till graduation.’ that said, at least in the 4kids dub, she had spent the summer before season two touring with some music group and also performed at the back to school dance in season one. is there something about a musical debut i’m not understanding?

that all being said, all of this is based on one (1) episode. i know that the 4kids dub changed a ton from the original canon, including re-writing more ‘mature’ plot points, in an attempt to make the show more suitable for younger, american audiences. i can totally understand why people who are familiar with the og dub can’t stand the 4kids iteration. i think must of us tend to gravitate towards the dub we grew up with. i also am going to try sit down and watch the rai dub up to season three, whenever i finish my season three 4kids rewatch

again, if you can’t stand the 4kids dub, please don’t take these presumptions criticisms based on my viewing of one episode too seriously. honestly? i am starting to consider 4kids as an entirely separate iteration of winx canon entirely. for me the winx canon ends at season three, since that’s when the 4kids license expired, and an entirely new canon had been established by the 4kids writers. none of these writers were the same writers as that of the rai dub, so why should we consider it within the same canon?