4Kids Entertainment Forum

This isn't strictly anime-related, as it's more about a video game, but 4Kids-- best known to most of us as purveyors of various kid-oriented TV shows and destroyer of One Piece before it was revived by FUNimation --has become the global licensing agent for Mini Ninjas, a new video game by Eidos and one I've expressed interest in since I first stumbled upon it back during this year's GDC (though it shouldn't be confused with VIZ's "mininja" promo items for Naruto). In other words: 4Kids has a property I'm interested in?

Of course, there's no guarantee that 4Kids will make any kind of television show based on the franchise, but according to my magic 8-ball, the outlook for it is good-- it's what 4Kids DOES. Especially since its TV shows, for better or worse, are first and foremost 25-minute ads for other merchandise, with more commercials filling out the extra five minutes. (Even if you LIKE the Pokemon anime, it still exists more to sell merch than to make money on its own, and you're just going to have to live with that. It was true of like 90% of the cartoons you watched as a kid, too.)

IF 4Kids makes a cartoon or film or something based on Mini Ninjas, what will remain to be seen is whether it's "all ages" or just "for kids," i.e. whether it can appeal to an older crowd along with the usual 8-12 demographic. This may or may not be something 4Kids gives a flip about, but hey, I'd like to hope...
 
Anyway, here, have Giant Bomb's trailer for the game.
   

4Kids is the program that I mostly blame for the travesties done to One Piece in the US.