Jetman is the French dub of 鳥人戦隊ジェットマン. It was first aired on TF1 block Club Dorothée on April 13, 1993, over a year after the series' ended in Japan with its' finale. While the series aired for 51 episodes originally, only 28 episodes were dubbed and aired in France.
The French dub had censorship with a few minutes of footage cut towards fight scenes due to violence and some episodes were skipped entirely, due to its' more mature violent nature such as blood, violent deaths and even torture scenes, compared to other Super Sentai shows that were also shown in France previously. With that, this leaves the series incomplete in terms of content.
This was the seventh and also the very last of the original Super Sentai series to air in the country, before Saban started internationally distributing Power Rangers, which was adapted from Toei's work. At least in France, this series has somewhat been forgotten in light of its' dub being abruptly canceled and taken off the air leaving the series unfinished and resulted in a cliffhanger there, despite being one of the most popular entries with Sentai fans.
The original names are shown below in parenthesis.
| Character | Actor[1] | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Réno / Red Hawk (Ryu Tendo / Red Hawk) |
William Coryn | ||
| Galt / Black Condor (Gai Yuki / Black Condor) |
Alexandre Gillet | ||
| Antoine Nouel (stand-in) | |||
| Renato / Yellow Owl (Raita Oishi / Yellow Owl) |
Mark Lesser | ||
| Kaori / White Swan (Kaori Rokumekan / White Swan) |
Virginie Ogouz | ||
| Anne / Blue Swallow (Ako Hayasaka / Blue Swallow) |
Emmanuelle Pailly | ||
| Marie-Laure Dougnac (stand-in) | |||
| Tranza | Régis Reuilhac | ||
| Aya | Christine Champneuf | ||
| Comte Radiguet | Maurice Sarfati | ||
| Grey | |||
| Maria | Sophie Arthuys | ||
| Empereur Tran | |||
Narrator
|
Maurice Sarfati |
Trivia[]
- The Japanese opening was replaced by a French opening sung by Jean-Paul Césari.[2] Although, they actually did keep the original Japanese opening theme during battle scenes, with lyrics and instrumental versions kept intact. With scenes that has the Japanese lyrics heard, it was actually kept entirely during fight scenes in addition to the instrumental version towards the French dub.
- Only Kaori keeps her original given name.
- Tran, the child form of the Emperor Tranza, was given a female voice.
- Jet Icarus and Tetra Boy were renamed as "Titanor" and "Tériblor" respectively.
- The monster Semimaru was renamed "Rigolator"
- The last episode to be dubbed and aired was episode 38 on January 19, 1994.
- With Jetman being the very last of the "original" Super Sentai series (known as the "Pre-Zyuranger" era coined by fans) to be dubbed and aired in France, international competition has weighed in by Saban when they started adapting Toei's work. So instead of dubbing for the next Sentai series Zyuranger into French, they would dub its' American adaptation Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, in its' place.
- French and Basque were the two languages that this series was dubbed in, throughout western regions.
Censorship[]
- Several fighting scenes were censored due to the violent nature of the series.
- Several episodes were skipped due to the psychologists of TF1 stating that the show was too violent to be aired and subsequently, was suddenly taken off broadcast by the channel. Conversely, the episodes that were dubbed had some footage cut.
- Sometimes, the dialog was adapted in a grotesque way. Reportedly, after a bet between the voice actors; in fact, they challenged themselves to put the word "café" ("coffee") and other bizarre things in their replies, becoming a running gag in the dub. It was like this how the French dialog saw regularly the Jetmen declaring that it was time to "take a coffee" ("il est temps d'aller prendre un café") before scenes which were way more serious without any link with the previous dialog (such as the French dubs of Fist of the North Star and City Hunter, both directed by Maurice Sarfati), which took away every logic from the episodes' plot.
- One example of such dialogue was when one of the heroes gets shot by a blaster, in which his team mates in the original say "What's up? Chin up!", which in the dub was translated as "Ça va? Tu veux un café"? ("What's up? Do you want a coffee?")[3].
- Another example was in the episode 13, during the scene where Gai is surprised to see Ryu at the Golden Gate bar just to drink a glass of milk, with the former asks the latter why did he came there if he wasn't going to drink whisky, with Ryu replying that he wanted seriously to talk to Gai. In the dub, the dialogue was translated as: Gai:"Hey, what's going on? You usually have a grenadine!" ("Hey, qu’est-ce qui t’arrive, d’habitude tu prends une grenadine!") Ryu:"Yes, but today I am having a strawberry juice because this is a severe situation." ("Oui, mais aujourd'hui je prends un jus de fraise cas la situation est grave") [4].
- Just like the French dub of Fist of the North Star, some bizarre puns were inserted. An example was when Sticky Cockroach, a monster who managed to glue the Jet Striker to the ground, was renamed "Gluor, le maître des colles" ("Gluor, the master of the glues", a pun on "maître d’école", which means "primary school teacher").
- The episode 34 was the most censored episode of the dub, with the death scenes of the three Dimensian Soldiers (Dan, Kanna and Ray), with the episode stopping when Radiguet broods on his defeat (2 minutes before the end).