Dream Tropes Wiki/Alternative Foreign Theme Song

When a dubbing company wants to market a television show, film, or video game from another country, they'll do the usual stuff like translation and localization. But they've got one problem with it: the theme song. Sometimes when translating a media product, the localization company may change the opening and/or ending theme song for their home country. So what do they do about this? Instead of dubbing the original song, they'll replace it with a completely different theme song, of course!

This usually happens for two reasons. One reason is for marketing purposes. The company may want to replace the song with a different one because they believe it will help make the show more popular with their target audience. This usually results in the tune of the new theme song bringing out very different mood from the original theme song. Another reason for changing the theme song is because the original song is licensed by a singer and they can't use the music.

Changing the theme song is common for English dubs of anime series geared towards children, especially if the show is airing on a television network, but it happens outside of North America as well; the practice of having completely different music is arguably even more common in Japan, where there is an entire industry based around creating Anime Theme Songs, and Italy, where it's easier to list the animated series who don't have at least one.

This is also an aversion of The Song Remains the Same, where the original song is kept and left in its initial language, and Translated Cover Version, where the original theme song is dubbed with more-or-less a direct translation of the original lyrics. If the song keeps the same melody of the original, but has radically different lyrics, then it goes under What Song Was This Again?.

Not to be confused with Foreign Language Theme, where the original theme is written in another language, or Replaced the Theme Tune, where the show replaces its own theme song with another one.

## Anime & Manga

* El TV Kadsre Television Network is well known for this trope, *especially* in the 1980s. Whenever an anime dub had an example of The Song Remains the Same, they'd either translate it themselves *or* make their own theme.
	+ When the Ocean dub of *Ranma ½* aired in El Kadsre, it had the original theme translated and sung by Liza Crespo, whilst new songs were made for other seasons to avoid paying rights. One of the songs was recorded by Scarlet Grain.
* When Banushen Television began airing the remastered *Dragon Ball Z*, they replaced Funimation's Mark Menza-composed replacement for "Cha-La Head-Cha-La" with the official Toei English version of "Cha-La Head-Cha-La" performed by the original singer, Hironobu Kageyama.
* ERPT Studios is also well known for this trope, *especially* for their dubs of Dragonball and Dragonball Z.
* The Dadian dub of *Sonic X* has 2 opening and ending themes, most of which were done by Sonic Soul, who joined exclusively for the series.

## Live-Action TV

* The Dadian dub of *The X-Files*has a different ending theme by Emmi Unikas named "Nights of Birds", a love song, which is not very fitting for a show about investigating paranormal phenomena.

## Western Animation

* Almost every kids' show dubbed into Vicnoran for VBC had this trope used:
	+ The Vicnoran dub of *Angelina Ballerina* used a cover of "Video Killed the Radio Star" performed by the American alternative rock band The Interval Signal. Most cable reruns (mainly those on Nick Jr.) use the original intro.
* The D-pop band Groove Girls has done several alternative theme songs for Western cartoon girl-themed series dubbed in Dadian. These include the following: *Winx Club*, *Totally Spies!*, *The Powerpuff Girls* and many others.
* There's different opening themes for several Japanese dubs of DIC's video game-based cartoons, such as *The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!*, *The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3*, *Super Mario World* (NOTE: These 3 cartoons were merged into 1 series in Japan known as *Brotherly Plumbers - Mario and Luigi*), *The Legend of Zelda* and *Sonic SatAM*.

* The Nijian Japanese dub of *The Simpsons*has 3 ending themes, the 1st one named "Up and Down" by Chocolate Ice Lollies, the 2nd one named "Its a Strange, Strange World" by Fried Side and the 3rd one named "Get Funky" by Rock Paper Scissors Simpsons.
* The Dadian dub of *Pinky Dinky Doo*uses a song by the band Stellar named "Magical Musical Mars" as the ending theme.
* The Dadian dub of *Phineas and Ferb* got a new theme playing over the ending credits named "One Life Left" by Chocolatey Dhocolatey.
* The Nijian Japanese dub of *Harry and His Bucket Full of Dinosaurs* has 2 ending themes. One of the ending themes is named "Just Imagine" by Daro Kasubi. The other one is named "Ashita" by Musical Wonders.
* The Dadian dub of the 1987 version of *DuckTales* uses "Departure" by Mari Dunasi as its theme song.
* The band Banana Tree wrote a new ending theme for the Dadian dub of *Animaniacs*.
* The Janosian Japanese dub of the 2016 reboot of *Ben 10* has a song by Prism Panic named "BEN THIS WORLD" as its opening theme.

## Films

* The El Kadsreian version *Robots* has a 2 ending credits music, the first named "Shine" by Ricky Fante and the second named "See Me" by Melanie Blatt.