To start, I liked the old/original ENG voice cast much more compared to what they got replaced with in the current/modern voice ENG cast permanently, whether that is due to better vocal direction or not, better casting or not, etc. is up to one's opinion, but that's one thing I think 4Kids got right here despite the current Ash & TRio TPCi cast doing the roles twice as long by now. Longest =/= best, IMO.
I also really appreciate they never objectively got as bad as TPCi about replacing the OST from XY onward in the last three Series in a row, and even the dub music they composed wasn't THAT bad and seemed to fit in most situations it was placed in (note: most, I didn't say all). There's more dub music in the last 10 years of the dub than in all 8 years of the OG dub, trivia.
Also, their intros were twice as long as all of TPCi's, and that helped make them more memorable in the English run. I also slightly preferred their script writing over TPCi's, as TRio while still rewritten, actually spoke like human beings back in those days in the English dub rather than wannabe poets/Dr. Seuss caricatures, Ash had far less slang & rad-isms in his lines, etc.
Did they still mess up some stuff? Sure, M01 & Chronicles haven't aged well at all, the jelly donuts (TPCi ALSO did it too in the M22 dub, that said), sandwich MS Paint etc. but on the whole it was fun & enjoyable under them from Seasons 1-Season 8 & Movies 6-8 got solid dubs. I'd argue the dub was never the same after they more or less departed, tbh.
Overall? Somewhat justified, but they did give us the OG English dub VA casts for Pokemon & Yu-Gi-Oh as well as the fan hit TMNT 2003 Series, so that buffers some of the travesty that was their One Piece dub (absolute garbage) and most of their other works that turned out badly in Mew Mew Power, Sonic X, etc. (Turtles Forever also kinda sucked, yeah).
The only thing 4Kids deserved the hate for was their ridiculous censorship practices (often parodied on YouTube), but the hate for them was really overblown in hindsight & they did do some things right as well. Al Kahn was a truly warped individual, though, the hate for him was warranted that said but the employees didn't deserve it.
And their voice cast for Shaman King was good enough that the VSI Los Angeles dub brought a lot of them back in the 2021 more faithful dub adaptation, too, there's that.
Re: rice balls, here you go, they did call them what they were a few times too in fairness- but the issue was inconsistency about it:
Rice Balls
Brock makes some Rice Balls.
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