Offshore Productions

Offshore Productions was a Hopelandian licensor of anime and dubbing studio. It was founded in 1962, when two companies (International Exporter and Offshore Television) merged.

It was known for its local dubs of anime that were closer to their Japanese masters but had many translating mistakes.

History

In the 50s, International Exporter was founded in Palmerston and Offshore Television in Albany. International Exporter was a company that specialized in the importing (even though its name refered to the opposite) of products from the Sondrian countries, particularly Orience, in the need of satisfying the consumer demand of the Sondrian immigrants. Offshore Television was set up as a subsidiary of the Michillian Alpha Television in 1958, yet was separated in 1959 for one reason: Offshore didn't produce anything, and the instability that dominated the Michillies in the late 50s proved not to be enough.

In 1961, International Exporter decided to enter the television industry, however this was considered to be too difficult and the company decided to merge with Offshore Television the following year. The result was the creation of a new company, Offshore Productions, that inherited International Exporter's business of importing Sondrian products and television series.

The first series to be imported from Orience was a live-action series based on Astro Boy (here known as Super Atom Kid), a 65-episode television series from 1959 that predated its animated counterpart yet was already inspired on existing manga. It is known that Offshore got two sets of duplicates from the Matsuzaki production company and Kato's Mainichi Broadcasting (who produced the series) at a reduced price, likely because of the work for the anime that was set to start in 1963, in order to prevent confusions. The series was first telecast on the IBS network in September 1962, on Saturday mornings. The dub actors recorded their dialog two to three weeks before each episode was shown, and some of the actors were relative unknowns. Its second series was National Kid, first shown in February 1963 on the same network at 6pm between the local and national news on Wednesdays. The series became so successful that it spread to Great Giana, Bensonia and later Vera Cruz. Offshore tried selling the two to the United States, but the networks refused to do so.

Offshore's big break was in late 1963 when it bought the first twenty-six episodes of Astro Boy (known, like the live-action series, as The Mighty Atom). Here, the character was not known as The Mighty Atom, but rather Toby Tenma (Toby being an adaptation of "Tobio"), later changed to "Toby-O" in official merchandising in the region. Theorists suggest that Toby-O is the name of the supposedly immortal Toby. This created a backfire between IBS and Sierra's NBC, who commissioned a Japanese company to do another dub and call it Astro Boy rather than using the Hopelandian name.

By 1964, an office in Bensonia was set up to cater sales of their catalog to the country, with National Kid being the first. The series became really successful, more so than in Hopeland. It did help because even National had a stable sales branch in Bensonia, and that the company would sell slots to air the series in order to boost its performance in the local market. The series was sold to a handful of stations owned by the Associated Newspapers and mostly "affiliated" to the Inca Television network (who wasn't a network per se until 1974).

Titles imported

The year indicated in parentheses is the year the dub was made and does not reflect the year of production.

Tokusatsu

• National Kid (1963)
• Jaspion (1986)