User blog:Colorband/A Brief Inquiry into 4Panel Studios

It's 1994. 4Panel come into existence.

Their first few years are pretty quiet.

They basically work with every mid-tier Atlansian manga distributor under the sun.

It's 1997. They release Evangelion. They've just barely stopped releasing it - Ani's got the rights to release the Netflix dub now.

It's 1998. They release Pokémon. Yes, that one. It's hugely successful. Yes, that successful. When 4Kids drops it, they start licensing it straight from the source. They still use the Anglicized names and the international openings though. It's still working out for them.

Time passes. They want to get into the manga business. EMcP, their owners, don't want to - so 4Panel convinces EMcP that they should slowly spin them off - it takes until 2004 for them to sell the last of their shares in 4Panel.

It's 2003. They release Lupin the Third Part II. It's fairly successful, especially in Eusloida, where it threatens to become almost Itainian in its popularity.

It's 2004. They release One Piece. Instead of using 4Kids' dub, they decide to do something they rarely do and give it a more faithful in-house dub. This eventually leads to the Trapanandic region becoming a hellworld where no one can decide which 4Panel dub is better.

It's 2007. Pioneer goes under, causing them to stop dubbing Lupin The Third Part II. This couldn't have come at a worse time for 4Panel. Drunk with Pokémon power (and more importantly, money), they decide the most reasonable thing to do is take over production wholesale, acquiring the rights directly from SMS and getting Phuuz to continue with their dub. It works, but causes the company coffers to dip dangerously low, leading to a potential Part III dub being cancelled alongside Eikaroth dubbing.

It's the late 2000s, heading into the early 2010s. A shedload of mid-tier Atlansian anime distributors collapse. Since their modus operandi was "work with every mid-tier Atlansian manga distributor under the sun," this leaves 4Panel left out in the cold. After a brief period of panic, they decide to negotiate directly for the rights to their most popular titles and eventually end up becoming Funimation's Trapanandic distributor.

They actually dub Gintama. This is because the person who created them is very upset Gintama's never gotten an English dub.

People call them "blessed Appa" in video comments. Like the buffalo thing from Avatar. They call them that because 1. their current logo looks like it says "AP" and 2. they actually distributed Avatar in the Trapanandic region in partnership with Paramount Home Entertainment (since parent company Viacom owns the show through Nickelodeon) for a time.