Cartoon retakes

Several episodes of the Jem cartoon, actually went through some stages of changes, especially the first 8 episodes, which I'm first and foremost concentrating on on these pages.

I only mention scenes which are not the same in all versions: Scenes were added (to make the stories more understandable) or cut out (usually to correct bloopers), moved (usually just another clip away or so), re-animated (because of bloopers or too dark colors) or frozen to fill out time where a clip was removed. Although there might be lots more little differences in these episodes inbetween all these retakes on these pages, I decided to concentrate on the most interesting and noticable changes.

In my opinion, it was a good thing they corrected bloopers, and fun seeing more scenes. Just sad to see they cut out a bunch of clips aswell. As you will see, no version has it all, so if you're a huge fan of Jem, you're going to have to watch them all to not miss out on anything. Although Christy Marx was involved in both adding and removing several of the clips for atleast the 5 episodes version 2# of Truly Outrageous, all of the retakes weren't written by her.

If you have further interest in edits of the Jem episodes, you should also see a very detailed site at Cartoon Review site: Jem. This guy is an expert on these stuff and knows alot of technical details about the actual process of editing episodes.

Truly Outrageous

Episodes:

The first five episodes of the Jem cartoon, didn't start out as five episodes:
  1. 15 segments: each 7 minute long. The original version aired on TV, all segments with their own episode title (although not sure the titles were written out). The songs were probably the short version at this point. (Do you have these segments recorded, give me a mail).

    (Aired in Italy)

  2. Unreleased reworked material: Edits were done, before they even released it in any form after the airings of the segments. Most of the material was kept, and some retakes were done. Then... the movie version aswell as the 5 episode version #2 used this material as a base (the 5 episode version #1 didn't), and then added their own retakes for their releases. A clue to the existence of this unreleased reworked material, would be that the 5 episode version #2 share many retakes with the movie, and is missing several scenes that are in the 5 episodes version #1 (except for a few scenes which probably derrive from the old segments and where just cut out of the movie version). And so the 5 episodes version #2 could not derrive directly from the movie version.

  3. Movie: 90 minutes long. For the VHS release the segments were bundled togheter and released as "Truly Outrageous". Retakes were done, several of which were also available in the 5 episode version #2, some that weren't. Alot of little clips were repeated and thrown in where they didn't belong. Some of the songs were extended, and also included repeated clips.

    (Released in Sweden, Finland, UK)

  4. 4 episodes: The segments were bundled togheter and cut into four, to become the first four episodes of the cartoon TV series. This is yet to be confirmed whether it was just a Dutch edit. But one thing that speaks for that it wasn't, is that production numbers for these episodes have only been found from 4041 to 4044. No production number 4045 has been confirmed.

    (Aired in Holland)

  5. 5 episodes version #1: with long recaps, a few clips that were probably new and retakes, also a long preview of the next episode at the end. Short version of the songs, like in the segments. No episode titles were present at this time, so most of the countries where this version was aired choose the episode titles from one of the three short segments that each of these episodes now consisted of, like episode 1/title from segment 1: "The Beginning", episode 2/segment 5: "The Mansion", episode 3/segment 7: "Video Clip", episode 4/segment 10: "The Sparks Fly" and episode 5/segment 13: "Synergy".

    The retakes done before the TO movie were not present here, instead they went back and used the old segments and then added new retakes for this version.

    (Aired in the UK, Italy, France and Australia [thanks to Cosmic Falcon for confirming Australia])

  6. 5 episodes version #2: with short recaps, lots of new long scenes and retakes. At this point, the series had already gone as far as the episode "In Stitches" according to Sunbow's own episode numbers, so these first five episodes got the numbers 5205-008 to 5205-012. Also the songs were extended and the music videos got new scenes.

    Some of the background music was replaced, sometimes with music from later episodes. The songs that had a music intro before the singing starts "Too Close For Comfort" and "Truly Outrageous", were cut to start like the versions that were released on the music cassette tapes that came with the dolls and other merchandise.

    Based on the same reworked material as the movie, and shares several retakes, while the movie did have edits that aren't present here. This version also share some scenes with the 5 episode version #1.

    (Aired in Spain, same as on the Rhino DVDs).

The comparison is now done all in one page between all versions I have: Movie, 5 episodes version #1 and #2, episode by episode (only finished one yet, the rest are between the movie and the 5 episodes version #2).

I'll try to explain how I set it all up. I've divided it all into columns, starting with a description of the scene, and then to the right of it the columns continues for the script, Original Segments (Guess), Movie, 5 episodes version #1, 5 episodes version #2. If there's a picture in a particular column, it means that clip was included right there in that version. Sometimes the images will look different which means the scene was re-animated. Sometimes there's a little note underneath one image about what kind of edit was made, and even if an image next to it (from the other versions) looks the same, that note will only be included under one of them, but hopefully you'll understand that it goes for the others, which look the same, aswell.

I even decided to try to figure out what was in the original segments. As for missing scenes, we're screwed. But as for identifying what was retakes and not included in the original segments, I figured that the things that were the same in all of these three versions: the TO movie, the 5 episode version #1 and #2, or maybe even the same in just two of them, were probably how it was in the original segments. And the alternations were probably retakes unique for each version. The exception is that the movie version and the 5 episode version #2 share som retakes. And another exception seems to be that the movie and the 5 episode version #1 both have some unique clips that weren't retakes, but derrive from the old segments, because they seem to be connected directly to the original scenes which were just cut slightly for the other versions. For those scenes that are included in all three versions, but slightly different in all of them (because of re-animations) or even between the movie and 5 episode version #1, I would take for granted that the original version is either from the movie or the 5 episode version #1, depending on which seems to be a corrected blooper.

I'm working on checking the following versions:

  • 4 episode version
  • Rhino DVDs
  • Hub airing
  • Shout Factory DVD

Starbright

Episodes:

The Starbright episodes already to begin with, were divided into three, and had absolutely incredible animation. Still they went through as much as two stages of retakes, resulting in three versions of these episodes.

  1. First version consisted of three episodes. This version might never have aired, but evidence of it can be found in a recap in the second of the below versions, in the shape of one particular clip. (If anyone has this episode recorded with this particular clip included in the actual episode, give me a mail).
  2. Second version had atleast one re-animation. (Version aired on the Hub [thanks to Garrett Aja for confirming])
  3. Third version had some huge changes: a few extra scenes, but the big thing was that almost half of all scenes got re-animated. The reason was apparently that they wanted to correct alot of small bloopers, but they still managed to overlook some big ones, and the downside was that many times the characters ended up looking very different. In the re-animated scenes, not necessarily all characters appear to have been re-animated though. Also a few parts of some of the music videos got re-animated. The intro to the song "Jealousy", was changed to resemble the cassette release intro. (Version on the Rhino DVDs).


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