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Anime Censorship in America

Page history last edited by Caroline Dougherty 15 years, 1 month ago

Anime Censorship in America

 

 

What is Anime Censorship?

 

 

When anime first hit the US shores, people couldn't believe the amount of mature content that was involved in it.  Before it could be shown here however, the dialogue needed to be translated into English.  So, this is the first thing that typically happens.  Next, the network that's running the show decides what the demographic for their particular show is and makes adjustments to the script, visuals and music accordingly.  The show then needs to be edited to fit the standards of the Federal Communications Commission (the FCC).  After all of that, the show can be edited even further by shortening the opening and closing credits in order to make more time for commercials.  Below, we have the original and edited versions of the show Yu-Gi-Oh!.

 

 

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While around the same length, these two openings are completely different.  Why?  The goal here was to change the show's original demographic of teenagers-young adults to children.  Also when changing the demographic, many networks decide that anything from the Japanese culture would likely confuse young children, so all of that is removed as well.  When all of this is done, you end up with a product that is sometimes completely different from the oiginal, as the above clips show.  Now I will provide some specific examples of things that are censored when anime is localized.

 

 

 

 

 

 Religion:

 

 

Religion is quite often completely removed from censored anime.  It’s never limited to any single religion, either.  Anything from Christianity, Buddhism, and even Ancient Egyptian is removed.  Often this takes place in the form of airbrushing over religious symbols.  The cross has been removed from shows like Pocket Monsters and Dragonball Z.  Hexagrams, like the one pictured above, are edited to look like weird pointy shapes.  Even more ridiculously, in Yu-Gi-Oh!, there are several cards the characters play with that make allusions to religion which recieve edits as well.  These are always edited and occasionally very sloppily.  Below, a couple of examples are pictured:
                                          
Okay, and now I will walk you through these.  The first one, to the far left, is the most obvious.  It was originally an angel with a halo over its head.  For that one, they simply removed the halo and called it a day.  The second card, originally entitled "The Dark Ruler of Hades" has been fairly heavily edited in order to remove any similarities between it and the devil.  Horns on its head have been changed to orb-like balls and the drink in its hand has been changed from red, which signifies blood, to green.  Finally, the name has been changed.  In a move of pure laziness, they have simply put a space between the a and d and called it quits.  The third card's edit is impossible to see without explanation.  The picture on this card has been completely redoneOriginally, the picture displayed an ankh which is the Ancient Egyptian symbol for life.  The final card on the far right was originally called "Ouija Board of Death".  Since this covers the topic of religion and death, which we will talk about later, it was changed to "Destiny Board".
Another good example of religious censorship takes place in the series Dragonball Z.  In a couple of episodes, characters die and get sent to a place called "The Home For Infinite Losers" or "HFIL" as is displayed on the shirts of the guardians of the place.  The real picture is much more simple.  By removing a couple of lines, they have edited the real name, Hell. 

 

 

 

 

Drug and Alcohol References:

Inclusions of drug and alcohol in anime is actually quite common…  In Japan that is.  Here in America, every reference to drugs and/or alcohol is immediately removed or explained, sometimes with hilarious consequences.  In an anime show entitled One Piece, there is a character named Sanji that is often shown smoking a cigarette.  In the American version, a lollipop has replaced the cigarette.  Seems like a good plan, right?  I would say that you are right, until Sanji suddenly takes a drag off of the lollipop.

 

 

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Alcohol is also edited out in very poorly planned out ways.  In the show Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, one of the characters has a father that owns a vineyard and wants his son to follow in the family business.  When he refuses, he comes to try and force him by beating him at the card-playing academy he is currently attending.  The censors decided that the only way around this was to make his father a hot sauce tycoon.  Also, when playing the card game, the father has several card characters that are referred to as "dizzy", when they are obviously drunk.

 

 

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These are just a few examples of the censorship of drug and alcohol use amongst the tons out there.

 

 

Violence:

 

 

Probably one of the most heavily edited aspects of most localized anime is violence.  Pictured above is a shot from One Piece.  In the unedited version a gun is being aimed at the characters head.  In the censored version, some sort of hammer and spring device is the threat.  This is but a taste of the copious editing that takes place when violence is involved.  Frequently, in shows edited by 4Kids Entertainment, things as harmless as slaps are completely removed from the show and that is only the beginning.   The idea of death almost always removed.  In Yu-Gi-Oh!, you will often hear characters talking about sending people to the "shadow realm" in the edited version.  This almost always means that one character is intending to kill the other.  Death is often avoided by either euphemism (i.e. the shadow realm) or simply not mentioning it.  It is much like a parent will treat their child when confronted by death at an early age.  The captions for the pictures below are not an exagerration...

 

 

   (If the saw hits my ankle, it'll cut my foot off)

   (If the "dark energy disk" hits my ankle, it'll send me to the "shadow realm")

 

 

A character will "go on a long journey" or perhaps you will just simply never see them again and the censors are hoping you won't question their sudden absence.  Blood is another major thing that gets the boot when companies are censoring their shows.  In most programs that are being aimed at children, every single speck of blood is wiped clean in the edit.  One notable example would be Dragonball Z.  In the edited version of the show, blood may show up as a smudge or just completely disappear.  Pictured below is a comparison shot from the show Naruto in which blood is censored:

 

 

A common technique to get around characters using guns is to simply erase them and pretend that the character is pointing.

 

(very menacing!)

(that's better...)
Sexuality:
The main thing here is the censoring of nudity.  Since we don't allow nudity on TV at all until past the hour of 10 pm (and many of the shows are being aimed at children) nudity is often removed during censorship.  Often, anime will show mild nudity within the context of everyday life such as during a bath (pictured above).  The networks get around this in many different ways:
  • drawing in objects to cover up the nudity
  • the "digital bra/bikini technique"
  • adding in towels or robes
Sexuality between minors is also something that is heavily edited.  Networks will often get around this obstacle through rewriting the dialogue to either change what they are implying or to increase the character's age to make it more acceptable.  In an episode of Pocket Monsters, one of the female characters is leaving the show and has a final encounter with the main character in which she confesses her love to him.  In the edited version, she very passionately tells him that he's a very good friend.  These are just a very few examples of the things that get censored when it comes to bringing anime to American television.

 

Conclusions

 

 So, how has this whole censorship deal been recieved?  The answer is either with great ignorance or anger, neither of which is a very good response.  People typically either accept what they see on TV as the original show hate the network for what they have done to the show.  Efforts have been made to get the original versions out there as well.  Typically when a show is released striaght to DVD, it is the original version hitting the shelves.  Even some networks, such as Cartoon Network, are making attempts to put mostly unedited anime programs on the air during later hours to get around the FCC.  The wheels are starting to turn in the correct way, but we are still not there yet.  Anime is an artform that Japan is sharing with us and if we don't deem it appropriate for our children then perhaps we shouldn't be showing it to them.  Or perhaps we should reevaluate what makes appropriate television.  In the meantime, do what you can to watch the original version of your favorite anime if you haven't.  It may surprise you.

 

-Ben Horn

 

Sources:

Wikipedia

Yu-Jyo.net

Naruto Place

Psypokes.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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